ICK AND I WERE GOING to drive across country for our honeymoon. Fly to California, drive back. Neither of us had traveled much. But we were going to do it the summer after our first anniversary, as Nick needed to accrue enough vacation time. And of course, we didn’t make it to our first anniversary.

Our wedding was…well, you’ve been to weddings. They’re all the same, more or less. It was very nice.

That’s a lie. It was horrible. I was wallowing in doubt, first of all, a chorus of What the hell are we doing? ringing under my constant self-assurances. It’s okay. He loves you. He’s great. What the hell are we doing? We’re too young. It’s okay. He loves you. Why am I not in law school? Why am I following a man? It’s okay. He loves you. It’ll work. What the hell am I doing?

When I said yes to Nick there on the Brooklyn Bridge, I hadn’t envisioned a quick wedding. Figured I’d go to law school at Georgetown, where I’d been accepted, then…eventually…get married. I had no problem with a long-distance relationship; Nick and I had been long-distance my entire senior year, and we were doing fine. But he pushed. Why live apart when we could live together? If I could get into Georgetown, then Columbia or NYU would be a piece of cake. We loved each other. We were great together. We should get married. No reason to wait.

Nick could be very convincing. And relentless. And of course, I did love him.

So, the first day of summer, having been out of college for a month, I was about to get married and sweating blood at the thought. All morning long, as we set up chairs and put flower arrangements on the tables in my father’s yard, I waited for Nick to suddenly realize we were idiots to play this high-stakes game of grown-up. I waited for the courage to call things off. For my father to tell me this was a mistake.

I waited, too, for my mother.

See, she’d followed a man, too. My mother, a California girl, had come to Martha’s Vineyard at age twenty-one with some friends, met my father—seven years older, tanned and manly. Legend had it that my mother had been doing a modeling gig in Boston. She and her pals had decided to pop out to the island, and Dad was fixing the roof on the cottage one of the friends rented. He was tall, handsome, quiet—the best of the blue-collar clichés. Mom invited him to a beach party. When her friends left the following week, she decided to stay. A month later, she was pregnant and voila…our family.

As of my wedding day, my mother had been gone for more than eight years. In all that time, I’d received four postcards, all of them in the first year and a half of her desertion. They were all similar…Florida is hot and muggy, lots of orange trees and huge bugs. Hope you’re keeping up the good grades! The second one came from Arizona. Sure is hot here! You should see the way people water their lawns! Don’t they know they live in the desert? The third from St. Louis (Clydesdales, the arch, a baseball game), the fourth from Colorado (bluegrass festival, Rocky Mountains, thin air). None of the postcards had a return address. She signed them all Linda…not Mom.

I guess I hated her, except I missed her so much.

I had no real reason to expect her to show up. And yet, our engagement announcement had run in the paper. Martha’s Vineyard had a small year-round community; if she’d stayed in touch with anyone, she would’ve heard that her only child was getting married. So it wasn’t impossible that she’d come—it was just extremely, extraordinarily unlikely, and yet every time I heard the ferry’s blast, my heart rate tripled.

She didn’t come. That made more sense than her appearing, but it was crushing nonetheless. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she had. Still, in the back of my mind, a little scenario played in which my mother, gone these many years, would come home at last, and in all the excitement and happiness (because it was a fantasy, after all), my wedding would be postponed indefinitely.

Then I’d look over at Nick and see his smile, and shame would blast me in a hot wave, because I did love him so. But as much as I wanted that to be a good feeling, it wasn’t. It was simply terrifying, as if I’d been walking innocently along one day, and a yawning pit opened in front of me. Ever since he’d knelt down on the Brooklyn Bridge, I’d been scrambling back from a crumbling edge, trying to save myself from whatever lurked in that dark hole, quite sure it was nothing good.

Yet the appointed hour arrived, and there I was, putting on a white sheath dress and painful shoes, my hair worn down for once because I knew Nick loved it that way. BeverLee tried hard to be a good mother of the bride, hitting my hair with Jhirmack every time she walked past, fussing over my flowers, my dress. If my mother had been here—if she’d never left—we’d have gotten matching manicures, as we did when I was little. She’d have worn a pale blue silk dress, not the orange polyester that Bev had chosen. She’d have told me that marrying young was the best choice she’d ever made, and she could tell that Nick and I would be just like her and Dad.

Instead, I had BeverLee, chattering constantly, forcefeeding me coffee cake and bemoaning that I’d opted against the dollar dance. While I knew her intentions were good, I’d wanted to tap her with a magic wand and render her silent, stop having her tell me I was “purdier than a new set of snow tires.” How could I be getting married without my mother? How I could I be getting married, period? How was it that I’d let things get so out of hand?

