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.