Now I pulled the box forward and plopped down on the floor next to it with a sense of inevitability. Unless I threw it out, this box wasn’t going anywhere. I worked my fingers underneath the packing tape and peeled it back. Inside, there was a jumbled mass of memories—exhibition catalogs and rolled promotional posters, a handful of random postcards and Polaroids, bits and pieces from my life in the museum. I couldn’t help reaching for the photos, fanning them out like a losing hand of cards. One showed the placement of an alabaster statue, another had a grouping of oil paintings, and in another a woman stood with her arms spread wide. I knew she was showing how much space to leave between installations, but she looked like she was waiting for an embrace. I’d trusted her. I’d loved her.

But by this time she had begun sleeping with the museum director, a bald-headed guy twice her age who was also the CEO of the North Atlantic Museum Trust. And she’d been embezzling. And taking a few pieces of art. Which I had learned when the theft was discovered and Aimee framed me for it.

Some part of me felt like I was still standing in the director’s office, trapped in the nightmare. On one side of the room, the director, the museum’s lawyer, an insurance adjuster, and Aimee—all with identical frowns of cold judgment.

On the other side, me.

If there had been any more proof than a suspicious email trail Aimee had created and her own lying testimony, I would be in jail. But after the only truly valuable piece of artwork mysteriously reappeared and the money was written off, I had been dismissed with a permanent mark on my reputation. A local reporter had shared enough details to blacklist me socially and professionally. If I had been guilty, I could have understood being fired, even being made a pariah in print and online. But I knew I was innocent. And so did Aimee. She was the part I just couldn’t understand.

Had we ever been friends? Why had she driven me to the ER when I cut my hand on a sharp piece of tile and then waited while I got stitches? Those late-night calls, the little “just thinking of you” gifts—from an article torn out of a magazine to a funky piece of artisan jewelry to a bizarre flavor of chocolate to postcards addressed, stamped, and mailed even though we saw each other daily (our private running joke). None of that had been necessary if all she needed was a fall guy. It was like the man who meets your parents and talks marriage only to ghost you after sex.

I looked at Aimee’s glossy lipsticked smile, her dark arched eyebrows, the angled bob framing her face, the face of a liar, and twisted the photo in my hands.