No one else seemed concerned. My father told me Nick was “a good kid” and imagined we’d “do all right.” Nick’s father was beefy and charming and shallow…alas, he was Nick’s best man; Jason was already half in the bag, his hair worn long for Tom Cruise’s Interview with a Vampire look. Christopher, then in high school, flirted with Willa, whom he wouldn’t see again for thirteen years.

Even as I walked down the aisle on Dad’s arm, that little voice in my brain was whispering furiously. You don’t have to do this. This has disaster written all over it. Nick’s face was solemn, almost as if he guessed what I was thinking. He recited his vows in a somber voice, his dark eyes steady, and even then I thought the words almost ridiculously naive. Did anyone believe that vows meant anything anymore? My parents had said the same things to each other. Nick’s parents had also promised till death did them part. Who were Nick and I to believe that our vows would be any more lasting than the breath it took to say them?

Then it was my turn. “I, Harper, take you, Nick…” and suddenly, my eyes were wet, my voice grew husky and I wanted with all my heart for those words to be true. “To have and to hold from this day forth…” We could do this. We could be that little old couple who still reached for each other’s hand. “…all the days of my life.” And I looked into Nick’s gypsy eyes and believed.

After the wedding, we spent a few days in one of those huge sea captains’ houses on North Water Street in Edgartown. It was owned, as are they all, by a fabulously wealthy off-Islander for whom my dad occasionally did some work. He’d generously offered his house for our brief honeymoon, as he wouldn’t come to the island till the Fourth of July. And so, for a few days, Nick and I played house as we were playing grown-ups…we drank wine on the vast back porch, planned our trip for next summer—our true honeymoon, we called it. We made love in a room overlooking the lighthouse, cuddled and watched movies, and for those five days, I believed in happily ever after. For five days, it seemed possible that Nick and I would have a house, children, a life, an old age together. Maybe I was wrong to be so…dubious. I wasn’t.

Six days after our wedding, we drove down to Manhattan to the tiny apartment in a desolate part of Tribeca, and everything changed. Nick went back to work. His hours were long. His dedication was impressive. His ambition was boundless. His wife was left alone.

Of course, I realized he had to work, to impress his bosses, to separate himself from the pack of other young and hungry architects. It wasn’t the hours—well, the hours didn’t help. But Nick had a plan, and that plan went as follows: graduate at the top of his class. (Check). Land job with top firm. (Check). Get married. (Check). And once the box next to my name had been checked off, Nick sort of…dropped me.

Because I’d missed the deadline on applying to New York law schools, I had an unwanted year off. Our plan— Nick’s plan, really—was for me to apply to Fordham, Columbia and NYU, make our little apartment a home and fall in love with the city. No need for me to work; he was making enough to pay our bills. Alas, our apartment was a dingy little walk-up in Tribeca, which was something of a ghost town in those days, a place where it was nearly impossible to find a newspaper on the weekend, where no families seemed to live, where the noise of the West Side Highway was endless and the screech of the subway woke me up at night.

I tried to make our apartment homey, but I wasn’t really the Martha Stewart type. Painting the bathroom, scrubbing grout with bleach, putting throw pillows on our futon couch…it failed to deliver the promised satisfaction. Though I initially cooked dinner every night, stretching our dollars as best I could, Nick rarely made it home before eight…or nine…or ten.

All the effort he’d put into our courtship, into wooing me, because yes, I was a prickly porcupine of a person, I knew that…all the little ways he’d made me feel cherished and safe…that all ended as soon as we hit the Big Apple. I found myself married to a man I barely saw.

I was alone in a city I didn’t know and didn’t like, to be honest. It was so loud, so hot and muggy. At night, I’d have to wash my face twice and swab my skin with toner to get it clean. Our apartment smelled like cabbage, thanks to Ivan, the sullen Russian who lived downstairs and rarely left the building, who listened to soap operas at top volume and always seemed to be lurking, shirtless, in his doorway when I came down the stairs. Garbage trucks clattered and banged down the street at four in the morning, and someone had a dog that barked all night. Central Park was a long, tooth-jarring subway ride uptown, and Battery Park, much closer, was dirty then, filled with drug dealers and homeless people sleeping on benches, a sight that never failed to gut me.

I had two friends from Amherst down here…one in law school, one in publishing, and both were caught up in the glamour and excitement of their lives. The fact that I’d gotten married was baffling to them. “What’s it like?” they’d ask, and my answer would be vaguely pleasant. The truth was, marriage thus far sucked.

