When my husband, Landon, invited his beautiful best friend, Janey, to the lake house that was supposed to be just for the two of us, I told myself it's time to leave.

Janey is wearing a bikini top, cutoffs that end at the very top of her thighs, gold at her wrists and throat.

Dressed for a magazine spread about a beach getaway.

"Landon!"

She launches herself at him, arms winding around his neck, and he catches her, his hands coming to her waist to steady them both, and she holds on a beat, two beats, three, her face tucked into the side of his neck.

I stand very still on the porch with my hand on the rail.

He's laughing, saying something I can't hear.

"Claire." Janey arrives in front of me, and she takes both my hands in hers. "Thank you. Truly. I know I'm barging in."

"You're not barging in," I say, because what else is there.

"You don't mind me crashing your little beach getaway, right?" She says it lightly, a laugh riding underneath, already turning to look at the house. "Landon made it sound like it would be so sad for me to sit at home alone."

Your little beach getaway. As though I'm the guest.

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The lake house smells the way it always does when it's been shut up for a season—cedar and lake water and the faint sweetness of the beeswax someone uses on the floors. I breathe it in from the doorway and let it do what it's supposed to do, which is remind me that this place has never once belonged to Landon's calendar or his company or anyone but us.

We got here just after noon. Landon carried the bags up the porch steps two at a time, and for a little while it was easy to pretend nothing had shifted. He unlatched the windows so the breeze could move through. I found the good glasses in the cabinet where I left them last summer. He came up behind me while I was reaching for them and pressed a peck to the back of my neck, and I let myself lean into it, because he meant it, and because I am tired of holding my body like a fist.

"See?" he murmured against my skin. "This is going to be good."

"I know."

"You'll like her once you know her."

I set the glasses down before I say something that undoes the afternoon.

He's gone back to the car now for the cooler, and I take out my phone the way you reach for a hand in the dark.

We made it, I type to Tarren. She's driving up separately. Should be here any minute.

The reply comes fast enough that I know she's been waiting.

Wait. He actually brought her. He actually did the thing.

He actually did the thing.

Claire. On your anniversary weekend.

It's not our anniversary.

It's your WEEKEND. Same principle. I'm calling Dave in here to witness this.

Don't.

Too late. Dave says, and I quote, "that's insane." A pause, three dots blooming and vanishing. Are you okay?

I look out the window over the sink. The lake is doing its bright, unbothered thing, wind combing silver across the surface, and I think about how many years I spent believing a view like this was a thing that happened to other people.

I'm fine, I write. I'm going to enjoy my weekend.

That's not an answer.

It's the one I'm going with.

I turn the phone face down on the counter, which is becoming a habit I don't love about myself.

I hear the car before I see it. That's the thing about a convertible on a quiet road—the engine arrives ahead of everything, a low expensive purr rounding the bend through the trees. I go out onto the porch because standing at the window feels like hiding, and I refuse to hide in a house that's mine.

The car is the color of a candy apple. Janey has the top down, of course she does, her blonde hair whipping loose from whatever she pretended to do with it this morning, sunglasses pushed up, one tanned arm lifted in a wave that's mostly for Landon, who's straightening up from the cooler in the drive.

She doesn't park so much as abandon the car. The door swings open and she's out of it before the engine's fully quiet, and she is wearing—I take the full measurement of it in one uncharitable glance and hate myself for the glance—a scrap of a cover-up over a bikini top, cutoffs that end at the very top of her thighs, gold at her wrists and throat. Dressed for a magazine spread about a beach getaway. Dressed, I think, and then make myself stop thinking it.

"Landon!"

She crosses the gravel at a run and throws herself into him.

Not a hug. Not the arm's-length, shoulder-patting greeting of two people who've known each other since they were children in matching school blazers. She launches, arms winding around his neck, and he catches her because a man catches what's thrown at him, his hands coming to her waist to steady them both, and she holds on a beat, two beats, three, her face tucked into the side of his neck like she's coming home from somewhere terrible.

