chapter 12
After dessert, when the crowd began to loosen, I walked to the balcony. The night was kind. The air smelled like old stone and new money.
The door opened behind me.
“Chloe,” Daniel said.
I looked at the river. “Hello.”
He came to stand beside me. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“She invited me.”
“You came.”
“I came to see if I could stand in a room with shadows of my old life and not forget my new one.”
“How’s the experiment going?”
“Successful.”
He nodded. “I remember the list,” he said finally. “From college. The list of things you wanted to do before thirty.”
I remembered it too. It had been on an index card, taped to our cheap dorm wall.
Learn to make croissants. See the ocean from the other side. Run five miles without stopping. Visit Prague with my mother in winter. Paint a wall any color I want and then paint it another color for no reason. Fall in love once and keep it.
“You made me put ‘Fall in love once and keep it’ on your list too,” I said.
“I did,” he said, wry. “I meant it.”
“I believe you. You just kept giving it away to the loudest room.”
He flinched, then straightened. “Ashley’s planning another fundraiser,” he said. “A bigger one. She wants you to speak. About forgiveness.”
“Of whom?”
“Of everyone,” he said helplessly.
“Then tell her no,” I said.
He surprised me by nodding. “All right.”
On my way out, Ashley appeared in the doorway like a postcard of herself.
“There you are!” she said, breathless. “Everybody wants to say hi to you. Come!”
“I was just leaving,” I said.
“Leaving? But—Chloe, I thanked you in my speech. We’re sisters.”
“No,” I said gently. “We aren’t.”
She laughed, not understanding. “You’re still mad about the photos. Daniel explained. I was sick, it was my dream, you know how girls are—”
“The problem was never the photos,” I said. “It was the story you told around them.”
Her eyes sharpened, the first honest look of the evening.
“You can’t just walk away,” she said, bewildered. “You’re the stable one. That’s your role.”
“I changed my role,” I said. “The casting director approved.”
I walked home in my tall shoes and carried them the last two blocks because my feet wanted to feel the city without ceremony. I slept like someone who had paid off an old debt.