“Deep thoughts?” he asked, warm-eyed.

“Just an old mirage,” I said, picking up the glass. “The view’s better here.”

Colton raised his own glass. “To the truth, then.”

“To the truth,” I echoed, and the glasses chimed.

I was thirty-eight years old and I believed, sitting on that terrace, that I had walked out of the whole thing clean and that the story was over.

The view was better there. That part was true and has stayed true.