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I looked at him, and for a second, under the club lights, he looked both twenty-five and fifty at the same time. The young man in the navy suit with one piece of hair falling loose, and the older man at Hudson’s on Shaker Square, gray at the temples, hand stiff from an old lacrosse injury, asking whether I wanted to talk and accepting it when I said no.

Then the older version flickered. I tried to hold it, but the details slipped sideways.

Panic rose so fast I nearly dropped my shoes.

“I have to go,” I said.

Paul stepped forward, then stopped himself. “Okay.”

I turned before I could say anything else and walked down the club drive on the grass toward the road, carrying my heels by their ankle straps. Behind me, the club glowed through the trees, bright and polished, full of people who would talk about this night for years, though half of them would pretend they’d always known something was off and the other half would improve their memories every time they told the story.

The evening air was thick and damp, the sky had gone dark blue over the lake, with a thin silver edge where the last of the light still held. Crickets called from the grass. A car passed on the road, windows open, radio playing “If Ever You’re in My Arms Again.”

My feet hurt before I reached the main road. I walked anyway, because the pool house was less than a mile away, and because getting into a car with anyone would have required me to be a person who could have a conversation.

I was not that person.

By the time I reached my parents’ driveway, the first drops of rain had started to fall, warm and scattered, spotting the dust on my feet. The house was lit softly, the kitchen lamp on, the upstairs hallway glowing.

The pool shimmered under the patio lights. Rain dotted the surface in tiny rings, and the red float had drifted into the shallow end where Henry had probably abandoned it after playing shark patrol. The yard smelled like chlorine and wet grass, the same smell I’d woken to thirteen days ago when I opened my eyes in a body without a single ache.

Thirteen days. They’d seemed almost generous at first. A strange, impossible gift wrapped in youth, music, and a second chance. I’d thought time would spread out in front of me, enough to test Paul, chase Dean, ask my mother uncomfortable questions, and somehow choose this time with confidence.

I opened the pool house door and stepped inside. The room was exactly as I’d left it and not at all the same. The bed was unmade, floral sheets tangled near the foot. My Journey T-shirt lay on the chair beside a damp towel. A half-full cup of coffee sat on the little table, cold now, with a ring of brown at the inside edge. The radio sat near the window, and beside it was the Purple Rain cassette in its plastic case.

Dean’s handwriting curled across the label.

Lorrie Hale.

I set my shoes on the floor and dropped the satin bag onto the bed. My feet were filthy. My dress was damp at the hem. One curl had come loose from its pin and stuck to my neck. I sat on the bed and stared at the wall.

Rain tapped softly against the roof. Somewhere in the main house, a door opened, then closed. My parents were home, both of them probably trying to decide whether to come check on me or leave me alone.

Please leave me alone, I thought.

The thought was followed so quickly by another that I couldn’t stop it.

Please don’t.

As I sat there, a thought came.

Paul hates wet bath mats.

I didn’t know why that, out of everything, came back so clearly, but it did.

My husband disliked wet bath mats. He would step out of the shower, see one bunched on the floor, and make that small sigh I’d mocked for years. At some point in all our years of marriage, I’d known that sigh as well as any love song.

It was ridiculous and it made me cry.

The Purple Rain cassette sat on the table, waiting. The plastic case was scratched near one corner.

I picked it up as the label glowed faintly in the yellow lamplight.

Lorrie Hale.

Not Ellsworth. Not Mom. Not Mrs. Paul Ellsworth. Just the girl I’d thought I’d lost.

For years, I’d believed Dean’s handwriting on that cassette was proof. Proof that I’d chosen wrong. Proof that another life had been waiting for me and I’d failed it. Proof that the girl I used to be had stood at the edge of something brave and stepped back because everyone was watching.