Nick left for work about twenty minutes after he got up at 6 a.m. If he did make it home before ten he’d spend perhaps fifteen minutes talking to me before disappearing with a smile and an apology behind his computer screen. Many nights, he wouldn’t get home till after eleven, and I’d have fallen asleep, realizing he was home only when I rolled over and felt his sleeping form. In the five months we were married, he didn’t take off one entire weekend, opting instead to go to the office on Saturdays and most Sundays.

He quickly made himself indispensable at work. His boss, Bruce MacMillan, aka Big Mac, loved Nick’s quick wit and work ethic, so Nick was promoted to the wine-and-dine crew, charming clients, schmoozing with the more senior architects, learning from them, kissing up to them, getting in on their projects. He was happier than I’d ever seen him.

I tried to be a good spouse, tried not to be selfish and resentful. I wasn’t stupid…I knew this was an investment in the future. But it was Nick’s future, the one he’d always envisioned, without room for accommodating another person…or so it seemed. I wasn’t a part of his world; he didn’t need advice on how to handle people or how to do his job. What I wanted desperately was to feel included but instead, as the weeks passed, I felt more and more as if we weren’t really in this new life together. I was just along for Nick’s ride. Harper—check. On to the next thing.

I tried, I really did. Wandered the neighborhoods, tried to decipher the massive subway system. I spent all day collecting anecdotes to share with Nick, then began to resent him for not being home to hear them. I hung out at the local library, signed up for some literacy volunteering, but that was just a few hours a week. New York scared me. Everyone was so…sure. So clear on who they were and where they were going. When I voiced my feelings to Nick one morning as he hurriedly shaved, he was baffled.

“I don’t know, honey,” he said. “Just try to have fun, don’t overthink everything. This is the greatest city on the planet. Get out there, enjoy. Oh, shit, is that the time? Sorry, honey, I have to run. We have a meeting with the people from London.”

I got out there, if only to please my Brooklyn-born husband. But Nick knew all the neighborhoods, was something of an expert (and pain in the ass) on the city, so my tales of wandering (when I did get the chance to tell them) seemed to bore him.

“Actually, you were in Brooklyn Heights, honey. Cobble Hill’s a little more inland. Sure, I’ve been to Governor’s Island. I know exactly where you were. Of course I’ve been in the Empire State Building. A million times.” He’d give me a tolerant smile, his eyes drifting back to his computer.

I think things took an irreversible turn about three months into our marriage. When I forced myself to tell Nick how lonely I was, he suggested we have a baby.

I looked at him for a long, burning minute, then said, “Are you out of your mind, Nick?”

His head jerked back. “What?”

“Nick…I barely see you! You want me to have a baby? So we can both be trapped here while you swan off and work your eighteen-hour days? So you can ignore me and your child? I don’t think so!”

“You’re the one who’s complaining about being lonely, Harper,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be lonely if you’d actually spend some time with me, Nick.” My throat felt as if a knife was stuck in it, my eyes were hot and dry.

“Harper, baby, I have to do this. I have to work.”

“Do you have to work so much? Can’t you ever make it home for dinner? Can’t you ever take one whole weekend off, Nick? Ever?”

It was one of our more impressive fights. I hated it. Hated myself for needing him as much as I did, hated him for not knowing that. He may have been actually a little scared at my reaction; clearly, we weren’t on the same page. We weren’t even in the same book. He promised to do better. Said he’d take this coming weekend off, both days. We’d go up to the park, have a picnic, maybe go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Cooper Hewitt.

But Friday night, when he came home well after nine, he broke the news. “I have to go in tomorrow. Just for an hour or two. I’m really sorry. I’ll be home by eleven at the latest.”

I’ll admit now that I knew he’d never make it, and thus, wanting to increase my ammunition, went all out preparing a Martha-style picnic for us. Curried chicken with raisins, cucumber salad, a loaf of French bread from a bakery in the Village. Oatmeal raisin cookies baked from scratch. A bottle of wine. At twelve-fifteen, he still wasn’t home. At one, not home. At 2:24, he called. “I’m running a little late,” he said. “Just have to do one quick thing, then I’m out the door.”

He got home at 5:37, a bouquet of browning daisies in his hand. “Babe, don’t have a fit,” he began inauspiciously. “Big Mac needed me, because apparently Jed totally flaked out with getting the permits from—”

I took a fistful of chicken salad and threw it at him, getting him right in the face. “Here. I made this for you. I hope you get salmonella and spend the next four days puking yourself raw.”

