I could see him wind up to it, could see him reach for the sentence he had clearly been saving, polishing, perhaps, for years, against the day he might run into me.

“Leaving you,” he said, “was the smartest thing I ever did.” Chloe laughed, a bright cruel little sound.

And I stood there in my simple navy dress and looked at this man who had emptied our account and taken up with the woman in my kitchen and now, five years later, wanted to make certain I understood that I had been the mistake he was wise to correct.

I opened my mouth to answer him.