“I’ve been wondering lately if I made a mistake in breaking off my engagement,” I admitted. Knowing that Sarah had experienced the same trauma my mother had—worse, really, since she’d never had a child—made me feel oddly close to her. “I felt like I couldn’t trust my fiancé, but since then it isn’t like I’ve met anyone else I could trust, either.” My disastrous attempts at dating in the past year had made Martin seem, if not like a knight in shining armor, then at least one who hadn’t been too badly tarnished. His occasional trips to Spain reminded me of what I missed about him, and made it easy to overlook the dents and scratches he’d accumulated over the years.

“That sounds like my former husband. He had an affair. Actually, he’d had many silly little affairs over the years, but I never minded that. We had this ideal of an open relationship. We were free to see other people if we wished, but we belonged to each other.” Sarah stared out the window, but her mind wasn’t on the things in front of her eyes. “Only this one affair was different. It was as if he’d discovered his grand amour, the old fool.” There was a catch in her voice. The subject clearly stirred up a lot of emotions.

“Did you know the woman he had the affair with?”

“No. It was someone he knew from work.”

“Did he end up marrying her?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“No. I believe she ended up dumping him.”

“My fiancé had an affair with a woman he worked with,” I blurted out. “At least, I think he did. He lied about business trips with her. I don’t know. He’s always denied it, and the woman is married to someone else now.”

Sarah looked my face over carefully, then took a tiny sip from her glass. “Was it all a misunderstanding? You might still work things out.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. I think…” For a second I hesitated, then plunged in. “I’m wondering if he might have had some kind of… relationship… with my sister.” I’d wanted to talk about this so badly, but I had no one else to say the words to. Jesse hated Martin, so he couldn’t be sympathetic, and I didn’t have anyone else to confide in. I’d always felt unfairly judged when people found out about my screwed-up family. Since college, I’d kept the past to myself, only offering that my parents had died in an accident when I was young. The only person I’d opened up to was Martin.

Sarah’s eyes were wide with shock. “But… Lily… would she do that?”