Sebastian's wife wanted to talk, and the terrifying part was that she sounded like someone who was on my side.
I said yes, not immediately. I sat with the phone against my ear long enough that she could hear me deciding… not hesitating, actually deciding, and then I said yes because I had spent sixteen years working with an incomplete version of events and the incompleteness had started to cost me more than the truth ever could.
We met at a restaurant she suggested. Quiet, midweek, the kind of place designed for conversations that needed to stay where they were put.
I arrived first deliberately, ordered water I wouldn't drink, and was already seated and composed when she walked in.
I had seen her in photographs, society pages. The wedding announcement I had found on a Thursday morning