Nick took a piece of chicken off his cheek and ate it. “Pretty good,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

That was it. I stomped into the bedroom, slammed the door and clenched my arms over my head.

Of course he came in (we had no locks). With exaggerated patience, he wiped off the chicken salad and put the towel in the hamper, came over, wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t apologize. Kissed my neck. Told me he loved me. Asked me to be patient, since this was all, in his words, just temporary. It wouldn’t happen again. We’d work things out. Then he turned me so that my face was pressed against his beautiful neck, so that I could smell his good Nick smell and feel his pulse. It worked. I cracked.

“I hate it here, Nick,” I whispered into his collar. “I never see you. I feel like…like an appendix.”

“An appendix?” he said, pulling back.

I swallowed. “Like I’m here, but you don’t really need me. You could cut me out and everything would still work just fine.” I had to whisper, it was so hard to admit.

He looked at me long and hard, his eyes inscrutable. I waited for him to understand. Waited for him to remember that I had abandonment issues, that the only other person who was supposed to have loved me forever had left me. I waited for him to realize I needed him to do more than check me off, waited for him to tell me I was no appendix…I was his beating heart, and he couldn’t live without me.

“Maybe you should get a job, honey,” he said.

That was the beginning of the end.

“A job,” I echoed dully.

“You’re alone too much, and I hate to say it, but I really can’t slack off at work right now. If you get a job, you’ll make some friends, have more to do. We can always use the extra money, too, I won’t lie. You can quit when you start law school.”

He’d wanted me to marry him, I had, and that was the end…to him, anyway.

“I’ll ask around the office,” he added. “Maybe someone has a lead.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll find something on my own,” I said. My heart felt like a rock sitting hard and cold in my chest.

“Great, honey. Good girl.”

Then he took me to bed and we had sex, and it was his way of saying, See? Everything’s just fine. And that, according to Nick, was that. It certainly let him off the hook. Me getting a job was much more convenient than admitting that marriage needed an investment of time, especially a new marriage, especially when the bride was me. This way, Nick didn’t have to change his hours or tell his boss sorry, not tonight, he had plans with his wife. No, clearly this was just what the doctor ordered. Harper needed a job. Not a husband who actually showed up.

Almost defiantly, I answered an ad. Bartender, which was old territory for me since I’d worked my way through college bartending. The restaurant was called Claudia’s, a trendy new place in SoHo.

The morning of my interview, still angry with Nick for not understanding, I accidentally slammed my hand in the front door. My left hand. No cut, but my fingers had taken the worst of it and almost without thinking, I moved my wedding ring from my left hand to my right. I rarely wore my engagement ring, which was surprisingly large. It was also, to my small-town girl’s mind, an irresistible prize for the many roving thieves of New York. Nick only laughed when I told him that and didn’t seem to mind.

But my wedding ring…that was a different story. That ring, I loved—two strands of gold woven together, one slightly darker than the other. It was delicate and beautiful and one of a kind, made by a Vineyard goldsmith. It didn’t look a lot like the classic wedding ring…especially when worn on the wrong hand. Claudia’s manager didn’t ask if I was married, and I didn’t think to tell him.

You get better tips as a bartender if you’re young and pretty…and single. Or if the patrons think you’re single. My fingers were swollen for a few days. The ring stayed on my right hand. It meant nothing. Except, of course, that it did.

Work at Claudia’s was a lot of fun. Located in SoHo on a cobblestoned street, it drew in the Sex and the City-type crowd—beautifully dressed women who wore outfits that cost more than my rent, men who smelled expensive and thought nothing of leaving me a twenty-dollar tip on a ten-dollar drink. And my coworkers…they were just like me. Higher aspirations, temporarily in the service biz, some balancing grad school. None of us planned to be there forever. All of us were in our twenties—Claudia’s owner knew that the actor/model staff drew in a better clientele or something, so we were all slim and good-looking.

As the new kid, I watched from the sidelines, but even the sidelines were thrilling. Occasionally, someone would confide in me—Jocasta had dated Ben, then dumped him for Peter; Ryan needed a roommate and Prish was looking, but did they really want to work and live together? Especially after that one-night stand? Flattered to be included in their drama, their angst, I’d give a noncommittal answer, didn’t take sides and was generally well liked. They fascinated me…they were so free. Big plans, lazy days, a pleasant place to work. The way it was supposed to be at our age.

