Chapter 3

The music started again upstairs.

Ethan's head snapped toward the ceiling. Even after everything, he was still worried about his party going quiet.

"Stay here," he told me. "Let me end this without making it worse."

He followed his mother up the stairs. Vanessa hesitated, then carried Oliver after them.

I stared at the sentence on my phone.

Thursday through Monday.

For a year, I had treated the empty side of our bed like evidence of my own failure. I snored after procedures. I woke at every sound. I was too sad, too watchful, too difficult to sleep beside.

No. He had simply been sleeping somewhere else.

I locked my phone and went upstairs.

Ethan stood at the microphone again, asking everyone to excuse a painful family misunderstanding. The compass rested in its velvet box on a table beside him. Vanessa stood several feet away now, bouncing Oliver against her shoulder without looking at Ethan.

I walked through the center of the room.

"Claire," Ethan warned.

I stopped beside the table. "Turn it over."

His fingers closed around the microphone. "This is not the time."

"You just told everyone what it means. Turn it over and show them where it came from."

He reached for the box, but I got there first.

The compass felt warm from his hand. My thumb found the small catch automatically. The lid opened with the same faint click I had heard in the antique shop nine years earlier.

I held it beneath the nearest table light.

"Wherever life takes us, come home to me," I read. My voice shook once, then steadied. "Claire."

No one moved.

Vanessa stared at the open lid. "You said that compass helped you through Oliver's birth."

"It did," Ethan said.

"You didn't say she gave it to you."

He looked at me instead of answering her. "Congratulations. You've made your point. Now give it back."

I closed my hand around the compass. "Tell them when our marriage ended."

"Don't do this."

"Was it before or after the appointment three weeks ago?"

His jaw tightened.

I opened our messages and held up the screen.

One more try. Whatever happens, we face it together.

A phone camera lifted near the bar. Then another. The guest closest to the windows kept filming as Ethan turned toward me.

He saw the phones too.

"You want the truth?" he said. "Fine. I kept going to appointments because leaving you in the middle of treatment would have been cruel. Don't turn compassion into a marriage."

The cruelty of the words struck first. Their meaning followed.

He had admitted it in front of everyone: three weeks ago, while telling Vanessa and his family we had been separated for a year, he was still attending fertility appointments with me.

I lowered my phone.

"Thank you," I said.

For the first time that night, Ethan looked uncertain.

Vanessa moved into the space between us. Oliver had begun to fuss, but she did not take her eyes off Ethan.

"You told me she stopped treatment a year ago."