"No." Lauren shook her head slowly. "No, he didn't tell me that."
They looked at each other across the table. Outside, a snowplow went by on Elm Street, scraping, its yellow light pulsing across the kitchen ceiling.
"I want to know what happened," Renée said. "I have his version. I want yours. I'm not here to scream at you. I'm not here to make a scene. I have a six-year-old who thinks she broke something, and I need to know exactly what it is she thinks she broke."
Lauren was quiet for a long moment. She turned her mug around and around on the table.
"Did he tell you I kissed him?" she said finally.
Renée didn't answer.
"He did." Lauren nodded to herself, a small bitter nod. "Of course he did. That's—okay. That's fair, maybe. I don't even know anymore. I'd had two glasses of wine and I hadn't eaten anything all day because I'd been at the hospice since six in the morning." She looked up. "I put my head on his shoulder. I did that. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. And he put his arm around me and he said, 'Happy birthday, Laur,' and he kissed my hair. And then I looked up. And then—I honestly couldn't tell you who moved first. I've thought about it every night since. I don't know. I think it was both of us. I think we both just—fell into it."
Renée held her coffee mug in both hands and felt its heat against her palms and did not move.
"I'm not saying that to make it worse," Lauren said. "I'm saying it because you came all the way out here, and you deserve to have somebody tell you the truth instead of the version where they look best. I came over to your house three times while you were at work. I knew you were at work. He told me which nights. I told myself it was nothing, that we were old friends, that he was just being kind because my dad was dying. But I wore that sweater on the third night. I wore those shoes. I told myself it was for a Zoom party I wasn't even going to log into. I knew what I was doing. I didn't know how far I would let it go, but I knew what I was doing."
She stopped. Her chin was trembling.
"Why?" Renée said.