For the first few weeks, I just watched, did my job, listened. No one asked if I was married, and I didn’t offer up the information. Was I punishing Nick? Of course I was. I barely saw the guy. He said he’d drop by one night and see the place, but the weeks passed and he never did.

I was young, stupid, insecure, lonely. Walking home some nights, I’d feel that dark, pulling thing in my chest and I’d wish I could cry, because I hated Nick, I loved him so much. I felt tricked and betrayed, and I kept waiting for him to do something that would make me feel the way I’d felt before we were married…that I was cherished, loved, irreplaceable. But he was young and stupid too, and the ocean between us darkened and deepened.

I didn’t have the type of bond with my family that would allow me to vomit up my misery over the phone…besides, Willa was only a high school kid and thought Nick and I were the height of romance. BeverLee…no. As for my father, I’d stopped even trying to tell him the truth years ago.

Then one night, a waiter named Dare asked me to hang out with them after closing, and suddenly, I had a group of friends. I don’t think I realized how deep my loneliness went until then. My college friends had grown distant, engrossed in their fabulous careers or the challenges of graduate school. But my coworkers…they were right where I was, at this strange phase of life where we worked, but not in our chosen fields, where Real Life still seemed a way off. They were like butterflies, lovely to behold, free to float and flit wherever the breeze carried them, no responsibilities other than making rent.

Of course, none of them was married. In Manhattan, you started thinking about marriage after living together for a decade or so, when you were closer to forty or fifty than twenty. Married at twenty-one? Willingly? I told myself I’d bring it up…eventually. If the gang and I became closer, sure, I’d tell them in some droll, charming way, make a joke out of my de facto missing husband. Or maybe when Nick finally showed up at Claudia’s, as he continually promised he would. Any pangs of guilt I had on the subject were smothered in the relief of finally belonging.

So I kept my wedding ring on my right hand. Nick didn’t notice…but then again, our marriage now consisted of an occasional bout of sex in the wee hours of the morning and a few polite sentences exchanged here and there, mostly via voice mail. I missed him so much that I literally had to turn myself away from it, to stuff it down and ignore it. And hey. I was good at that sort of thing.

My new circle of friends became more and more important. We ate together before work, an early dinner around four-thirty, and we would try to outdo each other with pithy comments and observations of the city and its inhabitants. We might hang out at Claudia’s after closing, and I’d make specialty drinks, grapefruit gin fizzes, honey-almond martinis. One day, Jocasta, Prish and I braved the mob at Century 21 and bought cheap designer shoes. We went to a book signing in the Village. When Thanksgiving rolled around, Nick had to go to Lisbon, his first international trip with the firm (or ever). I congratulated him, smiled as he packed, kissed him as the car service came to bring him to the airport.

“You sure you’re okay on your own?” he asked, hesitating there on our grimy sidewalk.

“I’ll be fine. I’m going to Prish’s for dinner. Have fun. Good luck!”

I waved as he left, then called my pals and let them know I was free for the animated film festival at the Angelika theater. We all went and felt very sophisticated indeed. Actually, my friends were fairly sophisticated. And shallow and somewhat heartless, but they were better than nothing. I tried to keep up, tried not to feel like such a rube.

The waiter named Dare (short for Darrell, but dear God, don’t ever say that aloud) was a very intense guy…wanted to write the next tormented, twisted, bleak Great American Novel and had plans to get his MFA from somewhere very impressive. Jocasta and Prish both had the hots for him, as did just about every female who walked into Claudia’s. He had long blond hair and smoldering gray eyes, and he was tall and thin and made you want to feed him. He took himself very, very seriously, and hey, it worked. He flirted with me…well, not really. Flirting was beneath him. He stared intensely at me (between serving meals, of course). I knew he was interested, but I certainly didn’t lead him on.

The need to say something about Nick grew, but for whatever reason, I kept waiting. Maybe for him to remember he adored me, to do something so loving and memorable that all doubt would be forever swept away and we’d live happily ever after. Again…I was young and stupid. And the thing with secrets is, the longer you keep them, the more tightly rooted they become.

By the Night of the Unforgivable Event, I’d been working at Claudia’s for almost three months. It was December, and New York is never prettier than at the holidays, Christmas lights in every restaurant and coffeehouse, wreaths on the charming doors of the Village, menorahs winking in windows. Splashy, colorful displays shouted out from the big department stores, and Santa stood on every street corner. Finally, I was falling in love with New York.

