Page 277 of The Lies We Play

That is what I do now. I play with lies the way other people play with house keys at the bottom of a purse—touching each one until I find the one that opens the version of the day I can survive. I have been doing it since the accident. Small lies. Necessary lies. Polite lies. The lies I play so no one looks too closely at the woman I became when the woman I who didn’t come home.

I don't know yet whether I will see Sofia on Monday.

I don't know where I will be later today.

That alone should be enough to make me sit down and drink water like a sensible person. Instead, I am standing in my kitchen in Florence with a trembling hand, a cold coffee, and the very specific sensation that my life has been moved three inches to the left while I was not looking.

Fitz—Mr. Everhart, except he asked me to call him Fitz, which still feels like being invited to call a judge by his childhood nickname—said to let him handle everything. Avoid speaking about the Saint Claire matter. Get ready to leave on short notice.

Short notice.

The phrase has been living under my skin all morning.

Florence has taught me to measure time differently. Not slowly, exactly. Italians are not slow. Anyone who has watched a grandmother elbow three tourists aside for the last good tomatoes at the market knows that. But Florence understands endurance. It lets light crawl across stone. It lets espresso be three sips and still somehow an event. It lets a person believe, for ten fragile years, that if she stands in one place long enough, the past might stop looking for her.

Now everything is urgent.

Now everything has a door.

Moises arrives on time, as usual.

The buzzer sounds, and I press the button before I am ready because if I wait for readiness, I will be found dead in this kitchen next to a fossilized bombolone.

As the lock releases downstairs, I realize something I don't want to realize.

I care for him.

I do.

But what we have is a routine.

A kind one. A tender one, in places. A Saturday routine with pastries, museum gossip, shared dinners, careful affection. A routine that doesn't include the rush of wanting to open the door before he knocks. A routine that doesn't make me imagine the next room, the next city, the next impossible adventure.

It makes me wonder if he feels the same.

It makes me hate myself a little for being in a relationship where neither of us has been fully giving or fully receiving, only placing small offerings on the table between us and pretending that was enough.

When he knocks, I call, “It’s open.”

My voice sounds too bright.

Of course it does.

Moises lets himself in and sets a paper bag on the counter.

“Pastries,” he says. “Marina was closing and gave me the last of the bombolone.”

“Thank you.”

“The strawberry one is for you.”

I look at him.

He looks back, expectant, kind, unaware that I am currently trying not to ruin his afternoon with the grace of a woman holding a loaded plate over a white rug.

I told him over the phone that I had something to talk about.

It’s important, I said.