Chapter 2

Clara came home with us because Evan said she needed to see the transfer receipt before she confirmed it.

He said it quietly, as though that made it reasonable.

Our kitchen was too bright after the ballroom. Evan had left the light over the old wooden table on, the one we had bought when Callie was a baby. Clara stood beside it with her coat still buttoned.

Evan pulled out my chair.

Then Clara's phone rang.

"Sit," he told her. "You don't have to carry this alone."

She sat down in the chair he had opened for me.

It was a small thing. That made it worse. I could have told myself I was being ridiculous. Evan had not planned it. Clara had not stolen anything by lowering herself into a chair.

But he had used the same voice he used when Callie was sick. The same voice he had used when my mother died and I could not get through a grocery list without crying in the cereal aisle.

I put my phone on the table between them.

"What's Callie's bridge?"

Clara went pale. Her eyes moved to Evan.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Margo, please. Not like this."

"There's no other way to ask."

He sat across from Clara, not beside me. "The studio was going under. Clara had a lease payment and two employees waiting on her. I gave her the money until she got back on her feet."

"The money for Callie's account."

"The contribution. Not the account itself." His expression tightened, as if precision made the decision smaller. "We can replace it."

We.

The word landed between us like a dish someone had dropped and not yet picked up.

Clara reached for the transfer receipt, then stopped. "Evan told me you both agreed."

"He told you wrong," I said.

She looked at him again. "Evan?"

Clara unlocked her phone. The confirmation screen showed the transfer as a private favor, with the date and a note about paying it back beneath it.

"I thought this was something the two of you'd decided," she said. "I can confirm that I received it. I can't confirm that you agreed. And I won't move another dollar tonight."

She pressed the button with one unsteady thumb.

"I knew Margo would understand once she knew what was at stake." He said it without looking at me. "You have no idea what it's like to watch your whole life go under."

I almost laughed. Not because it was funny. Because for one breath I saw myself through his eyes: the wife with a stable job, a paid-off car, a daughter with options. The woman who could always be asked to give up one more thing because she had survived the last request.

"Callie has a deadline," I said. "Her school is asking for that contribution this week."

"She has choices," Evan said. "She could start local. She could defer. It's not as if we took something from her forever."

The kitchen went still.

Clara stood so fast her chair scraped the floor. "I didn't know it was for your daughter."

"It's not your fault," I said, though my throat hurt saying it.

Evan looked at me then, relieved for half a second. As if I had done what I always did—made the room easier for him.

I did not soften the next sentence.

"But it's not ours to call temporary when she's the one who has to wait."

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

Callie stood on the bottom step in her dinner shoes, her portfolio tucked under one arm.

"Is this because of me?" she asked. "Because I want to go away?"

Evan opened his mouth.

For years, I would have answered before he could.

This time, I did not.