As I walked to Claudia’s that night, lazy snowflakes swirling in the dusk, I stopped in front of a shop window. There sat a good-sized model of the Brooklyn Bridge, cast in bronze, solid and lovely. Nick would love it. I’d buy it for him for Christmas. For a second, it felt as if I was standing on the bridge again, Nick on one knee, those Charles Dickens gloves, his beautiful, happy eyes…

Something shifted in my chest, as if a rock had rolled off my heart. I loved my husband. We could get through this long, tough time. Maybe I’d even quit Claudia’s, find something more compatible with Nick’s schedule so we could figure out how to make this work. Tonight, I’d tell my buddies I was married, we’d have a few laughs, whatever.

It was the night of Claudia’s staff-only Christmas party, a Monday when the restaurant was closed. There were about twenty of us including the kitchen crew, and the party was in full swing when I arrived. Prish had commandeered the bar and handed me a cloyingly sweet peppermint drink. The restaurant was loud, bright, festive and happy, my coworkers already buzzed and thrilled to see me. Maybe tonight wasn’t the night for telling everyone about Nick. I’d do it at a more quiet time. That would be better.

Prish’s cocktail invention was vile, so I shook up a few special martinis made with cranberries and Grey Goose. The food was smashing, goat-cheese-and-dried-tomato pizzas and crab cakes with remoulade sauce. Ben wore a reindeer hat, Jocasta had on a blinking-light necklace and a glittery red miniskirt.

By 10 p.m., we all sat around the table in the middle of the restaurant, all of us with a few drinks in us (some with more than a few), all quite happy. At some point—I hadn’t noticed exactly when—Dare’s arm had gone around the back of my chair. Very casual. We were a close bunch by now, and affection was always given freely. We all hugged good-night like a bunch of eighth-grade girls, the guys would do that hand-clasp, lean-in thing and the women would kiss the men’s cheeks. Asking Dare to move his arm would only draw attention to it, so I left the subject alone.

This was a mistake.

Something tickled the back of my neck, and I jumped. Dare gave me a half-lidded, steamy glance, but he didn’t interrupt himself, just kept talking to Ben about some political battle over a federal court appointee. Taking Dare’s hand from my neck, I set it on his lap, and he gave me a sexy little smile. Didn’t touch me again.

After dinner, the noise level (and the alcohol level) had risen. Prish was singing into a fork, Ryan was drumming on the table, keeping time, Ben was rummaging for another bottle of wine, and suddenly Dare turned to me and said, “I’ve been wanting to kiss you for weeks now.” Then he took my face in his hands and did just that.

A wet, sloppy, drunken kiss, fairly horrible, tasted like roasted red peppers. The others burst into applause.

“About time!” Jocasta yelled. “He’s been giving you the eye for ages!”

I pushed away. “Don’t do that again,” I said, adrenaline flooding my legs. This was bad. This couldn’t…I didn’t…he should never have…I had to tell them—

My brain slammed to a halt.

Nick was standing on the street in front of Claudia’s, looking in the window. Looking at me. His mouth was slightly open, as if he didn’t quite believe what he’d just seen.

The blood drained from my face.

For a second, I thought he’d just walk away, and I jolted to my feet, bumping the table. “Nick!” I called, but he was already opening the door.

“Friend of yours?” Dare asked lazily, pouring me some more wine. I ignored him, but my legs started to shake.

Nick came over to the table. “Hi,” he said quietly.

“Hi,” I breathed. He didn’t seem mad. Or even upset, really. Maybe he could tell that was just a stupid sloppy kiss from an irritating poser. His eyes went from me to Dare, then to the others.

“Um, guys,” I said, “this is Nick.”

I guess I sounded weird, or scared, because everyone quieted down.

“Nick? Who’s Nick?” Ben asked, emerging from the back room.

“You sneaky thing, Harper,” Prish said. “I didn’t know you were dating someone.”

The magnitude of what I’d done finally hit me. Nick looked at me, stunned, as if I’d just shot him in the heart. Which, in a sense, I had. He blinked—twice—I was on hyperdrive with the details here—his gypsy eyes as dark as a black hole. “She’s not dating anyone,” he said. “I’m her husband.”

Somewhere, a fire truck laid on the air horn. Over the sound system, a jazz band was murdering “White Christmas.” But otherwise, our party had gone abruptly silent.

“I thought you were only, like, twenty-one, Harper,” Ryan slurred. “What, are you in one of those religious sects or something? A sister-wife?”

“You’re married?” Jocasta asked, incredulous. “Are you kidding?”

And then Nick did walk out.

“Ruh-roh, Scooby-Doo,” Ryan said. I shoved away from the table, but Dare caught my hand.

“You don’t have to go after him,” he said.

