had seen the situation clearly.
The following September, almost a year after Allison’s wedding, Michael mailed me that lobby photograph in a frame. On its back he had written:
For the record, I was telling you about the time you fell off the dock. You were not being seduced. — Michael
I laughed until I had to sit. The picture went on my living-room bookshelf, not to memorialize Daniel’s jealousy, Rachel’s discovery, or the $18,420 in spending eventually exposed, but because of the expression on my face. It showed real laughter months before the divorce, before dating, before I could confidently say I’d recovered. I was already becoming myself again.
That’s the memory I wanted: not the hand-holding mistress, the jealous husband, or even the fact that the supposed rival was my cousin. It was Daniel’s assumption, revealed before he knew the truth, that because he had moved forward first,
