She turned off the kitchen light and walked to the bedroom. The new duvet was turned back - she'd done that this afternoon, optimistically, thinking about how the evening would end. She lay down on her side of the bed, still in her navy dress, and looked at the ceiling.

The candles were all out. Mozart had stopped playing hours ago, when someone had switched the speaker to a jazz playlist without asking. The crème brûlée ramekins were in the sink.

She pressed her palm flat against the empty half of the mattress.

Five years, she thought, for the last time that night. And this time the word that followed wasn't milestone, wasn't number, wasn't even tired.

The word that followed was enough?

She didn't answer it. But she didn't push it away, either.

The café on the corner of Maple and Grant was the kind of place that didn't try too hard - mismatched wooden chairs, a chalkboard menu, windows that let in good morning light. Ivy had found it herself, two years ago, on a walk she'd taken because the apartment was too quiet and she needed somewhere to sit that felt like it belonged to her and not to the Hartley name.

Fiona was already there when she arrived, both hands around a latte, looking like someone who had slept perfectly and dressed deliberately.

"You look tired," Fiona said, by way of greeting.

"Good morning to you too." Ivy set her bag down and sat. When the server came, she ordered chamomile tea and then immediately wished she'd ordered coffee.

"Tell me." Fiona leaned forward. She had a gift for this - for making you feel like your problem was the only interesting thing happening in the world. "What happened?"

Ivy told her. All of it - the cooking, the candles, the colleagues arriving, the conversation at her own dinner table that she'd been invisible at, the hair dryer, the card she'd written four times that was still in her cardigan pocket. She kept her voice even. She was good at that.

Fiona listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her. When Ivy finished, she set down her latte and shook her head slowly.

"He is an idiot," Fiona said. "I say this with complete clarity and zero exaggeration. Adrian Hartley is a gifted architect and a genuine idiot."

Despite herself, Ivy almost smiled. There was something particular about hearing it from Fiona - who had, once upon a time, been engaged to Adrian herself. It had lasted eight months before they'd called it off by mutual agreement, both of them apparently deciding they made far better allies than partners. The breakup had been civilized enough that Fiona had remained in the Hartley orbit, and by some alchemy that Ivy still didn't entirely understand, she had become Ivy's closest friend rather than her adversary. Ivy had spent the first year of the marriage waiting for that friendship to curdle. It never had.

"He forgot your anniversary, brought strangers into your home, and then told you to go find a hobby." Fiona ticked the items off on her fingers. "And you said - what? 'It's fine, it's just a date'?"

"Something like that."

"Ivy." Fiona's voice sharpened with something that sounded like genuine frustration. "You cannot keep making yourself smaller to fit inside his schedule. You were a person before you married him. You had opinions, you had a voice, you were funny - do you remember being funny? You used to make me laugh until I couldn't breathe."

Ivy wrapped her hands around her teacup. "I'm still funny."

"You're careful. There's a difference." Fiona leaned back in her chair. "You need to get out more. Come to the Hartfield Gallery opening next Thursday - the kind of people who go to things like that, you need to know them. Not for Adrian. For you. So you remember who you are when he's not in the room."

Ivy considered this. "Your father would be at something like that."

Fiona waved a hand. "My father is always at something like that. Currently he is also very busy trying to arrange my future." Her tone was airy, deliberately so. "He's decided Ethan Hartley would make an excellent match for me and has been dropping hints at every Sunday dinner for the past month."

"Ethan?" Ivy blinked. "Adrian's brother?"

"The very same." Fiona smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "The younger, less complicated, considerably more cheerful Hartley son. My father finds the idea of two separate alliances with the Hartley family very appealing, apparently."

"What do you find?"

Fiona turned her latte cup in a slow circle on the tabletop. "I find it exhausting to be arranged." She looked up. "How is Ethan, actually? You see him more than I do."

"He's good. He came to Sunday dinner last month and spent most of it arguing with Margaret about the Chicago zoning laws in a way that seemed to genuinely make her happy." Ivy paused. "She likes people who push back."

"Hm." Fiona looked out the window. Something moved behind her eyes that Ivy couldn't read. Then she said, "I actually have something to show you. I almost didn't bring it." She reached into her bag - the cream leather one, the Italian one, the one that cost more than a month of the budget Ivy had kept in her early twenties - and lifted out a small album. Worn at the corners. Old.

She set it on the table between them.

"I've been going back and forth about this for weeks," Fiona said. "I think you need to know. But I also know it's going to hurt, and I want you to understand that I'm not telling you to hurt you. I'm telling you because you deserve to have the full picture."

Ivy looked at the album. Then she looked at Fiona.

"Show me," she said.