“Yes, I do, asshole,” I hissed, yanking my hand free. The bells on the door jangled with obscene good cheer as I ran out into the cold night air. No Nick. At the corner, I looked both ways, and there he was, hands jammed in his pockets, walking fast, head down. “Nick! Wait!”

He didn’t wait, so I ran after him, tripping on the cobblestones, and caught up to him at the next corner.

“Nick,” I said. He didn’t look at me. I grabbed his arm. “Nick, wait,” I panted. “Please let me explain.”

“Go ahead,” he said, and his voice was oddly calm.

“Okay, well…I—I obviously didn’t…”

“Mention me.” The light changed, and he started across.

“Right,” I said, trotting after him. I’d left my coat at the restaurant, and it was horribly cold. My teeth wanted to chatter, but I clamped my jaw closed.

“You were kissing that guy.” Voice still calm, feet still walking. “What else have you done with him?”

“Nothing! That was nothing, Nick. He’s an idiot. He was drunk. That was nothing.”

“But nobody knew you were married.”

“No…I—see, Nick, I…” Oh, God, what was I going to say? “Let’s go home and talk, okay?”

He stopped, finally, and I immediately wished he hadn’t. He was furious. His eyes were black and hot and burned like a brand. “You never mentioned me.”

“No,” I admitted in a whisper.

“Not even once.”

I shivered, and not just from the cold. Nick didn’t offer me his coat. I didn’t blame him. “No, Nick. I didn’t tell them I was married. I didn’t talk about you.”

“I see,” he said softly. And he started walking again, but he took off his coat and threw it on the ground behind him, and the gesture broke my heart.

“Nick? Please! I’m sorry.”

He didn’t stop, or pause, or answer. I followed, picking up his coat but feeling unworthy to wear it. I was ridiculous in my shiny silver tank top and high heels, teetering after my furious husband. I was also full of self-hatred. And last but not least…I was utterly terrified.

And if there was one feeling I hated more than any other, it was being scared.

You know, he’s got some nerve, a small, evil part of my brain whispered. The seeds of resentment that had been festering for the past few months suddenly found fertile soil, replacing the abject terror and sense of doom. After all, Nick was a fine one to be mad. Really, Nick was feeling abandoned? Nick? I was the one who’d been dropped into a huge city and basically patted on the head and told to go off and play and not to bother the grown-ups. I was the one whose husband had no time for me. Of course I’d found friends. Of course I’d been hungry for some attention. He sure as hell wasn’t giving me any. My box had been checked! When was the last time Nick and I had had a real conversation, huh? He didn’t want real conversations. Not with me. Nope, I was just there to do his laundry, keep the fridge stocked and be available for a quickie in the middle of the night. Some marriage. Nowonder I hadn’t talked about it! Who could blame me?

Oh, Harper, don’t do this, the better angel said, but it was easier—so much easier—to be the victim. And so I built the case against Nick—I really was meant to be a lawyer—and found myself innocent. I’d made a mistake, yes, but not a huge one. Definitely forgivable, but what about his sins, huh? I let the righteous anger grow while Nick’s figure grew smaller and smaller as the distance between us grew. Fine. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say? Fine. That was nothing new, was it?

New York was quiet on a Monday night; Tribeca deserted at this late hour. Sirens, almost constant in the city, blared uptown. A single sheet of newspaper tumbled down the cobbled street, the only thing keeping me company. A bitter wind blew off the Hudson, cutting into me, bringing the smell of blood from the meatpacking companies on the West Side Highway.

By the time I reached our apartment building, Nick was already inside. I could see his dark head in the fourth-floor window—our bedroom. I let the door slam behind me and stomped up the stairs, wanting Nick to know I was primed for a fight. Opened the door to our apartment, walked briskly through the tiny kitchen and went into the bedroom.

He was furious, crackling with energy.

And he was packing.

Every thought was immediately sucked from my head. My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I watched as Nick packed with brutal efficiency. Jeans, in. Sweaters, in. T-shirts, socks, boxers…into the suitcases we’d been given for a wedding gift, suitcases that hadn’t yet been used.

The last time I’d watched someone pack this way was on my thirteenth birthday. He was leaving me, and terror rose up so fast and hard, I thought I might faint…gray speckled my vision and my legs wanted to buckle and my neck wasn’t strong enough to hold my head.

And then, just like that, something inside my heart shut off. My vision cleared. My legs and neck worked just fine. Maybe—maybe if I had fainted, or flung myself on him, if I’d begged him to forgive me, if I’d sobbed out how much I loved him—maybe we would’ve made it through that night.

