Generosity gives without needing anything back.

What Julian had offered me that day was something else entirely wearing generosity’s clothes, and the fact that I could not tell the difference, even married to him for six years, is the single thing I have had to make the most private peace with.

Chapter 2 — The First Three Days

For the first few days, everything felt the way a vacation is supposed to feel and so rarely does.

The resort sat on a curve of coastline where the water went from pale turquoise at the sand to a deep bottle-green further out, and the mornings arrived gentle and golden through the gauzy curtains of our fourth-floor suite.

We fell into the lazy rhythm of people with nowhere to be.

We spent our mornings by the water.

We shared long unhurried meals under the thatched pavilion, where the waiters learned Lily’s name by the second day and brought her strawberry smoothies without being asked.

We watched our daughter build sandcastles with the fierce concentration of a small architect, and Jim would kneel beside her in the sand, ruining his expensive sunglasses with saltwater, making her shriek with laughter.

Jim seemed, in those first days, to be relaxing.

The tight, drawn look around his eyes softened a little.

He slept late.

He ate well.

I remember watching him float on his back in the shallows one afternoon, his face turned up to the sun, and thinking that I had done the right thing by bringing him, that this was exactly what he had needed.