Grace broke up with me on my last trip to visit her, in late October 2014. We were starting our first year of study at universities a state apart. I drove the 400 miles between us on short notice, because I made a mistake. I failed to stop one of the women I worked with from tagging me in a photo. We didn’t pose together. Her photo just captured me in the background. I told Grace over the phone that it was nothing and she said “oh, yeah, of course, nothing” in a tone that meant it was something, and that she was logging any attempt to persuade her otherwise on a list of charges to prosecute at a later date. So there I was, driving west.
When I stopped to get gas she called. She asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, love. I’m just filling up.”
“Okay. I saw your location stopped moving.”
“Just filling up, love.”
“Your car usually gets good mileage.”
I knew where she was going—she wanted to know if I was alone—but I had to play along until I could assuage her suspicion by answering a stated question. If I came right out and reassured her, she’d’ve seen it as defensive, and that was hard to backtrack from. “Reasonable mileage.”