“Listen, Nicki—much as I’d love to pry further into your secret reason for moving here, I’d better get on. There are people still on my staff who belong on the welfare line.” She nods toward Izzie. “I can’t rest until that’s rectified. But first stop: Ethan’s bag.”

I thank her, and return to my car feeling more optimistic than I have for a while.

Maybe nothing all that terrible has happened to me. Maybe I’m not the guiltiest woman in the world. If I told Kate, she might laugh and say, “God, what a story!” in an appreciative way. I’m so used to Melissa’s harsh glare and pursed lips and, more recently, her refusal to listen, but she is only one person. The wrong person to try and share a secret with, if the secret’s anything more controversial than “This is what I’ve bought so-and-so for their birthday—don’t tell them.”

The conclusion I’ve been strenuously trying to avoid reaching glows in neon in my brain: I need to give up on Melissa and find myself a new best friend. I can’t get away from her—she’s managed to tie us together forever, even if that wasn’t her intention—but I can demote her in my mind to “acquaintance”; she’ll never know I’ve done it, if I’m still friendly on the surface.

Is there a website, I wonder: newbestfriend.com? If there is, it’s probably full of people trying to turn it nonplatonic, looking for “fuck buddies” or “friends with benefits.”

Kate Zilber wouldn’t have let a run-in with a policeman stop her from doing what she wanted and needed to do. She wouldn’t have been doing it in the first place unless she’d decided it was OK, and she wouldn’t have been terrified and ashamed if caught. I doubt she’d have disappeared from Gavin’s life with no word or explanation, as I did.

The fairest thing to do, for his sake and my family’s—that’s what I told myself.

Liar. Coward.

I owe him an explanation. For whatever reason, however stupid and crazy it was, he was significant to me for a while. He mattered. I think I mattered to him too.

I drive along the Silsford Road with the window open, thinking about the possibility of contacting him now. Could I extend my definition of being good to include emailing him just once more, to tell him that my disappearance wasn’t his fault, that he did nothing wrong?

No. It wouldn’t be only once. He’d hook you again.

Cutting off from Gavin took all my willpower; I might not have the strength to do it a second time.