He raised both hands and ran them hard through his brown hair, leaving it sticking up in messy spikes across his forehead.

“Rachel, please,” Ethan muttered to his shoes.

“Let me explain how it started.”

“Is it true?” I asked again, louder this time.

Sylvia let out a short, bitter laugh that bounced off the hard, wipe-clean walls of the room.

“He doesn’t have to explain anything to you,” Sylvia snapped, swinging her velvet coat back over her forearm.

“He was drowning, Rachel.

He called me every single afternoon at three o’clock on his work phone, crying about how hard his life had become.”