And now, five years later, the man who had said them stood in front of me with his life collapsing around him, and his voice shook, and he said a different word entirely.

“Evelyn.” I waited.

“Help me.”

Five years earlier, those two words might have broken me open, might have summoned up all the old love and all the old need, might have made me reach for him.

Instead, I looked across the room toward Julian, who was kneeling on the marble floor beside our daughter, helping her buckle one tiny silver shoe while she explained to him something extremely serious about the wedding cake.

That was my life now.