meant to wait to tell you... at least until next week. But the thought of coming home tonight...” Blake shook his head and let the sentence trail off.

Very slowly, Annie closed the car door. Rain hit the windshield and ran in streaks down the windows, obscuring the world outside the car.

She couldn’t have heard right. Frowning, she reached for him. “What are you talking about...”

He lurched against the window, as if her touch—the touch he’d known for so long—were now repugnant.

It all became real suddenly, with that gesture he wouldn’t allow. Her husband was asking for a divorce. She drew back her hand and found that it was trembling.

“I should have done this a long time ago, Annie. I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy with you in years.”

The shock of it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was everywhere, spreading through her in wave after numbing wave. Her voice was tangled deep, deep inside of her, and she couldn’t find the frayed start of it.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said softly, and she heard the choked-up thickness of his breathing. “I’m seeing someone else... another woman.”

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. He was having an a fair. The word sank through her, hurting all the way to the bone. A thousand tiny details slipped into place: dinners he’d missed, trips he’d taken to exotic locations, the new silk boxer shorts he’d started wearing, the switch in colognes from Polo to Calvin Klein after all these years, the love they made so rarely...

How had she been so blind? She must have known. Deep inside, in some primitive feminine core, she must have known what was happening and chosen to ignore it.

She turned to him, wanting to touch him so badly it was a physical ache. For half her life, she’d touched him whenever she wanted, and now he had taken that right away. “We can get over an affair....” Her voice was feeble, not her voice at all. “Couples do it all the time. I mean... it’ll take me some time to forgive you, time to learn to trust, but—”

“I don’t want your forgiveness.”

This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not to them. She heard the words and felt the pain, but it all had a dizzying sense of unreality about it. “But we have so much. We have history. We have Natalie. We can work this out, maybe try counseling. I know we’ve had problems, but we can get through it.”

“I don’t want to try, Annie. I want out.”

“But I don’t.” Her voice spiked into a high, plaintive whine. “We’re a family. You can’t throw twenty years away....” She couldn’t find the words she needed. It terrified her, the sudden silence she found in her own soul; she was afraid there were words that could save her, save them, and she couldn’t find them. “Please, please don’t do this....”

He didn’t say anything for a long time—long enough for her to find a strand of hope and weave it into solid fabric. He’ll change his mind. He’ll realize we’re a family and say it was just a midlife crisis. He’ll—

“I’m in love with her.”

Annie’s stomach started a slow, agonized crumbling.

Love? How could he be in love with someone else? Love took time and effort. It was a million tiny moments stacked one atop another to make something tangible. That declaration—love—and everything it meant diminished her. She felt as if she were a tiny, disappearing person, a million miles away from the man she’d always loved. “How long?”

“Almost a year.”

She felt the first hot sting of tears. A year in which everything between them had been a lie. Everything. “Who is she?”

“Suzannah James. The firm’s new junior partner.”

Suzannah James—one of the two dozen guests at Blake’s birthday party last weekend. The thin young woman in the turquoise dress who’d hung on Blake’s every word. The one he’d danced with to “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

Tears stung Annie’s eyes, turned everything into a blur. “But after the party, we made love....”

Had he been imagining Suzannah’s face in the darkness? Was that why he’d clicked off the bedroom lights before he touched her? A tiny, whimpering moan escaped her. She couldn’t hold it all inside. “Blake, please...”

He looked helpless, a little lost himself, and in the moment of vulnerability, he was Blake again, her husband. Not this ice-cold man who wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I love her, Annie. Please don’t make me say it again.”

The sour remains of his confession tainted the air, left her with nothing to breathe. I love her, Annie.

She wrenched the car door open and stumbled blindly down the brick walkway to her house. Rain hit her face and mingled with her tears. At the door, she pulled the keys from her handbag, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t find the lock on the first try. Then the key slipped into the slot and clicked hard.

She lurched inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

Annie finished her second glass of wine and poured a third. Usually two glasses of chardonnay left her giddy and reeling and trying to remember song lyrics from her youth, but tonight it wasn’t helping.

