She asked me if I wanted to go back to her apartment “for a coffee” and I said that I did, because God I did—I wanted it more than I wanted a clean conscience. You’re a guy, Dr. K—you understand what I mean.

Skye said that she sort of liked walking in the rain, so we walked across town, and I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, only that we laughed. I laughed more that night with Skye than I’d laughed in years, Dr. K. With Garrett and Hope no longer in the house, and Maggie spending most of her time out with friends—I guess that’s what you do in high school—Heather and I pitter-patter around our empty home like strangers, and there isn’t a lot of laughter.

I expected a closet-size studio or a bunch of roommates, but Skye’s apartment in the heart of the West Village is a true one-bedroom and at least fifteen hundred square feet. Unless she works personally for Stephen King, more than a book editor’s salary is paying her rent.

I sank down into a couch as soft as butter, watching Skye shake off her trench coat and grab two espresso mugs from the bar. Her apartment is immaculate and tasteful and screams of money—everything from the art on the walls to the thick beige drapes hanging from the three enormous double-hung windows speckled with rain and glowing from the streetlamps below. Skye is too groomed to be a personal escort or something that would make her money remotely unethical; from the grandfather clock in the corner and the Nantucket Yacht Club tumblers, I’ve decided to bet on trust fund.

Absorbing more of the lavish details of her apartment, I realized that Skye Starling is exactly the kind of woman Heather has always envied—the kind of woman that Heather wanted me to help her become. But I failed. God, did I fail.

Skye slid beside me on the couch, her blond hair fanning the cushions, and pressed a warm mug of espresso into my hands. “Don’t judge me, but I’m having a real nightcap.” She tilted her mug to reveal two fingers of amber liquid inside.

“I’m not one to judge, Skye.” I inhaled the spicy sweetness of her perfume and wondered, not for the first time, if she had a thing for older guys or if the creases around my eyes were not actually as deep as I perceived them to be. After all, she still hadn’t asked my age.

I watched her take a sip of bourbon, the way her pink lip pressed against the mug’s rim. I couldn’t fathom how a girl like Skye could possibly be single. The thought had been sticking in my mind all evening, and I accidentally spoke it out loud.

“Good question.” She grinned. “Why are you single?”

“Touché.” I grinned back, then whipped up a story about an ex named Amanda, a woman I lived with for six years and almost married before I found out she was cheating on me with her coworker.

Skye’s face fell, and when she told me she was sorry, she looked genuinely sorry, and that’s a rare thing, Dr. K, when somebody you hardly know cares that you’ve been hurt. I could tell she wanted me to elaborate on Amanda, and that was the last thing I wanted to do, so I kissed her, there on her beautiful couch in her beautiful West Village apartment. And I may be pushing fifty, but I know the right way to kiss a woman. After that there was no more talking.

Chapter Six

Heather

NOVEMBER 1989

I started to get the feeling that Libby Fontaine’s money grew on trees. I knew nothing about art, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the several pieces of Peter’s I’d seen in the house, but I knew he had to be doing something right based on the steady stream of twenty-dollar bills in Libby’s silver Chanel wallet, which my friend Kyla says retails at around five hundred dollars. Kyla used to shoplift.

Libby was paying me fifteen dollars for every hour I spent “babysitting,” which included the time we spent sipping tea and chatting at the kitchen table while the kids slept. That was more than double what anyone else I knew was getting paid for part-time work. Sometimes it felt as though Libby was trying to give her money away, which baffled me.

I could tell that she craved company; whether it was mine specifically I didn’t know. But every night when she and Peter would come home from dinner in Plattsburgh or wherever they’d been, Peter would head out back to his barn studio and Libby would look at me with pleading eyes and ask me to stay for a mug of Earl Grey.

And I always did. Even when it was late and Gus had been at the neighbors’ for too long, I couldn’t refuse the extra hour or two that Libby would pay me to sit with her. First and foremost, I needed the money, but I was also enthralled by everything about her. Being in her presence put me in a kind of trance.

