Chapter 1

My husband stood in the center of the ferry's glass-walled salon with a baby in his arms and another woman in an ivory dress pressed against his side.

Behind them, gold letters spelled WELCOME, OLIVER.

"My son, Oliver," Ethan said into the microphone.

The words reached me over the clink of champagne glasses. Guests smiled. His mother lifted her glass. The woman beside him rested one hand on the baby's back as if the three of them had posed that way a hundred times.

The little boy had her dark hair and Ethan's deep cleft chin.

Then Ethan opened a velvet box.

Inside lay the scratched brass compass I had given him on our first wedding anniversary.

"This got me through the hardest year of my life," he said. "Whenever I felt lost, it reminded me to find my way home. Someday, I want Oliver to have it. I want my son to know his father will always find his way back to him."

The ferry horn sounded beneath my feet.

My fingers closed around my wedding ring. The edge bit into my skin.

I had found that compass in an antique shop. Ethan had laughed because the needle trembled whenever he held it near his watch. I had paid extra to have a sentence engraved inside the lid.

He still carried it after nine years. I had thought that meant something.

Then Ethan looked past the applauding guests and saw me through the open salon doors.

His smile vanished.

"Claire?"

Every face turned toward me.

Ethan lowered the baby against his chest. "Why are you here?"

Twenty minutes earlier, my friend and business partner, Sophie, had sent me a screen recording of a guest's public post from the party, with no greeting.

Are you watching this?

In the video, Ethan's mother had raised a glass beside the same gold sign. Sophie had included the ferry name and departure time. I had stared at the screen until all the things I had explained away returned at once: the single striped baby sock beneath the passenger seat, his new phone code, the shirts that never came back from the cleaners, the Thursday nights spent "helping Dad."

I had asked him once if there was someone else.

He had closed his eyes and said, "Not everything is an affair, Claire. Some of us are just tired."

I had apologized.

Now I stood on the public promenade outside a private celebration, tasting salt and champagne in the air.

"Who is he?" I asked.

The woman in ivory tightened one hand around Ethan's sleeve.

His mother looked down at her glass. His father did not look surprised. Neither did the friends who had eaten at my table and toasted my marriage.

Ethan's expression changed. The shock disappeared first. Then the fear. What remained was the calm face he used when he wanted everyone else to believe he was the only reasonable person in the room.

He stepped toward the microphone.

"I'm sorry about this," he told the guests. "Claire and I have been separated for a year. I hoped we could handle the transition privately."

The deck shifted under me. Through the windows, the pier began to slide away.

Ethan gave the room a sad, patient smile.

"Claire is having trouble accepting that our marriage ended a long time ago."