She walked dully through her house, trying to figure out what she’d done that was so wrong, how she’d failed.

If only she knew that, maybe then she could make it all right again. She’d spent the past twenty years putting her family’s needs first, and yet somehow she had failed, and her failure had left her alone, wandering around this too-big house, missing a daughter who was gone and a husband who was in love with someone else.

Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten what she should have remembered. It was a lesson she’d learned early in life—one she’d thought she knew well. People left, and if you loved too deeply, too fiercely, their swift and sudden absence could chill you to the soul.

She climbed into her bed and burrowed under the covers, but when she realized that she was on “her” side of the bed, she felt as if she’d been slapped. The wine backed up into her throat, tasting sour enough that she thought she would vomit. She stared up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. With each ragged breath, she felt herself getting smaller and smaller.

What was she supposed to do now? It had been so long since she’d been anything but we. She didn’t even know if there was an I inside of her anymore. Beside her, the bedside clock ticked and ticked... and she wept.

The phone rang.

Annie woke on the first ring, her heart pounding. It was him, calling to say it was all a mistake, that he was sorry, that he’d always loved her. But when she picked up the phone, it was Natalie, laughing. “Hey, Mom, I made it.”

Her daughter’s voice brought the heartache rushing back.

Annie sat up in bed, running a weak hand through her tangled hair. “Hi, honey. I can’t believe you’re there already.” Her voice was thin and unsteady. She took a deep breath, trying to collect herself. “So, how was your flight?”

Natalie launched into a monologue that lasted for a steady fifteen minutes. Annie heard about the plane trip, the airport, about the strangeness of the London Underground, and the way the houses were all connected together—like, San Francisco, you know, Mom—

“... Mom?”

Annie realized with a start that she’d lapsed into silence. She’d been listening to Natalie—she truly had—but some silly, pointless turn in the conversation had made her think of Blake, of the car that wasn’t in the garage and the body that wasn’t beside her in bed.

God, is that how it’s going to be from now on?

“Mom?”

Annie squeezed her eyes shut, a feeble attempt to escape. There was a white, static roar of sound in her head. “I... I’m right here, Natalie. I’m sorry. You were telling me about your host family.”

“Are you all right, Mom?”

Tears leaked down Annie’s cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I’m fine. How about you?”

A pause crackled through the lines. “I miss you guys.”

Annie heard loneliness in her daughter’s voice and it took all of her self-control not to whisper into the phone, Come home, Nana. We’ll be lonely together.

“Trust me, Nana, you’ll make friends. In no time at all, you’ll be having so much fun that you won’t be sitting by the phone waiting for your old mom to call. June fifteenth will come much too quickly.”

“Hey, Mom, you sound kinda shaky. Are you going to be okay while I’m gone?”

Annie laughed; it was a nervous, fluttery sound. “Of course I will. Don’t you dare worry about me.”

“Okay.” The word was spoken so softly Annie had to strain to hear it. “Before I start crying, I better talk to Daddy.”

Annie flinched. “Dad’s not here right now.”

“Oh.”

“He loves you, though. He told me to tell you that.”

“Yeah, of course he does. So, you’ll call Monday?”

“Like clockwork.”

“I love you, Mom.”

Annie felt tears flood her throat again, squeezing until she could hardly talk. She suppressed a fierce urge to warn Natalie about the world, to tell her to watch out for lives that fall apart on a rainy spring day without warning. “Be careful, Natalie. Love you.”

“Love you.”

And the phone went dead.

Annie placed the handset back on the base and crawled out of bed, stumbling blindly into her bathroom. The lights came on like something out of an Oliver Stone movie. She stared in horror at her reflection. She was still wearing her clothes from the airport, and they were wrinkled into something she didn’t recognize. Her hair was stuck so tightly to her head it looked as if she’d used Elmer’s glue as conditioner.

She slammed her fist onto the light switch. In the blessed darkness, she stripped down to her bra and panties and left the wrinkled clothes in a heap on the tile floor. Feeling tired and old and swollen, she walked out of the bathroom and crawled back into bed.