One night it was past eleven when Libby shuffled through the door, her cheeks rosy pink from the sharp November cold. Her pale blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and she was wearing dark eye makeup. She looked so pretty it was almost agonizing.

“The kids get to sleep okay?” She unzipped her smooth leather boots.

I nodded.

“Sorry we’re so late.”

“That’s all right. Is Peter out back?”

“But of course.” Libby rolled her eyes. “He’s most inspired in the middle of the goddamn night.” She formed air quotes around the word inspired.

I refrained from mentioning that Peter also seemed to spend most of each day closed off painting in the barn.

“Tea?” Libby glanced at me, hopeful, and reached for the kettle.

“I shouldn’t.” I wanted to stay, but that night Gus had a cold, and I knew I needed to pick him up from the Carsons’ and get him in his own bed.

“Wine?” Libby’s mouth slid into a small smile, and there were those hopeful eyes again. It was the first time she’d offered me alcohol. I couldn’t imagine the kind of wine she and Peter drank, but I knew it’d be better than the jugs Kyla’s older sister bought us.

“I could stay for a glass.” I nodded. “Thanks.”

I watched Libby open a bottle of red with expert hands, twisting the screw into the cork and whisking it out in an easy flash. She wore an ivory silk blouse that billowed around her bony chest, and tight black pants that made her legs look like chopsticks. I had begun to envy every single piece of clothing she owned.

She poured two glasses and slid one across the counter toward me. Libby held her stem and, closing her eyes, lowered her perfect nose to the rim. She inhaled, and her face flooded with something satiated and dense. I drew in the details of the elegant way she sipped, tilting her chin up ever so slightly.

I knew nothing about wine; I’d only ever had it from a plastic cup. I attempted to take as graceful a sip as Libby’s, but I pitched the glass too far back and it sloshed all over my throat. Still it ran down smooth, and a warm glow settled in my belly. An even sweetness lingered on my tongue. I could’ve drunk the whole bottle.

“So.” Libby shifted forward. “How’s the boyfriend?” She hadn’t asked me about Burke since that first day.

“We broke up,” I stated, proud.

“Oh?” Libby looked surprised. “Is that good news or bad news?”

“Well, I’m the one who ended it.”

“I see.”

“So, good news.” It was the story I was telling myself, the conviction I used to bury the part of me that was cracked in two without Burke, unhinged and flailing. “He parties too much.” The truth.

“If I’m being honest, my initial hunch was that you were way too good for him.” Libby twirled the stem of her wineglass. “I mean, he’s good-looking. But my hunches tend to be pretty on point.”

I nodded. I understood that Libby could see beyond Burke’s tall frame and pretty blue eyes, past his status as the dreamiest guy in the junior class at our high school. She saw the Marlboro Reds and the bad manners; who, in Libby Fontaine’s world, would flick a cigarette butt out the window onto somebody’s front lawn? Somehow, I knew, not a soul.

To Libby, Burke was a hick. White trash. And by some miracle—perhaps my quick transformation or perhaps due to something more profound that only Libby could see—I was not. I was mature enough to employ as a babysitter. I was poised enough to drink tea with. And in the short time I’d come to know Libby, that had begun to mean everything.

“I just think that with someone like Burke…” Libby drummed her fingertips across the marble countertop. “Well, one, beware the party boy. And two…” She looked up, her cinnamon eyes clear. “I know I haven’t actually met him, but I get the sense he isn’t nearly as smart as you, Heather. And you should be with someone who’s smarter than you.”

“Is Peter smarter than you?” It came out sounding like a challenge, and I immediately wished I hadn’t asked.

“Yes,” Libby said, unfazed. “I mean, we’re smart in opposite ways. Peter’s very mathematically minded, believe it or not. His art is numerical and precise. And I’m better with language and writing.”

“Interesting. Is that what you studied in school?”

Libby nodded. “I was an English major at Barnard. I worked in book publishing for a few years after college, and I thought about applying to grad schools and going back to get my MFA … but then I got pregnant.”