“We were miserable,” I say. “Or I was miserable, so I made you miserable, which made me more miserable, which made you more miserable. Our relationship was one never-ending clusterfuck of misery.”

“Can I take you out for dinner?” Dylan asks suddenly. I shake my head, smiling despite myself. He holds his hands up and shrugs.

“Look, I could be losing my mind, but what you just described didn’t sound like the worst to me,” he says, and a smile plays on his lips that would just need the smallest amount of encouragement to spread across his face. I wonder then what Dylan still sees in me after all this time and whether it’s something that is actually there or not. All I know is that on the first night of our honeymoon, we stayed up all night on a deserted beach in Andros, and for once I didn’t need any vodka in my veins or anything else but him to reach the sunrise in the morning.

“There were good times too,” Dylan says as if he’s reading my mind, and I just nod in response, not trusting myself to speak for a moment.

“Did you know that when we were together and you went away anywhere, I’d plan your eulogy?” I ask, after a while.

“What?”

“Like, I wouldn’t even realize I was doing it, and then I’d be midway through composing a funny but heartbreaking speech in my head, about how classic it is that you would choose to die in the most polite, least messy way possible, when I’d realize what I was doing. That’s not normal, is it?”

Dylan is trying not to laugh, seemingly at a loss for anything to say.

“Nobody’s normal, Grace.”

“Except for you,” I say, and I’ve got him there because we both know that Dylan isn’t planning anyone’s eulogy in his head.

“So how did I go?”

“What?”

“When you used to picture it. How did I die?”

“Ventricular fibrillation in your sleep. It was always very peaceful.”

“Thanks, Grace. I guess that’s something.”

We sit in the dark, smiling for a few moments.

“This has been a weird day,” I say. “You just got dumped.”

“I did,” Dylan says, but he doesn’t move, and I don’t want him to. We sit next to each other, and my heart is drumming in my chest. Then Dylan stands up and stretches, his T-shirt lifting to expose the tattoo on his stomach that he let me do for him one morning in a New York hotel. A jagged, uneven heart filled in with solid black that kept getting bigger because I messed the lines up. And that’s when I remember. I remember when Dylan had just arrived in LA and was renting that studio apartment in Los Feliz with one gas hob for a kitchen and a toilet with a flush you had to stand on to make it work, but he saw it as his palace. I knew from that first night that all he wanted was to love me and that if I could just let him, I might actually feel safe for once in my life. I remember how I felt on our wedding day, my hair tumbling down my back with a silk ribbon plaited through it, when I thought maybe I could be the person he wanted me to be. I imagine what would happen if I kissed him right now. We’d probably end up fucking against the wall within seconds.

I stand up and I hug Dylan good-bye instead, breathing in his warm, familiar smell at the base of his neck, and for the first time in a while, I let myself believe that everything might actually work out okay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I wake up to the sensation of my phone vibrating next to me. I pick it up and squint at the caller ID. I feel an unpleasant, complicated flicker of guilt when I see Emilia’s name and I wonder why I’m always the one feeling bad about everything. I pick up the call.

“Darling, I’m calling to see whether you want to come to the girls’ Christmas pageant this afternoon. Actually, who am I kidding, I don’t even want to go, but you would be doing me a massive favor. I hate doing this sort of thing alone.”

“I have a plan . . .” I say slowly, because I already told Esme she could come over. “But I think I can get out of it. I owe you, anyway.”

“Ugh, thank you!” Emilia says, ignoring my reference to the other night as I knew she would. “But please wear a disguise so nobody recognizes you. I don’t want to have to share you with all the Stepford wives at school.”

I promise her I will before hanging up the phone.

* * *

? ? ?

“Oh, Grace, what was the one thing I said?” Emilia asks when I slide into her car a couple of hours later. I look down at my ripped black jeans and black sweater and shrug.

“I’m disguised as a normal person,” I say, and when Emilia lets out a loud laugh, I feel guilty over how much I could ruin her life if I found the words.

“Aren’t we all,” she says after a moment, and she’s still laughing as we drive up the dirt track.

* * *

? ? ?

“Thank you so much for coming with me to this,” Emilia says as she pulls into the driveway of the girls’ school. “I always end up doing this sort of thing by myself.”

The car wheels shriek as they roll over the gravel. We pass the drop-off zone where I handed the girls over earlier in the week, heading instead to the underground parking structure.

“After all these years, I still hate being alone. Could you tell? You’re much more self-sufficient than I am, and I envy you for it,” Emilia says, but I ignore her generosity because we both know it’s not true in the slightest.

“Is Able still mad that you missed his screening?” I ask as Emilia slows down to let another car pass.

“He doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on when it comes to missing important life events,” Emilia says lightly.

“Do you ever get angry about it?” I ask, surprising myself as soon as the words are out of my mouth.

“What?”

“Being by yourself,” I say, my voice steady.

“How could I be angry about that?” Emilia says, and I can tell that she’s about to change the subject.

“Well, it’s just . . . Able’s priorities,” I say, as if I don’t want to be the person pointing this out to her. “That he never shoots a movie in LA, they’re all on location. It was a running joke on set that he couldn’t stay in the city for more than six weeks at a time.”

Emilia pauses for a moment without looking at me, and even though I know I’m being unkind, I feel a jolt of satisfaction. “They have better tax breaks elsewhere. We’re looking for space E9.”

I point to an empty spot in front of us, and Emilia pulls into it. She turns the engine off.

“I’d never really thought of it being a choice,” she says.

“I didn’t mean—”

“No, I know,” she says. “The truth is of course he could shoot here. But he needs his space to work, and I have a good life, so I really can’t complain.”

“Of course not,” I say, smiling at her, but I can feel that I’ve hit a nerve. We climb out of the car and take the elevator up to the grounds in silence.

The doors open up to the sprawling school campus, consisting of a cluster of log cabins that have been decorated by the kids, and a horse stable, an indoor swimming pool and three tennis courts. A goat attached to a long rope greets the parents by nuzzling at their pockets.

“I can promise you that this won’t be your typical nativity play, at least. We chose this school because it’s very . . . progressive,” Emilia says, any trace of uneasiness now gone. “They’re all lunatics.”

We walk past the tennis courts and follow signs to the playhouse. Before we get there, Emilia stops and ducks around the corner of the toilets, beckoning me to follow her.

“Judging by Silver and Ophelia’s rehearsals, we’re going to need a little help,” Emilia says as she roots around in her bag. She pulls something out and inhales deeply from it, the smell of fresh weed filling the air. She coughs slightly and then holds out the little stick to me. “The best OG Kush you’ll ever find. Want some?”

I look down at it and she immediately flinches, closing her hand so that I can no longer see the vape.

“I’m so sorry. I’m clueless sometimes.”

I shrug. “Weed was never one of my problem areas.”

“Even so,” Emilia says, and then she smiles. “Able hates that I do this.”

Something about the wistful way she says it makes me wonder if she’s still thinking about what I said in the car.

“How long is this play?” I ask.

“Two hours,” Emilia says, making an apologetic face. I hold my hand out and after a moment she drops her vape into it. I run my finger over her initials embossed in gold.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it from her. I inhale once, and then twice, three times, only blowing out afterward. I immediately feel something happen, the warm tingling sensation growing as it spreads through my body. The world around me takes on a hazy, dreamlike quality, as if I can only really focus on one thing at a time.