Before I left work, I called my older sister, Tessa. She lived outside the city with her husband and two daughters and had been the person in our family who remembered birthdays, kept emergency cash in the glove compartment, and never once told me what to feel. When I said Sabrina had been having an affair, she went quiet long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"At the office."
"Have you eaten?"
"Malik already asked me that."
"Then answer the question."
I told her no. Twenty minutes later she appeared with sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, a large container of soup, and the look she used to give me when I was seventeen and trying to pretend a bad exam grade didn't matter. She made me eat half a sandwich before asking a single thing about Sabrina.
"You don't need to decide whether to forgive her today," Tessa said. "You don't need to decide whether you love her tomorrow. Just don't let her need for an answer become more important than your need to understand what happened."
I nodded, grateful for advice that did not arrive disguised as an order. Tessa touched my shoulder and told me Mom had seen a strange message from Sabrina asking whether she'd heard from me. I asked her not to explain anything yet. I wanted my mother to hear it from me, not from the first person who could turn the story into a family announcement.
Across the city, Nora Mercer was having a different morning. I learned about it later, when the first shock had faded enough that we could compare what happened after the elevator doors closed. She returned home shortly after midnight, where she found Oliver's school backpack by the kitchen island and a half-finished science poster on the dining room table. Her sister, Rachel, had left a note saying Oliver was asleep upstairs and she would call in the morning.
Colin had not come home. Nora knew he had seen her in the hotel, knew the old story about a client dinner could no longer be used, and still he had not come home. He sent one message at 1:09 a.m.: I need time to figure out how to explain what you saw. She stared at it until the screen dimmed, then turned off her phone and went upstairs to check on her son.
Oliver slept sideways across his bed with one sock on and a book open against his chest. His hair was darker than his father's, and he had inherited Nora's serious eyes. She stood at the doorway longer than she meant to, watching him breathe. Whatever Colin had done, the boy in that bed did not deserve to become an exhibit in the case against his father.
The next morning Oliver came downstairs and asked whether she had gone to the store. Nora told him she had gone out to talk to someone and that she was tired. He watched her for a moment, then asked whether Dad was working late again. She could not bring herself to lie. She told him his father was staying somewhere else for the moment and that the adults needed to work through something difficult.