She could smell him in the fabric of the sheets. Only it wasn’t him. Blake—her Blake—had always worn Polo. She’d given him the cologne for Christmas every year; it came already wrapped for the holiday in a green gift box at Nordstrom. She’d given it to him every year and he’d worn it every day... until Calvin Klein and Suzannah changed everything.

Annie’s best friend showed up bright and early the next morning, pounding on the front door, yelling, “Open up in there, goddamn it, or I’ll call the fire department.”

Annie slipped into Blake’s black silk bathrobe and stumbled tiredly toward the front door. She felt like hell from the wine she’d drunk last night, and it took considerable effort simply to open the door. The expensive stone tiles felt icy cold beneath her bare feet.

Terri Spencer stood in the doorway, wearing a baggy pair of faded denim overalls. Her thick, curly nimbus of black hair was hidden by a wild scarlet scarf. Bold gold hoops hung from her ears. She looked exactly like the gypsy she played on a daytime soap. Terri crossed her arms, cocked one ample hip, and eyed Annie. “You look like shit.”

Annie sighed. Of course Terri had heard. No matter how much of a free spirit her friend claimed to be, her current husband was a dyed-in-the-wool lawyer. And lawyers gossiped. “You’ve heard.”

“I had to hear it from Frank. You could have called me yourself.”

Annie ran a trembling hand through her tangled hair. They had been friends forever, she and Terri. Practically sisters. But even with all they’d been through together, all the ups and downs they’d weathered, Annie didn’t know how to begin. She was used to taking care of Terri, with her wild, over-the-top actress lifestyle and her steady stream of divorces and marriages. Annie was used to taking care of everyone. Except Annie. “I meant to call, but it’s been... difficult.”

Terri curled a plump arm around Annie’s shoulder and propelled her to the overstuffed sofa in the living room. Then she went from window to window, whipping open the white silk curtains. The twenty-foot-tall, wall-to-wall windows framed a sea and sky so blue it stung the eyes, and left Annie with nowhere to hide.

When Terri was through, she sat down beside Annie on the sofa. “Now,” she said softly. “What the fuck happened?”

Annie wished she could smile—it was what Terri wanted, why she’d used the vulgarity—but Annie couldn’t respond. Saying it out loud would make it too real. She sagged forward, burying her puffy face in her hands. “Oh, God...”

Terri took Annie in her arms and held her tightly, rocking back and forth, smoothing the dirty hair from her sticky cheeks. It felt good to be held and comforted, to know that she wasn’t as alone as she felt.

“You’ll get through it,” Terri said at last. “Right now, you think you won’t, but you will. I promise. Blake’s an asshole, anyway. You’ll be better off without him.”

Annie drew back and looked at her friend through a blur of stinging tears. “I don’t... want to be without him.”

“Of course you don’t. I only meant...”

“I know what you meant. You meant that it will get easier. Like I’d trust your opinion on this. You change husbands more often than I change underwear.”

Terri’s thick black eyebrows winged upward. “Score one for the housewife. Look, Annie, I know I’m harsh and pessimistic, and that’s why my marriages fail, but remember what I used to be like? Remember in college?”

Annie remembered, even though she wished she didn’t. Terri used to be a sweet little Pollyanna; that’s why they’d become best friends. Terri had stayed innocent until the day her first husband, Rom, had come home and told her he was having an affair with their accountant’s daughter. Terri had had twenty-four hours’ notice, and then wham! the checking account was gone, the savings had been mysteriously “spent,” and the medical practice they’d built together had been sold to a buddy for one dollar.

Annie had been with Terri constantly back then, drinking wine in the middle of the day, even smoking pot on a few occasions. It had made Blake insane. What are you doing still hanging around that cheap wanna-be, anyway? he used to say. You have dozens of more acceptable friends. It had been one of the few times Annie had stood up to Blake.

