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Jenn, with all the Mercer folks. (All of them but Dean. Damn. That was another warning sign—we hadn’t hung out together with the theater crowd in…months.)
    I was pretty sure that Linda had been the one to e-mail first the past dozen times we’d corresponded. Her last message had arrived nearly three weeks ago, and it was still sitting in my inbox. I could hardly break my silence now, just to tell her that my life was collapsing all around me. “Hey, Li—haven’t bothered to get in touch for ages because I thought I was too cool, but now that I need you, here I am.” Uh-huh. Great way to be a friend.
    My parents were in San Diego, three thousand miles away. Even if they’d been an easy five-minute walk, though, I still wouldn’t have called them. We’d fought too many times over the past five years—first, about my being an undergraduate English major, then about my going to Yale Drama. They had hit the roof when I’d chosen the obscure discipline of dramaturgy. Note to self: Insert long, boring story about how I’d tried to bury the hatchet two years before, traveling all the way across country for the extravagant sixtieth birthday party that my mother threw for my father. Insert longer, more boring story about how Dean had been an ass for the entire week we’d visited, repeatedly offending my effusive mother with his stand-offishness. Yeah. I wasn’t going to reach out to Mom and Dad, to confirm their worst suspicions about Dean.
    That left my grandfather, Pop-pop. Pop-pop who had always had faith in me. Pop-pop who had always placed my happiness above more common definitions of success. Pop-pop who had given me my graduation money—money that I’d lost because I’d been stupid and naive and trusting.
    “Hi, Pop-pop,” I would say. “Becca here. I’m just calling to tell you that Dean is a lying, cheating bastard who has probably been plotting how to bankrupt me and the theater for the entire time I’ve been shacking up with him.”
    Yeah, not so much. I wasn’t going to tell my grandfather what had happened. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
    At least I had three hundred dollars in my wallet—thank God I’d stopped at an ATM on Sunday morning. Money Miser Dean had always advised me to take out the most I could at any one time; we could save on service fees that way. Knowing that my grandfather’s gift would easily cover my immediate need for cash, I’d taken my stack of twenties with confidence. Such a luxury, that security. I hadn’t even bothered to count the bills.
    I’d actually been proud about how well I was managing my life.
    That was before I was broke. And homeless. And totally, completely alone.
    The bastard. I turned toward my bulletin board, ready to rip down everything that reminded me of Dean—every note he’d ever left me, every card he’d ever given me for my birthday or just because, every menu from every meal we’d shared since I’d started at the Mercer.
    Well. That was easy. There wasn’t anything there. There wasn’t any record of good times together, of shared casual fun. The chaos on my bulletin board was from me, from my life, from my friends and coworkers. But not from the man I’d thought I’d loved.
    Huh. What exactly had been going on for the past six months? What lies had I been telling myself, to make our happy, happy home life seem real? Just how much of an idiot was I?
    I didn’t have time for self-pity, though, or self-examination either. I had to make a plan. The police were going to finish their investigation of the apartment soon enough—a week or two, the precise date didn’t really matter. Even when I was allowed back into my home, I knew I couldn’t afford to live there on my own. It had been a stretch for the two of us, with Dean’s salary, which was half again as much as mine. Unless he’d lied about that. Maybe he’d been earning even more, salting away the difference in some hidden bank account.
    Jackass.
    It didn’t matter. Not now. Not