The reservation had been made three weeks ago.
Sophia had called the restaurant herself — not their usual place, somewhere new.
A table by the window.
Champagne on arrival.
She had even described the occasion to the hostess, who had said *how romantic* in a voice that made Sophia smile at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror.
That was three weeks ago.
She was still smiling.
The penthouse smelled of garlic and white wine.
She had cooked.
That was the first surprise — Andrew always said her cooking was the one luxury he never wanted to give up, back when luxury was a word they used as a joke.
Back when they ate on the floor of a half-furnished apartment and called it a picnic.
She had wanted to give him that tonight.
A memory wrapped inside a present.
The table was set with candles she’d carried home in a paper bag on the subway, because somehow that felt more honest than having them delivered.
Two plates.
Two glasses.
A card she had rewritten four times, each draft more embarrassing than the last, until she settled on something simple:
*Five years.
Every single one of them — yes.*
She had folded it and placed it against his glass and stepped back and looked at the whole thing and felt, for a moment, entirely certain of her life.
That was at six o’clock.
By eight, the candles had burned a quarter of the way down.
Sophia stood at the kitchen counter with a dish towel in her hands that she was no longer using, watching the wax drip.
Her phone was face-up on the counter.
No messages.
She refreshed it once.
Twice.
Set it down again.
At eight-seventeen she heard the elevator.
She straightened.
Touched her hair.
She had worn the blue dress — the one from their second anniversary, the dress he had once pressed his face against her shoulder and said *you smell like everything good* — and she crossed to the edge of the kitchen, and waited, smiled, and listened to the elevator doors open.
And then she heard a second pair of footsteps.
A woman’s laugh.
Familiar in a way that took three full seconds to place — three seconds in which Sophia’s smile stayed exactly where it was, suspended, waiting for her mind to catch up with what her body already knew.
The candles went on burning.
*Five years.
Every single one of them — yes.*
The card leaned against his empty glass.