When His Fiancée Framed Me for Theft

I found the restaurant six weeks ago.

It was tucked between a laundromat and a Vietnamese grocery on a side street in Carroll Gardens — the kind of place with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu and candles stuck into old wine bottles. No valet. No dress code. No one from Hector's world would ever walk through that door, which was exactly the point. I made the reservation under my own name. Emryn Sanders, party of two, seven o'clock.

I wore the green dress. Not the one he bought me — the one I picked out myself from a rack at a boutique in Cobble Hill, the one that cost me two hours of deliberation and a hundred and forty dollars I didn't need to justify to anyone. I did my own hair. I took the subway.

I got there at six fifty.

The hostess seated me at a corner table near the window. The candle was already lit. I ordered sparkling water and looked at the menu I had already memorized and told myself he was just running late. Hector was never late. That was one of the things I had always loved about him — the way he treated time like a form of respect.

Seven fifteen. I rearranged my silverware.

Seven twenty. I read the chalkboard specials for the fourth time.

When my phone buzzed, I already knew. I don't know how I knew, but I did — the way you know a storm is coming before the sky changes color. Some part of me had been waiting for this specific moment for three years.

His voice was warm. It was always warm. That was the thing about Hector Kennedy — he never sounded like he was doing something wrong.

"Em." Just my name, the way he said it when he wanted me to understand something without him having to explain it. "It's Dior. She collapsed at the Whitfield gala — panic attack, they're saying, hyperventilating in front of everyone. I can't leave her like this."

I watched the candle flame bend sideways in a draft from the door.

"I know," he said. "I know. I'm so sorry. I'll make it up to you, I promise. Next week — anywhere you want, I'll clear the whole evening."

Next week. Anywhere I want.

I had heard some version of this sentence so many times that I could have written it for him.

"Okay," I said.

I don't know why I said okay. Maybe because it was easier than the alternative. Maybe because I was sitting in a restaurant I had chosen specifically so no one would see us together, and the irony of that was suddenly too heavy to carry.

"You're the best," he said. "I'll call you later."

He didn't call later.

I sat at that table for another hour. I ordered the pasta because the waiter had come by twice with a look of careful sympathy, and I didn't want his pity to go to waste.