“You stayed with me every day,” Terri said softly, slipping her hand into Annie’s and squeezing gently. “You got me through it, and I’m going to be here for you. Whenever you need me. Twenty-four hours a day.”

“I didn’t know how much it hurt.... It feels like...” The humiliating tears burned again. She wished she could stop them, but it was impossible.

“Like your insides are bleeding away... like nothing will ever make you happy again? I know.”

Annie closed her eyes. Terri’s understanding was almost more than she could bear. She didn’t want her friend to know so much; not Terri, who’d never held a marriage together for more than a few years and couldn’t even commit to owning a pet. It was terrifying to think that this was... ordinary. As if the loss of twenty years was nothing at all, just another divorce in a country that saw a million breakups a year.

“Look, kiddo, I hate to bring this up, but I have to. Blake’s a hotshot attorney. You need to protect yourself.”

It was bruising advice, the kind that made a woman want to curl up into a tiny, broken ball. Annie tried to smile. “Blake’s not like that.”

“Oh, really. You need to ask yourself how well you know him.”

Annie couldn’t deal with this now. It was enough to realize that the past year had been a lie; she couldn’t fathom the possibility that Blake had become a complete stranger. She stared at Terri, hoping her friend could understand. “You’re asking me to be someone I’m not, Terri. I mean, to walk into a bank and clean out the money, our money. It’s so... final. And it makes this about things... just things. I can’t do it to Blake. I can’t do it to me. I know it’s naive—stupid, even—to trust him, but he’s been my best friend for more than half my life.”

“Some friend.”

Annie touched her friend’s plump hand. “I love you for worrying about me, Terri. Really, I do, but I’m not ready for this advice. I hope...” Her voice fell to a whisper. She felt hopelessly naive when she looked into Terri’s sad, knowing eyes. “I still hope I don’t need it, I guess.”

Terri forced a bright smile. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just a midlife crisis and he’ll get over it.”

They spent the next few hours talking. Time and again, Annie pulled a memory or an anecdote out of the black hat of her marriage and tossed it out, as if talking about her life, remembering it, would bring him home.

Terri listened and smiled and held her, but she didn’t offer any more real-world advice—and Annie was thankful. Sometime around noon they ordered a large lamb sausage pizza from Granita’s, and they sat on the deck and ate the whole thing. As the sun finally set across the blue Pacific, Annie knew that Terri would have to go soon.

Annie turned to her best friend. Finally, she asked the question that had been hovering for the better part of the afternoon. “What if he doesn’t come back, Terri?” She said it so quietly that, for a moment, she thought the words were buried in the distant sound of the surf.

“What if he doesn’t?”

Annie looked away. “I can’t imagine my life without him. What will I do? Where will I go?”

“You’ll go home,” Terri said. “If I’d had a dad as cool as Hank, I would have gone home in an instant.”

Home. It struck her for the first time that the word was as fragile as bone china. “Home is with Blake.”

“Ah, Annie.” Terri sighed, squeezing her hand. “Not anymore.”

Two days later, he called.

His voice was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. “Blake...”

“I need to see you.”

She swallowed hard, felt the sudden sting of tears. Thank you, God. I knew he’d come back. “Now?”

“No. My schedule’s kind of tight this morning. As soon as I can break free.”

For the first time in days, Annie could breathe.

When Blake stared at the soaring white angles of the house, he felt an unexpected pang of loss. It was so beautiful, this home of theirs, so stunningly contemporary. A real showpiece on a street where teardowns routinely cost five million dollars and nothing was too expensive.

Annie had conceived, created, and designed this place. She’d taken the view—sea and sand and sky—and translated it into a home that seemed to have grown out of the hillside. She’d chosen every tile, every fixture; all through the house were incongruous little items of whimsy—an angel here, a gargoyle there, a ratty old macrame plant hanger in the corner of a room with thousand-dollar-a-square-foot wooden paneling, a family photo in a homemade shell frame. There was no place inside that didn’t reflect her bubbling, slightly off-center personality.

He tried to remember what it had felt like to love her, but he couldn’t anymore.

