Yet when Juliana returned to the Wild Goose Tavern the next night, Ned Spires wasn’t there. She waited at the bar in her usual place until eleven p.m. He’d let her down, she should have known. Weak, a coward! Acquaintances of his from the university stopped here, weeknights. Juliana knew them by their faces, not names. She’d never been good at names. Nodding at Ned Spires when she was with him, and at her. But when Juliana wasn’t with Ned, not seeming to see her.

Bastards. She hated them all.

Into the Wild Goose in the later part of the evening came a familiar face, a white-haired older friend of Ned Spires, possibly a fellow poet, to whom Juliana spoke as a naïve young girl might speak.

Asking this person if he knew “Ned Spires”—if “Ned Spires” was to be trusted? A good man?

The white-haired man stared at Juliana in surprise.

Asking her, why did she want to know?

Juliana said that “Ned Spires” told her he was separated from his wife and filing for a divorce and she was wondering was any of that true …

Seeing in the white-haired man’s face an expression of doubt, dislike, Juliana ceased speaking. For she was not accustomed to men regarding her with such condescension, especially not older men who were (usually) grateful for her attention.

Carefully the white-haired man told Juliana that he “had not heard a word” about a separation, still less a divorce.

“But Ned Spires is a ‘good man’—to be ‘trusted’?”

The white-haired man frowned, for this line of inquiry was annoying to him. Pointedly he glanced at the bartender, who was eavesdropping from a few feet away, and so the bartender came to Juliana and told her politely that Ned Spires was an old friend and that she’d best return to where she had been sitting or, better yet, consider leaving, for it was after midnight.

Did Juliana need a ride home? Any kind of help getting to her home?

“No! I do not.”

Juliana retreated, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. She had not intended this harshness—this was not her.

Much of what she’d said was not Juliana speaking. Vodka, it was.

Meaning to leave the tavern, on her way out of the tavern, but turning suddenly and returning to the bar to explain to the men. Their eyes shifting onto her in annoyance, dread.

“He has threatened my life. ‘Ned Spires.’ I mean—that was what I’d learned. But—I think—” Juliana’s voice faltered, she felt as if she were grasping a rope, hauling herself up out of dark, churning water in which she might drown as the men stared at her. “I think I may have misunderstood. You are saying that Ned Spires is a good man. He is kind … I was one of his closest friends, we shared his poetry together. I don’t wish him ill. Yes, Ned is a good man, he is to be trusted. I see that now. I’m sorry, I was misinformed. I’ve said the wrong thing. You don’t need to tell him. I see now that I was wrong—he’d never said he was getting a divorce. He never said that to me.”