Chapter 2: Getting Ready (Early The Previous Evening)

I was finishing getting ready in the bathroom. It was our anniversary, and Nick had wanted it to be special. We had both been so careful, tiptoeing around the silence in our bed and the distance that had grown between us since Michael was born. Tonight felt like a real chance to close some of that distance. Roxie and Ryan were supposed to join us for dinner and dancing because we had insisted. They had become our closest friends over the last few months. They had helped us secure our house, which had made such a huge difference in our lives. They had taken us in when we had no one else, and it had felt natural to include them. Roxie had arranged a babysitter at their place so Nicole and Michael could stay overnight and Nick and I could have the rest of the evening alone when we got home. Everything had been planned so carefully. Everything had felt possible for a few hours.

I had spent a long time in the bathroom getting ready. Longer than I usually did. The dress was the one Roxie had talked me into buying two weeks earlier. It was a short black cocktail dress that was open in the back all the way down to just above my tailbone, and the hem was three inches above my knees. The thin fabric had clung to my hips, and the neckline was lower than anything I had worn in years. When I tried it on in the store, I told Roxie it was too much and that I could never wear something like this in public; she laughed and said it was perfect, and that Nick would lose his mind the second he saw me.