I tapped my thumb on the group text my oldest friends, Sarah, Jennifer, and Madison, kept going at all times. We had grown up together, and the three of them had returned to Cape Carolina. I was the only outlier who had moved away for good. I wanted to tell them. I needed to tell them—at least that I was coming home, if not the reason why. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet.

As I leaned my head against the plane window, watching Palm Beach become smaller and smaller and then fade to white, I couldn’t think about next steps. All I could think about was how to tell my mother. My mother loved me more than anything, but she also had ideas about how my life was going to turn out. I thought she would be disappointed in me. My divorce was a mark on her sterling reputation.

But then I had a thought that neither consoled me nor made me feel worse: Thad had never really been mine. I had been a part of a life he was trying to live, a pawn in a game that he had tried to play and lost. A tiny part of me pitied him, felt sad he had spent years living a life that must have felt like it was the wrong size and color. But I think what worried me most of all was that I really, truly hadn’t known.

In fact, I used to feel sorry for my friends. Their marriages were so boring. Thad and I went dancing, we took art classes, we traveled on a whim, we laughed all the time. I couldn’t reconcile how the man who told me how beautiful I was, who looked at me with pure admiration, was the one who had betrayed me.

Thad had called and texted me no fewer than twenty-five times. I didn’t want to read his texts, but I couldn’t help it. The last one was a gut punch. Amelia, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.

It was a relief. I hadn’t been that stupid. Thad and I did have real love. It was just the lust part that was missing. I’ll admit that we hadn’t had a hot and steamy sex life. Maybe it wasn’t as good as our conversations over coffee about the art opening we’d gone to the night before or our long, rambling walks through Palm Beach’s elite neighborhoods, where Thad would have me in stitches over his renditions of the secret lives behind those bougainvillea walls.

I reasoned that a girl can’t have everything. While my friends complained about their husbands not wanting to take them out or go on vacations or watch Bravo, my small concern seemed paltry. Thad and I had fun. We had love. The lust would be gone eventually anyway, I justified. I was married to my best friend.

I fell asleep, my face pressed against the plastic window, jolting awake when the plane touched down. Shocked that I’d slept through the entire flight, I powered my phone up, and, momentarily forgetting what had transpired, I, out of habit, said sleepily, “Hey, Siri, text Thad. Landed.”