Chapter 1

Michael Reed never could have imagined that I'd see that message on his phone, calmly set it down, and go right back to stirring the pot on the stove.

"Hey Michael, thanks for the coffee today! Next one's on me, yeah?"

The photo showed a latte with the Starbucks logo on the cup, her reflection caught in the glass as she flashed a peace sign at the camera. She had a sweet, crinkle-eyed smile, the kind I used to wear before I turned twenty.

Her name was Emily Foster.

I'd heard the name before.

Michael had been working overtime 23 days straight. Every soup I made, from beef stew to chicken noodle, sat in the fridge untouched.

I really did believe the project was that brutal, until his mom dropped by last week and let slip, "Michael seems pretty relaxed lately. Just the other day I saw him post a photo of himself grabbing coffee at Maple Square."

My hand stilled, fork frozen over my plate.

I scrolled through his entire feed and never found that post.

He'd hidden it from me when he uploaded it.

That year, we'd been married three years and known each other for 24.

My mom and his lived across the hall from each other from the time we were both still in diapers.

We grew up joined at the hip, tearing through the hallways together as toddlers, and once in kindergarten when he wet his pants at nap time, I peeled off my jacket and tied it around his waist to cover for him.

His dad would chuckle that the two of us were childhood sweethearts, and that one day our families would just have to become in-laws.

My mom would laugh along and say it all depended on what the two of us actually wanted.

As it turned out, we really did end up getting married.

At our wedding, he stood at the altar with red-rimmed eyes and said, "Anna, I've known you were the one since I was six. That'll never change, not in this lifetime."

I buried my face in his chest and cried hard enough to wreck my makeup.

Our childhood friends in the crowd whistled and hollered, declaring us the first couple to come out of the old neighborhood, and swearing none of them would believe it if we ever split up.

Back then, I really did believe childhood love was the most unshakable thing in this world.

Years later, I came to understand that even the ripest plum can't compete when someone holds out a glass of fresh, sweet juice.

*****

I'd never set out to spy on him.

I mean it.

We had 24 years between us. Every expression on his face, every breath, every word he swallowed back, I knew them like pieces of my own body.

At 11, he fell out of a maple tree and ended up with seven stitches in his knee, and I cried harder than he did.

At 15, the first time he came in second in his class, he locked himself in his room and refused to eat, and I sat outside his door with a plate of food for an entire afternoon before he finally let me in.

At 18, we got into different colleges. The day he saw me off at the train station, he stood on the platform as my train pulled away and pressed his hand to the window.

Through the glass, he texted me to wait for him, that he'd marry me one day.

We powered through four years of long-distance college without breaking up once.

The year we graduated, he took a job at an architecture firm and I passed my dental boards. One day, he said, "Anna, let's go file the paperwork." I said okay.

There was no proposal, no ring, and we just walked into the City Hall hand in hand.

On our way out, he picked up two hot dogs from a street vendor, and we stood there on the sidewalk eating them while he said, "Aren't we the most low-key newlyweds you've ever seen?"

I bit into mine and laughed, "It took us 20 years to get married. That's a pretty long engagement, don't you think?"

Back then, I really did believe my whole life was set.

I'd work as a dentist at a community clinic, come home after shifts to wait for him at dinner, and spend weekends eating across the hall at his parents' place. The whole thing felt plain, steady, and calm.

I never imagined Michael would change.

When I was little, I watched my parents through the wreck of their near-divorce. My dad had been seeing some woman who worked at a sketchy massage parlor.

For those three years, my mom was a shadow of herself. She started going through his pockets, checking his call logs, bolting out of bed every time his phone buzzed at night.

One time my dad came home at one in the morning and she swept every dish off the dinner table. Soup splattered across my face, and she clutched me to her chest, sobbing, "I stayed for you, baby. I stayed only for you..."

I was nine that year.

What did a nine-year-old understand? All I knew was my mom had changed. She wasn't the mom I'd grown up with, the one who'd laugh while braiding my hair. She'd turned into a detective, a madwoman, a thief who'd sneak through my dad's phone.

In the end, they didn't get divorced. My dad came back to the family. My mom forgave him.

But even now, she still has nights when she can't sleep. When my dad goes out for work dinners, she'll still slip onto the balcony and watch for the headlights of his car coming home.

One afternoon I came home and walked in on her going through his phone again. My dad sat beside her, exhausted and fed up with all of it.

That image embedded itself in nine-year-old me like a splinter, and to this day I've never been able to dig it out.

That's why I made myself a vow early on. I would never, in this lifetime, become my mother.

*****

The day I found out Emily Foster existed was a Friday.

Michael texted again to say he was working late. I sent back a quick "okay," pulled a package of beef chuck from the freezer to thaw, and set a stockpot on the burner.

I diced the carrots, peeled the potatoes, seared the beef chunks until the edges turned a deep brown, and let everything simmer down together.

I'd done this routine more times than I could count.

I figured I'd just take some over to him. He'd been pulling such long hours at the firm, no way he was eating anything decent.

Last year, he'd come down with a stomach ulcer, and I'd spent the whole night in the ER beside him while he sweated through the pain. After that, I started making him soup.

Once the beef stew was ready, I went to the closet to dig out a thermos.

Tucked at the back of the drawer was an old tin box that held years of small paper memories.

There were ticket stubs from our first movie together, train tickets from college trips home, and the receipt from the dinner he'd taken me to with his very first paycheck.

I'd always told myself that when I got older, I'd glue all of it into a scrapbook.

While I was rooting around for the thermos, I knocked the tin box over by accident.

A folded scrap of paper slipped out from one of the compartments.

It was a sheet torn from a notebook, folded in half, with yellowed corners. On it, in shaky child's handwriting, was scrawled the line. [Marriage Certificate. Michael Reed and Anna Summers.]

Underneath, two stick figures held hands.

He'd given it to me the year he turned six.

His mom told me later that he'd insisted on using a red crayon to draw a stamp at the bottom, pressed so hard he tore right through the notebook page, and earned himself a scolding from his teacher for it.

I folded the paper back up and tucked it into my purse. Then I packed up the soup, hailed a cab, and headed over to his office.