From Chapter 1:

Shall we walk back? James asked outside the theater.

Chicago, April 2017. The air chilly, the sky cleared off after an evening of rain. We’d left the play a half-hour after it began, a poorly-written, poorly-acted farce. Now the sidewalk was empty. Tiny lights strung between gas lamps and storefronts created a glittery canopy beneath which we stood. Charming, he’d said when we arrived earlier, a part of the city neither of us had seen. I was still in my clothes from that morning: white sweater, pencil skirt, suede ankle boots with zippers, high-heeled.

I’ll call a car, I said. Your hotel’s on the way to mine.

We rode in silence, the wet asphalt glowing red and green at stoplights. When we pulled up to his hotel, James turned to face me, adjusting his glasses. Okay, he said. Text me when you’re safely back. He leaned over to brush my cheek with his lips, but when the bellhop opened the rear door he didn’t get out. He sat looking ahead, rubbing a hand up and down, up and down his thigh.

Both of us 45, born in the same year, four months apart; both married to our spouses for twenty-three years. Two similarities in what had come to seem, in the time we’d known each other, a cosmically-ordained accumulation: born and raised in the desert southwest, allergic to peanuts, obsessed with the Christian mystics and quantum theory and Moby Dick. Children the same ages and genders—older girl, younger boy—and 96-year-old grandmothers who still lived independently. In the end it was this last fact that undid me, the longevity in our respective genes.

The safe way to let yourself fall in love with someone who isn’t your spouse: imagine the life you might have together after both your spouses have passed away.

(What I mean is, darling: when I made love with you that night, I was making love with the magnificent old man I knew you would become.)

Can I help with any bags? the bellhop said.

You’re at the Hyatt? James said to me.

Yes.

Take us to the Hyatt, he said to the driver, and pulled the door shut.

**

But this story begins where most end: a boy and a girl in love, a wedding, a happily-ever-after.

Malibu, June. A bride and four attendants on a grassy bluff above the Pacific. The morning is overcast, typical on the coast, the diffuse light ideal for photographs. The bride’s dress is raw silk in antique ivory and appears backlit against the slate of ocean. Sweetheart neckline, cap sleeves, full skirt with a train that will later gather into a bustle. She cradles her bouquet like an infant, six-dozen roses in various stages of bloom, blush pink. The groomsmen, fraternity brothers, have already been photographed. They wait inside the chapel, where in half an hour the ceremony will begin. They wear gray tuxedos with ascot ties and slick black shoes. Three, including the groom, have the same round tortoise-shell glasses.

Down the coast, at the country club in Pacific Palisades, the caterers are assembling the cake: five tiers frosted in a basket-weave pattern, with real ivy and roses trailing down one side. The bride has selected a different flavor for each tier: butter cream, chocolate, spice, red velvet. The top layer—which will be placed in the couple’s freezer for their first anniversary, until one night while they’re out, the bride’s younger brother, knowing nothing about such traditions, eats the whole thing—is white-chocolate with raspberry-creme filling. The centerpieces are fishbowls with ivy and roses identical to those on the cake. They sit in a refrigerated van on Pacific Coast Highway, north of Sunset. The driver is stuck in beach traffic.

But there is plenty of time.