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kitchen, where I was making coq au vin for Jim, my first effort. I’d finally been able to unpack all the wedding presents that I’d been storing at my mother’s, as Jim’s and my apartment in New York hadn’t had space for an extensive kitchen. Now my French enameled crocks and stainless steel pots gleamed, ready for use, ready to help me turn out the smells and meals of a real home. Unfortunately, my knowledge of cooking was negligible. But never mind, I was ready to learn.
    Ellie sat down at my marble café table in the breakfast room and started rooting in her oversized handbag—buttery heavy leather, expensive and scarred from use.
    “Drink?” I asked, pointing to a bottle of wine on the counter between the two rooms. I was drinking Pellegrino.
    “I’ll have what you’re having,” she said. “Remember?”
    “Oh, sorry,” I said. Rehab.
    I filled an old cut-glass water tumbler that had been my granny’s. I enjoyed these little flourishes. So many choices were up to me nowthat I had my own private world to command—from paint and paper, rugs and light fixtures, to the glass I served a guest in. It was part of why I’d convinced Jim to come back. For just a moment I was proud of what I was starting to form.
    “Do you mind?” Ellie asked, pulling out a silver cigarette case engraved with her scrolling monogram and a matching lighter. She must have seen the horrified look on my face because she opened a window, pulled a chair next to it, and sat down. “I’ll blow straight out the window. You won’t even smell it.”
    “Ell …,” I said.
    But she was already lighting up. “You’ll see. I’ll put it out if it bothers you.”
    This is how it had been since we were girls. From eating the last cupcake, to borrowing your favorite bracelet without asking, to raiding your parents’ liquor cabinet to your certain punishment—there was no stopping Ellie. You could object, but she went right along and did what she liked anyway. It was a trade-off I was used to. Most everyone was. In exchange, when you were around her she gave you a feeling that she’d just come from a party, exciting things were just around the corner, and she’d be taking you with her wherever she was headed next. Ellie was always at the center of things, and when you were with her, you were too.
    She lit her smoke and as she exhaled the smell brought the clearest memory of driving with her in her mother’s Saab, listening to Morrissey sing, passing red-label Dunhills and lipsticks back and forth between us. I must have been in high school, she in college, as we headed to a party in the woods or a tennis game at the country club with older boys, popular boys, on a crystalline day driving into our limitless futures. She’d exercised a sisterly affection over me as she watched that I didn’t drink too much or made sure I was paired with the boy I was interested in for mixed doubles. The smell of her smoke, that faint taste—it flavored my fondest memories of our friendship.
    I brought her an old saucer to use as an ashtray and went back to washing mushrooms in the sink. We chatted about our mothers, Jim,and the pregnancy. I avoided the topic of the divorce, figuring she’d bring it up if she wanted to talk about it. She smoked and drank the rest of the Pellegrino before she came to the point of her visit.
    “Tell me about Randall Leforte,” she said. “I’ve never seen him before last night.”
    “Is your divorce final?” I said, moving to a cutting board to start chopping.
    I’d meant this lightly, as a joke, but she winced. “Good garden seed,” she said, exposing her Cleveland roots with that turn of phrase. “Yes.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I really am.”
    “Thanks,” she said, waving smoke out the window as if waving the matter away.
    “You interested?” I asked. “In Leforte?”
    “I might be.”
    Post-college, when I’d lived in New York, I’d often gone out with Ellie, and I was used to her predatory