But I wasn’t really the sobbing, flinging type.

“So I guess till death do us part…that was just for fun?” I said. It was the wrong thing to lead with. Obviously.

He didn’t deign to look at me. “I’m staying at Peter’s tonight.”

“For longer than tonight, from the looks of it.”

“How long have you worked there, Harper? Two months? Three?” He moved to the minuscule closet and swept out his shirts, hangers and all. “You never, never found a second to tell your best buds that you were married? Not once? In three fucking months?”

“Maybe I would have, Nick, if you’d come around. Ever.” My voice was cool.

“No wonder that douchebag was kissing you,” Nick went on. “Why not? You’re free and clear, right?” His eyes dropped to my naked left hand, and his eyes seemed to flinch at the absence there. “Jesus, Harper,” he said, and his voice broke, and the case against him took a serious blow.

I bit my lip. “Nick, look. I’m really sorry, I am. It’s just…I just felt so freakish—”

“Freakish?”

“Well…yes! It’s just…you’re never here, Nick! You didn’t want to listen to how lonely I was, you didn’t care, all you do is work—”

“I’m trying to build a life for us, Harper!” he yelled. “Working so we could have a decent future!”

“I know, but, Nick, I just didn’t expect it to be all or noth—”

“I have to do this! I thought you understood!” He threw a pair of shoes into the suitcase. “No wonder you’ve been so…distant. You’ve been—”

“Me? Me, distant, Nick? Seriously?”

“—playing around with some 30-year-old loser who’s still waiting tables, trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.”

“Not that I was playing with anyone, Nick, but could you blame me? You’re the one who was on fire to get married, and before the first week is out, you barely remember to come home.” I was yelling, too, both of us runaway trains, unable to stop.

He slammed the bureau drawer closed.

“Nick,” I said in one last effort to stay calm, to make him see, to make him stay. “Nick. Look. It was stupid and immature—”

“Stupid and immature, okay, so that’s a start, Harper. How about deceitful? How about manipulative? How about unfaithful?”

“I didn’t cheat on you! That guy, he just…kissed me. I didn’t want him to, he just did!”

“Right.”

My jaw clenched. “Okay. Believe what you want, Nick. You haven’t listened to me for months, why would you now, right?”

Ivan of the Cabbages banged on his ceiling. “Quiet, eediots!” he yelled. Nick continued stuffing his clothes into a suitcase.

“You erased me, Harper,” he said. “I don’t even exist in your life.”

“Right back at you, Nick,” I bit out.

“How can you say that?” he barked, slamming closed the lid of the suitcase. “Your picture is all over my office! Everyone knows you at my firm. You’re all I ever talk about!”

“And why is that, Nick? Because it makes you look good to have a little wife tucked away at home?”

“This is pointless,” he said, moving into the bathroom. He clattered around, grabbing his toothbrush, razor, shaving cream. He was leaving me. After that full-court press to convince me to marry him a month after college graduation, after countering all my fears with assurances that we’d last forever, after all I’d put up with since our wedding day, Nick was leaving me. The first major bump in the road, and the whole “for better or worse” clause was just flushed right down the toilet. My chest felt so tight I couldn’t breathe, and my face was burning hot.

I should’ve known. I should never have believed.

He yanked open the front door and banged down the stairs, suitcase in tow. I followed wordlessly. My brain was a roaring mess. A cab—shit, he must’ve called a cab, he was really leaving!—turned the corner and slowed in front of our building.

Nick turned to me, jaw clenched, eyes hot with anger. “You never believed we’d work, and guess what, Harper? You seem to be right. Good for you. I’ll be at Pete’s. Go back to the restaurant. Have fun with your waiter.”

At those words, I yanked off the wedding ring from my right hand and threw it at him, and the ring…my beautiful, lovely, special ring…bounced off his chest, went into the gutter and rolled into a storm drain.

“Nicely put,” Nick said, and with that, he got into the cab, and not two seconds later, he was gone.

I didn’t remember going back inside, but obviously, I did, because some time later, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, shaking so hard my teeth chattered. I didn’t fully realize I’d called anyone till I heard the groggy voice on the other end, the voice of the one I knew would help me. “I need you to come get me,” I whispered. “You okay?”

“No.”

“I’m on my way.” No questions asked. Probably, no questions needed.

I filed for divorce the very next day, sobbing for only the second time in ten years, sitting in Theo’s office. But it was for the best. Sometimes the heart needed time to accept what the head already knew.

Nick and I weren’t going to make it.