It was the hardest smile of my life.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I thought you were someone else.” And I turned my cart around and walked away, and did not let my knees give out until I reached the car.

I have thought a great deal about that smile, because everything that came after grew out of it, and because it went against every instinct in my body.

There is a version of that afternoon where I tore the necklace off her throat, where I screamed the truth across the bakery, where I gave the whole store the scene it would have gossiped about for weeks — and I understand the woman who would have done that, I have been her in my imagination a hundred times since.