Hello, Sunshine

“That sounds comfortable. And sustainable.”

“It’s great.”

“Why don’t you just stay with me?”

“You have the celebrity friend. And I can’t impose like that.”

He put up his hand to stop me. “First of all, it’s not an imposition. And second of all, she’s in Paris for the week. Doing her fall shopping.”

> I looked at his outfit, the same hoodie he seemed to live in whenever he wasn’t fishing.

“You guys have so much in common,” I said.

“It is our hobbies that bring us together.”

I laughed, took a sip of the cocoa.

“So the party didn’t end up going so well?” he said.

I paused. “It was Danny,” I said.

“What was?”

I looked at him, waiting for him to figure it out.

“Holy shit. The husband was the one who hacked you?”

I nodded, afraid to speak—afraid if I said another word, I’d burst into tears. Fourteen years. The tears hadn’t seemed to stop. Danny had been my person. I’d trusted him so much it hadn’t even occurred to me he would have done this, regardless of his reasoning. What did that say about me? What did that say about how little I’d been paying attention to him?

Ethan folded his arms over his chest. “Why would he . . . just . . . why?”

“He said he did it because he loves me,” I said, my voice cracking.

“There are other ways to love someone.”

I met Ethan’s eyes, desperate for a lifeline. “You think so?”

“I know so,” he said, trying to process. “How do you think the girlfriend plays in?”

I wrapped my hands around the cocoa, held it to me. “She doesn’t. There is no girlfriend.”

He looked confused. “What about the showering?”

“She was redesigning our apartment, Danny’s apartment now. I guess the guilt I heard in her voice was about that, about her choosing him in the breakup or something . . .”

“You believe him?”

I did. Would I sound like a fool if I admitted it? I’d looked up Simon Callahan when I got back to Montauk, and he was who Danny said he was. But I hadn’t found any photographs of him and Maggie. Not on Wireimage, not on her Facebook page. I didn’t find any proof. Danny’s word was my proof. And it was really the only proof I needed. What did that say about where I was now?

“So if we take him at his word, what exactly did he think he’d accomplish?”

I shrugged. “He was hoping that I’d remember who I used to be. You know, before the world was watching, and I lost it.”

“It?”

“Me.”

Ethan nodded, considered. “Well, he’s not wrong about that part,” he said. “The husband.”