A blurry story from two weeks earlier: a man’s hand holding a wine glass across a dark restaurant table, only the cuff visible, the watch unmistakably Damen’s because Carissa had bought it for him on their eighth anniversary after he spent six months hinting that all his friends had “real watches now.”
Carissa stared at the image until the edges of it blurred.
Then she closed the laptop and went to bed in the guest room without touching her own side of the mattress.
The next evening, she came home early.
No warning. No text.
She walked in through the front door at five-thirty and heard laughter coming from the living room—Nikki’s bright, airy laugh, followed by Damen’s lower one, the version he used when he was flirting or getting away with something. Carissa slipped off her heels on instinct and stepped closer without announcing herself.
They were on the couch.
Not in a compromising position. That would have been almost merciful. No, what she saw was worse in its casualness. Nikki sat cross-legged facing him, wearing jeans and one of Carissa’s old cardigans she must have taken years earlier and never returned. Damen leaned forward, elbows on his knees, phone in hand, reading from notes while Nikki repeated the lines back to him.
“How did we meet?” he asked.
Nikki smiled. “At Lindsey Barron’s birthday party in Oak Brook. I was standing by the back window pretending I didn’t know anyone, and you came over with a drink and said you were impressed by my commitment to looking like I hated everyone.”
Damen grinned. “Good. Again, but slower.”
Carissa did not move.
That was her story.
Her exact story.
Lindsey Barron had been a law school friend. Oak Brook had been the suburb. The back window. The joke about hating everyone. The drink in his hand. The first laugh she ever gave him.
It was not just that they were rehearsing for a lie.
They were stealing her memories to make the lie breathe.
Carissa stepped into the room.
Neither of them jumped. That would have at least suggested conscience.
Instead, Damen looked up like he’d been expecting her eventually and said, “Hey. You’re early.”
Nikki gave a little wave. “We’re practicing.”
Carissa let her gaze move from one face to the other. “I can see that.”
Damen patted the couch cushion beside him as if she were joining family game night. “You can actually help. We’re trying to make sure the timeline sounds natural.”
Carissa remained standing. “You’re using my timeline.”
Damen frowned like she was being tedious. “It’s the easiest one to remember.”
Nikki examined her nails. “It’s not like you own a meet-cute, Carissa.”
There was no apology in her voice. Not even discomfort. Just that familiar younger-sister entitlement, as if the world had again presented her with something Carissa had built and she had decided it would fit her better.
Carissa sat in the armchair across from them because she suddenly wanted to see how far they would go in front of her.
They went very far.
They stole the story of the rooftop proposal overlooking the river. They stole the anniversary dinner at the French restaurant in River North where Carissa had cried into a linen napkin because she had been so absurdly happy then she didn’t know what else to do with it. They stole the weekend in Saugatuck, Michigan, where she and Damen had gotten caught in the rain and ended up drinking bourbon from paper cups in a motel because every nicer place in town had been booked.
When Carissa corrected a detail—“It was French, not Italian”—Damen rolled his eyes.
“Does that matter?”
“It mattered when it happened.”
He gave Nikki a look and spoke in a higher-pitched imitation that was almost comically cruel. “It mattered when it happened.”
Nikki laughed.
Carissa felt the laugh hit somewhere below the sternum.
“Why don’t you go do some work?” Nikki said with a sweet smile. “Isn’t that your zone?”
There are women who throw wine.
Carissa had always admired them.
She only nodded, stood, and walked upstairs.
Halfway to the landing, she stopped. Not because she heard words. Because she heard tone.
Laughter changed shape when it was safe. It softened. It dropped. It became private.
Carissa turned slowly and looked through the banister.
Damen had lifted his hand to Nikki’s face.
His thumb was brushing the curve of her cheekbone the way it had brushed Carissa’s years earlier on nights when he still looked at her like she was a destination instead of a utility. Nikki leaned toward his hand with her eyes half-closed. Their faces tilted. Their mouths hovered.
They were about to kiss in Carissa’s house, on Carissa’s couch, under the framed black-and-white print Carissa had bought in New York the year she made partner.
A floorboard shifted under Carissa’s foot.
Both of them jerked apart.
And then, instantly, the performance began.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Damen said.
“We were practicing,” Nikki added. “For affection.”
Carissa came down the stairs at a measured pace and sat back in the armchair.
“Of course,” she said. “Affection rehearsal.”
Damen laughed too hard. “Exactly.”
Carissa folded her hands in her lap to hide the trembling. “Good to know.”
She didn’t confront them then.
She had spent too many years in litigation to waste a cross-examination on unprepared witnesses.
Nikki left around seven-thirty, brushing past Carissa with a nervousness she tried to disguise as irritation. Damen showered and then moved toward the bedroom like the day had ended in his favor.
Carissa stood in the doorway and blocked him.
“No,” she said.
He blinked at her. “Move.”
“No.”
He looked genuinely startled. That told her how often she had made herself easier to handle.
“I’m not doing this,” he said.
“We are absolutely doing this.”
He sighed, the sigh of a man exhausted by consequences arriving on time. “Carissa, you’re taking this somewhere insane.”
“Then stop me with the truth.”
“We told you the truth.”
“Then say it cleanly,” she said. “Why did you touch my sister’s face like that?”
He crossed his arms. “Because we were practicing.”
“Why did you both jump apart?”
“Because you walked in looking like a prosecutor.”
“You still haven’t denied that something is going on.”
His jaw tightened. “Because there is nothing going on.”
“Look me in the eye and say you are not sleeping with Nikki.”
He looked at her. He looked away.
That was enough.
