Mark insisted his feelings were real.
Claire answered, “Maybe yours were. But I fell in love with someone who didn’t exist.”
She returned the ring and told him not to contact her again.
I felt no rush of victory.
I remembered Claire looking at that ring, believing it represented her future.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
“So am I.”
Before hanging up, she said, “I thought he was brave for loving again after losing you. He wasn’t even brave enough to tell us the truth.”
Late that summer, Ben called.
Mark had been asking the guys about another fishing trip.
Nobody wanted to go with him.
Ben explained that he’d told the others everything, including Mark’s claim that I was dead.
They’d confronted Mark together.
Instead of apologizing, Mark argued that his private life shouldn’t affect their friendship.
“We trusted him,” Ben told me. “And he used that trust to make fools of us.”