He’d been sleeping with other women for ten years, seducing them and bedding them and forgetting them. He’d traveled with them, spent the night with them, and through it all, Annie had been at home, baking recipes from Gourmet magazine and picking out paint chips and tile samples and driving Natalie to and from school. He’d thought sooner or later she’d notice that he’d fallen out of love with her, but she was so damn trusting. She always believed the best of everyone, and when she loved, it was body and soul, forever.

He sighed, suddenly feeling tired. It was turning forty that had changed his outlook, made him realize that he didn’t want to be locked in a loveless marriage anymore.

Before the gray had moved its ugly fingers into his hair and lines had settled beneath his blue eyes, he thought he had it all—a glamorous career, a beautiful wife, a loving daughter, and all the freedom he needed.

He traveled with his college buddies twice a year, went on fishing trips to remote islands with pretty beaches and prettier women; he played basketball two nights a week and closed the local bar down on Friday nights. Unlike most of his friends, he’d always had a wife who understood, who stayed at home. The perfect wife and mother— everything that he thought he wanted.

Then he met Suzannah. What had begun as just another sexual conquest rolled into the most unexpected thing of all: love.

For the first time in years, he felt young and alive. They made love everywhere, all times of the day and night. Suzannah never cared what the neighbors thought or worried about a sleeping child in the next room. She was wild and unpredictable, and she was smart—unlike Annie, who thought the PTA was as vital to world order as the EEC.

He walked slowly down to the front door. Before he could even reach for the bell, the hand-carved rosewood door opened.

She stood in the doorway, her hands clasped nervously at her waist. A creamy silk dress clung to her body, and he couldn’t help noticing that she’d lost weight in the past few days—and God knew she couldn’t afford it.

Her small, heart-shaped face was pale, alarmingly so, and her eyes, usually as bright and green as shamrocks, were dull and bloodshot. She’d pulled her long hair into a tight ponytail that accentuated the sharp lines of her cheekbones and made her lips look swollen. Her earrings didn’t match; she was wearing one diamond and one pearl, and somehow that little incongruity brought home the stinging pain of his betrayal.

“Blake...” He heard the thin lilt of hope in her voice, and realized suddenly what she must have thought when he called this morning.

Shit. How could he have been so stupid?

She backed away from the door, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from her dress. “Come in, come in. You...” She looked away quickly, but not before he saw her bite down on her lower lip—the nervous habit she’d had since she was young. He thought she was going to say something, but at the last minute she turned and led the way down the hallway and out onto the huge, multitiered deck that overlooked the Colony’s quiet patch of Malibu beach.

Christ, he wished he hadn’t come. He didn’t need to see her pain in sharp relief, in the way she kept smoothing her dress and jabbing at her hair.

She crossed to the table, where a pitcher of lemonade— his favorite—and two crystal glasses sat on an elegant silver tray. “Natalie’s settling in well. I’ve only talked to her once—and I was going to call again, but... well... it’s been hard. I thought she might hear something in my voice. And, of course, she’ll ask for you. Maybe later... while you’re here... we could call again.”

“I shouldn’t have come.” He said it more sharply than he intended, but he couldn’t stand to hear the tremor in her voice anymore.

Her hand jerked. Lemonade splashed over the rim of the glass and puddled on the gray stone table. She didn’t turn to him, and he was glad. He didn’t want to see her face.

“Why did you?”

Something in her voice—resignation, maybe, or pain— caught him off guard. Tears burned behind his eyes; he couldn’t believe this was hurting. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the interim settlement papers he’d drafted. Wordlessly, he leaned over her shoulder and dropped them on the table. An edge of the envelope landed in the spilled lemonade. A dark, bubbling splotch began to form.

He couldn’t seem to draw his eyes from the stain. “Those are the papers, Annie....”

She didn’t move, didn’t answer, just stood there with her back to him.

She looked pathetic, with her shoulders hunched and her fingers curled around the table’s edge. He didn’t need to see her face to know what she was feeling. He could see the tears falling, one after another, splashing on the stone like tiny drops of rain.