The diner was almost empty. A waitress in a green apron led us to a booth beneath a window clouded by condensation. Nora asked for tea and then changed her mind to coffee. I asked for the same. We sat across from each other with a little metal sugar dispenser between us and listened to the refrigerator behind the counter hum through the silence.
"I thought I would scream," Nora said eventually. "All day I imagined seeing him with another woman and screaming so loudly everybody in the hotel would remember it."
"I'm glad you didn't have to."
"I wasn't calm. I was terrified." She wrapped both hands around the hot mug. "When you held out your hand, I thought if I could take it and keep walking, maybe I wouldn't fall apart until I got somewhere safe."
"I'm glad it helped."
She looked down. "Please don't misunderstand what happened in that hallway."
"I won't."
The relief on her face was immediate and painful to see. I had not known her an hour, and already I understood how much energy she had spent making sure other people did not tell stories about her that she could no longer control. I told her she owed me no explanation, and that if walking out together was the only useful thing we ever did for each other, it would be enough.
Nora nodded, though she did not seem quite ready to believe it. Then she asked whether I had somewhere to go that night. I almost said home, but the word caught in my throat. The house was mine and Sabrina's, filled with things we had chosen together, and I suddenly did not know whether returning to it counted as going home.
"I suppose I'll go back to my place," I said. "I don't think I could sleep anywhere tonight."
"Neither could I." She looked at her ring. "But I have Oliver. I have to be somewhere he knows how to find me."
We exchanged numbers because both of us understood that the next day would be full of questions neither wanted to answer alone. Before we left, Nora said she was sorry. I asked for what, and she said, "For being the person who brought you there."
"You didn't make them do it," I told her. "You just stopped us from being the last people to know."
She wiped her eyes with the edge of a napkin and said she wished knowing felt better. I had nothing comforting to offer. The truth was not a gift that always arrived wrapped in relief. Sometimes it arrived like a demolition notice on a house you had spent years repairing, telling you the foundation had been failing long before the walls showed a crack.
I drove home with the radio off. At every red light I found myself replaying ordinary moments, not the scene in the hotel but the things that had surrounded it. Sabrina asking me to stop calling her office because it embarrassed her. Sabrina turning her phone away while we watched television. Sabrina saying Colin was demanding but brilliant, then insisting I was jealous of people whose careers took them into rooms with important clients.