New York, 2018

It was not where I thought I'd find myself on my forty-fifth birthday. I imagined I'd be sitting on some tropical beach with a cold drink in my hand, maybe with a pink umbrella to complete the cliché. Perhaps gazing at a crystal-clear sea, with Don sitting next to me. But that's not how life turned out.

As it happened, I almost forgot it was my birthday, as I sat on the bleachers in a large sports center, watching a fencing competition.

It was nearly the end of the bout and I was trying to stop myself from biting my nails. I certainly wasn't going to shout random things in Jen's direction, like some of the other parents did, embarrassing their kids in the process. What did I know about fencing, anyway? I only knew that it changed my daughter's life. That from an awkward preteen she turned into a confident, kickass teenage girl wielding a sword with such confidence, as if she'd been doing it since the day she was born. It helped that she was a left-hander, just like Noah, her coach.

"This is actually a slight advantage, Mom," she explained to me a week ago. "Noah says that because there are not as many left-handed fencers, when I fence a right-handed person, they can often be caught off-guard. It's because they are not as used to fencing someone left-handed, the hits are kind of different. But you know what?" she asked with a wide smile.

"What?" I had to ask.

"I discovered that I can actually fence with both hands!" she said triumphantly, as if she'd just announced that she discovered a new planet.

That was Jen, always living life to the fullest. I knew that if she continued like that, she was highly likely to get where she wanted in life — wherever that may be.

Now Jen was in the lead with 13 touches — the other fencer had only 11, but the bout was far from over. She still had two points to go if she were to win, and those two points were far from certain. Her opponent was a thin, tall brunette, an excellent fencer. Her coach yelled instructions at her, which she surely could not hear under the fencing mask, in the heat of the bout. The coach wasn't even supposed to be talking to her during the match — only during the breaks, but the referee did not call him out on it.

On Jen's side of the strip Noah stood silently, brooding, his fists clenched. He was not the yelling type. I watched him bite his nails at the end of the strip, his face dark and serious.

I tried to push our last conversation to the back of my mind and focus on the bout. I knew he was doing his best to help Jen win, despite the fact her mother had just dumped him a couple of weeks before.

Well, I didn't really dump him as such — how could I? My heart ached for him, or because of him, I wasn't sure which one was more accurate. Even my body ached for his touch. But somehow, I still don't know exactly how it happened, Don made me feel obliged — for the sake of the children if nothing else — to give him another chance.

Don just freaked out on me when I came to get Tom and Jen from his place after my solo trip to France, over a month ago. I went to Paris for some work meetings with French publishers who were considering purchasing the translation rights to some of the books we were about to publish. Then I continued to the Pays de Gex, near Geneva, a place I'd never even heard of a few months back. The Pays de Gex was the backdrop of some strange visions I had — for lack of a better description. That was where I've seen something, several things, that could have perhaps been glimpses of past lives, or maybe they were just my overactive imagination. One way or another, these were experiences I had during hypnotherapy sessions following my personal difficulties, insomnia, and anxieties — all a result of my separation from Don after twenty years of marriage.

But Don didn't see it like that; he wouldn't understand even if I found the words and the courage to tell him that I went to see a hypnotherapist. And not only that I went to see a hypnotherapist — I also had experiences and dreams I could not explain. It started with visions of a French girl living in a small village at the foothills of the Jura Mountains in the eighteenth century. It continued with visions of an African medicine man trying to save the young men in his village from a destiny of slavery, sometime around the fifteenth century.

I had visions and dreams I could not completely understand; I could not explain them to myself, certainly not to Don. Don knew me as a down-to-earth person, not as someone who believed in past lives, spiritual visioning, dreams that had meaning or any of that kind of stuff.

Then he completely lost it.

"Who did you go with?" he asked in a harsh voice that very quickly turned sheepish when I stared at him disbelievingly.

"That's not really your business anymore," I said. "You've got Claudette, remember?"

He'd been shacked up with skinny Claudette for nearly a year now, ever since we separated.

"She is not the reason for our separation," he said, and I was shocked to notice tears in his eyes as he sat across from me in a small restaurant in the Village a couple of days later. I could not recall when I ever saw tears in his eyes — maybe right after the birth of our first baby, Tom — but that was over sixteen years ago now. And if he had had tears in his eyes on other occasions in the past, they certainly had nothing to do with me, or with our separation.

"We decided to separate for other reasons," he sniffled.

"But we said we'd just try it out," I reminded him. "We said we just needed some space from each other, to see how it feels. What was the rush to move in with Claudette?"

He looked at me with puppy eyes.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess it was a mistake."

My throat suddenly felt dry. I took a small sip from my wineglass.

"A big one," I said.

"I know."

There was a long pause.

"Think about the kids," he said. "We owe it to them to try again."

Emotional blackmail was never a thing he'd done well, I thought.

"That's not fair," I said. "You didn't think about Tom and Jen when you started a new life, did you? They're kind of used to it now. And so am I."

He leaned forward across the table and took my hand in his.

"Amelia, I know I messed up. I really do. Will you please let me try and fix it?"

I don't know why, I have really no idea why, but I said, "Maybe."

And then, a couple of days later, I called Noah.

"We need to talk," I said. But he knew. Somehow, he already knew.

"Do you want to meet up or do you just want to say it on the phone?" he asked in that mechanical voice he had when he didn't quite know how he was supposed to react to something.

"Don asked me to give him another chance," I said.

He didn't say anything, but I could sense him holding his breath on the other end of the line.

"I am sorry," I said. "So sorry, but we kind of owe it to Jen and Tom to try. At least to try."

Noah still didn't speak.

"Say something," I begged. "Anything."

I felt a dull pain in the pit of my stomach, and then — not sure why — a small hope. A small hope that Noah would try to object, disagree, convince, argue. That he'd say, Don't go back to Don. Stay with me. We can make it work.

But he didn't say...