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was the last time we’d even had sex?
    Now, I was really going to be sick. I couldn’t remember a day, a night, not even a general sense of what had happened, when it had been. Dean was always too tired. He’d brush a kiss somewhere in the general direction of my cheek, tell me to sleep tight. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even bother getting up from his desk chair; he was too drawn to his spreadsheets, his graphics, whatever computer files he’d brought home from work, so that he could manage the Mercer’s funds late into the night.
    But Dean wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. He loved me. He had pushed me to come to the Mercer. He had insisted that I move into his apartment. I had to be making mountains out of molehills. I had to be tempting myself with little lies of disaster, testing my tolerance, like a child watching a horror movie between stiff fingers covering her face.
    Dean had to love me. For three and a half years, he’d always said he loved me. I would have known if he’d stopped loving me.
    My fingers were shaking so badly that it took me three tries to type in my password on the bank’s Web site. I clicked on the cheerful green square that said, “Check balance.”
    Zero.
    I must have made some mistake. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it in my ears. I caught my lower lip between my teeth and navigated back to the home page. My eyes blurred as I clicked on the green square again. “Check balance.”
    Still zero.
    He’d cleared me out.
    Dean Marcus—the love of my life, my theatrical inspiration, my mentor, my love—Dean had taken every last cent in our joint bank account. Including the graduation gift from my grandfather. Including six months of my Mercer paychecks. Including every penny I’d ever saved.
    Three and a half million dollars stolen from the theater, and he’d still felt the need to ruin me as well.
    I folded my arms around my belly, rocking back and forth as if the motion could somehow comfort me. My chair squeaked in rhythm with my movement, but I didn’t care. I didn’t think anyone could hear through my closed office door. And if they did? If they were annoyed? Well, they could just get over it.
    It wasn’t like anyone was going to seek me out, not until the police moved in, to complete their investigation. I knew the way that gossip spread around the Mercer. Within seconds of the board meeting’s end, someone would have started to whisper in the halls. That always happened—no matter how often people were sworn to secrecy, no matter how dire the threats to keep matters confidential. By now, the rumors had probably spawned on ShowTalk, in some discussion group newly created, just for this scandal.
    I knew the score. After all, I was part of the theater community. I fed on drama, just like the rest of them, just like all of my peers.
    I thought about who I could call. There were at least three dozen Yale alums within a three-mile radius. But a lot of them knew Dean. A lot of them had known Dean and me, as a couple. Truth be told, a lot of them had hinted that we might not be a match made in heaven. I could remember a lot of those conversations—every time, I had responded with a smile, a laugh. I had explained that Dean’s passion for perfection, his calm, logical, orderly approach to the chaotic world of theater, his ability to be a rock as I tossed around in the often crazy ocean of a professional artist, all of that kept me sane. He was two years older than I was. Older and wiser. Opposites attract.
    Well, he’d pretty much proven himself to be an asshole. So what did that make me now? A saint? Somehow, I didn’t think my Yale classmates would see things that way.
    My college roommate, Linda, was halfway across the country, in Chicago. I’d been ignoring her, though—not on purpose, just by accident. There were too many nights when I came home from rehearsal, from grabbing a couple of drinks with the cast, from long, invigorating conversations with Hal, with