I wasn’t sure if I said it as an alternate truth or as a way into a larger conversation. I only knew that these were the words my mouth made when I let it open.

Davis was quiet for a moment, but I could feel his concern change direction, moving out of our inner circle to the larger world that Char inhabited.

“That idiot,” he finally said.

“You don’t seem surprised.” I put the lotion back in my nightstand and got under the covers by him.

“Well, the Vegetables,” he said, like this was explanation enough. It almost was. I had never trusted Phillip with Char’s heart. “Still, how can he sit through dinner every night, face her across the table?” I didn’t answer, even though I certainly could have. I understood the mechanics bone deep. Amazing, the human capacity to compartmentalize, and, dear God, Roux was right; I was made out of origami, and so was Phillip, though I hated having anything in common with him. Davis, still thinking it through, asked me, “Did Charlotte tell you? Is she sure?”

“Char doesn’t know,” I said, and his eyebrows went up.

“Then how do you?” he asked.

I broke it down for him, but I left out the game. It was too complicated, and it opened a conversational door to questions I wasn’t yet sure I would answer. I didn’t want him wondering if I’d won any of the rounds. So I told him only what I’d overheard Tate saying to her friends at book club, how I’d guessed it was Phillip, how Tate had shown up the next day in a move that was tantamount to a confession. I also told him that Tate had written it off as sloppy-drunk kissing, a meaningless, unrepeated mistake.

Davis sat silent for a moment, digesting. Then he asked, “Do you believe Tate?”

“I don’t know. That’s part of the problem.” Davis’s dark eyes were serious, empathetic, but they held no answers. I asked him, “Would you want me to tell you?”

“If you were cheating on me? Yes, please,” he said, very dry. “Preferably before you give me syphilis.”

That made me smile in spite of myself, but at the same time I felt another question rising. And it wasn’t only about Charlotte.

“Let’s say Tate’s telling the truth. Put yourself in Charlotte’s shoes. Would you want to know?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “If you made out with Tate Bonasco at a barbecue? Hell yeah, I’d want to know. I’d probably want pictures.”

I smacked him lightly on the chest, laughing in spite of myself. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m a little funny,” he said, smiling back.

“I’m serious, though,” I said, because I was, and this wasn’t only about Phillip now. The stakes were higher than that, and I thought I could let him decide, right now, my larger course. “Really think about it. What if I had done something. Something bad, but it was in the past, and I was never going to do it again. Knowing it would hurt you, though. There would be consequences. It might wreck us. Would you want someone to tell you?”

He did think about it then, and I could see he was taking it seriously. He asked. “Does everyone know your secret thing? Are they all feeling sorry for me?”

I shook my head in an emphatic no. “Only me, and I’m not talking.”

“Then I think I wouldn’t want to know.” His answer clearly surprised him as much as it surprised me. But it had the ring of truth.

“Why?” I said.

He smiled then, his beautiful smile. “Because I’m happy, Amy. I’m really happy. I want to stay that way.”

I thought about our son, asleep in the little nursery room next door, snug and warm inside the house I’d made into a loving home. I thought of Maddy, with all her bounce and vigor, the way she spilled out her exuberant love all over us and crept to me for solace when she was caught inside her stormy sorrows. And Davis, this good man who smelled like sandalwood over his own essential warm, male smell and who quietly made any room we were both in feel complete.

“I’m happy, too,” I told him.

But he wasn’t finished. “If Tate’s lying, though, if it was more than one mistake, if it’s still ongoing . . .” He trailed off, then swallowed. At last he said, “I didn’t know last time. I should have. If betrayal of any kind is ongoing, then yes, I’d want to know.”

In his words I felt the ghost of Laura, the woman I had banished from this room with cherrywood furniture, new paint, and my own scent. He sounded so hurt, remembering, that I scooted close, pressed myself against his side, resting my head on his broad, bare chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. I was sorry for a thousand things. Not least of which were all the things my silence allowed him to assume. No, all the things my words led him to assume. This was what Roux did, wasn’t it? Davis was having one conversation, honest and truthful, and I was having at least three. I didn’t want to be that kind of person, but it was in me. It was a part of me, and it was oh, so very useful at this moment.

He put his arm around me, still talking, pulling me in closer. “By the end she was drinking all day every day. Driving Maddy to kindergarten blasted. Toting Maddy’s little friends around in the car, too. Every minute of her life, she was lying. She never said a word, but it was lying, all the same. God, yes, I wish I’d known. I’d have gotten out much sooner.” He shook his head. “It sounds like I’m off topic here, but it applies. You need to be sure what happened before you act. If Tate’s telling the truth, then stay out of it. But if it’s an ongoing lie, an affair, you have to tell Charlotte. So she can get out and not waste any more time.”

I had my answers then. For every question. Even the one I’d actually asked, the one about my friend. Char was in real trouble, separate and distinct from mine. I’d let my worries about her husband slip off my radar, and that wasn’t like me. I had her back, always.

But I had to know if Phillip was seeing Tate before I acted. If he was cheating, he wouldn’t be too hard to catch. Smug, entitled Phillip would leave a trail. As soon as this ugly business between Roux and me was settled, I would devote myself to finding out. When he told Char he was golfing, I could call the course and ask for him, to see if he at least was where he said he was. I could keep up with Tate on social media, see if her absences matched his “boys’ weekends.”

The answer to my unstated question was even more clear.

Davis preferred the past in the past, so I would leave it there. Even though my lies were a living thing, they were not about him, or us. Not really. I was not actively betraying him, so that was that. Of course, he might not see it that way. His old hurts from Laura, they ran deep. I wouldn’t risk it. Silence was my best, my only, choice.

Yet I couldn’t simply hand the money to Roux. Not if I could help it. I’d done good with the first half of Nana’s trust. I had put a little justice, that word that Roux had tried to use against me, back into the world. I needed to do good with the second half as well. It would be wrong to use it to save my own ass, to let Roux bask in unearned luxury.

That meant I had to find a third way out.

Roux had begun this as a game. She’d told me not to play. But I already was. I had to. More than that. I had to win.

It was an easy thing to say. I have to beat her at her own game. But I had never played before. I didn’t even know all the rules, and she was a pro. It was as crazy as my challenging LeBron James to a driveway round of Horse, and yet I couldn’t see another choice.

Also? I was pretty fucking good at it.

My past and my quiet, watchful nature combined to make me a natural. I’d seen through Roux, after all. She’d gambled, claiming to be Lolly Shipley without all the facts. God, if it had worked? I’d have given her anything. It was emotionally smart. But it had tipped her hand. Coming at me unprepared like that, plus the dingy house—I’d understood gut deep that she was under some external pressure. Money or time, she was short on one or both. I’d used that understanding to buy myself this night to decide. How much more rope would she give me if I pushed her?

Quite a bit, I thought. She only had the one great big red button. She wouldn’t push it. Not as long as she believed she’d get my money in the end. The moment she understood that I was never going to pay, I had no doubt she’d wreck me, but in this gap I had some room to work.

I was up half the night, staring into the darkness, thinking while Davis slept deep and easy. I could hear Oliver through the baby monitor, sighing and shifting every now and again, but mostly sleeping sweetly, innocent.

I needed a plan that did not involve the police or an appeal to Roux’s better nature. The first option ensured that all my secrets would come out, and as for the second—a better nature—Roux didn’t seem to have one. At some point I shifted from waking to dreaming, falling into a fantasy world where Roux had simply disappeared. Mysteriously. Never to be seen again. I understood that this was on me. If she disappeared, it would be because I made it so.