I stand very still on the porch with my hand on the rail.

He sets her down. He's laughing, a little off-balance, and he says something I can't hear, and she wipes under one eye with a knuckle even though I'd bet the whole lake she isn't crying. Then he remembers me. I watch him remember me. His gaze lifts to the porch and something in his shoulders adjusts, and he keeps one hand at Janey's back to steer her up the steps, and it's such a small thing, that hand, and I can't stop looking at it.

"Claire." Janey arrives in front of me smelling of coconut and expensive perfume, and she takes both my hands in hers, and her smile is warm the way a photograph of a fire is warm. "Thank you. Truly. I know I'm barging in."

"You're not barging in," I say, because what else is there.

She tilts her head. Her eyes do a quick, thorough inventory of me—the sundress, the bare feet, the fact that I've been here long enough to look settled —and then the smile widens a degree, and she squeezes my hands and lets them go.

"You don't mind me crashing your little beach getaway, right?" She says it lightly, a laugh riding underneath, already turning to look at the house. "Landon made it sound like it would just be so sad for me to sit at home."

Your little beach getaway. As though I'm the guest. As though she's doing me a favor by finding my house charming.

"Of course not," I say. "There's plenty of room."

"You're a saint." She's already moving past me, through the door, her sandals clicking on the beeswaxed floor. "Oh, this is precious. Landon, is this the place your parents used to—no, of course it isn't, theirs was on the other lake, wasn't it, the one with the boathouse."

"Different lake," Landon says, coming up behind her with her bag over his shoulder, and there it is, the ease I flagged for Tarren over truffle fries weeks ago. He doesn't have to translate himself for her. She hands him a memory and he catches it, the same way he caught her out of the air.

I go back inside and get the good glasses down after all. Three of them.

We drive into town for dinner because I don't have enough in the kitchen for three and because I cannot spend the first evening watching them assemble old summers at my table.

Landon has the keys. Janey comes out to the car in a white dress that makes her tan look like a decision, and she goes for the passenger door the way you go for a chair you've always sat in—hand on the handle, half inside already.

"Oh—" Landon stops with his own door open. "Claire rides up front."

It comes out stiff. He hears it come out stiff. Janey looks up over the roof of the car, and there's a flicker of something across her face, quick as a fish turning, before she laughs and lifts both hands.

"Right. Sorry. Old habits." She slides gracefully into the back like it was her idea, arranging her skirt. "We used to take his father's car everywhere. I practically lived in that front seat."

"Never stopped you from backseat driving," Landon says.

"I was a menace." She catches my eye in the side mirror and smiles at me, and I make myself smile back, and I get in the front seat of my husband's car like it's a thing I have to be granted.

The restaurant is the one on the water with the string lights and the dock you can eat on if you ask. The hostess leads us out, and there's a round table, four chairs, one empty, and it should be nothing. It should be the most nothing thing in the world.

Janey pulls out the chair beside Landon.

"I'll just—" she starts, settling her bag onto it.

Landon's hand comes to the back of the chair on his other side. My side. "Claire, why don't you⁠ —" "It's fine," I say.

Both of them look at me.

"It's fine," I say again, lighter, reaching for the chair across from him instead, the one that puts the whole table between us. "Sit wherever. We're on vacation."

Because the alternative is a scene. The alternative is a woman who counts seats, who fights over a chair on a dock under string lights, who cannot let her husband's grieving friend sit next to him for the length of one dinner. The alternative is proving Tarren right and Janey right and everyone right, and I would rather eat the stone.

So I sit across from my husband. Janey settles in at his elbow with a soft, grateful exhale, and reaches over to touch his sleeve—smoothing away a piece of lint that isn't there—and Landon opens his menu, and the lights come on over the water, one string at a time, gold against the dark.

"This is perfect," Janey sighs. "Isn't this perfect?"

"Perfect," I agree, and pick up my menu, and hold it like something that could keep my hands busy while the rest of me goes quiet.