Chapter 2

The guest room became Diana's before her first suitcase arrived.

Apparently a burst pipe had damaged her apartment. Vincent told the housekeeper to prepare the east suite and told me the Arden family had always stood beside his.

I wasn't sure where a wife was supposed to stand in that arrangement.

Within days, Diana's shoes lined the back stairs. Her friends drank on the terrace. The cook asked her what she wanted for supper before remembering to ask me.

One evening I went downstairs for a glass of water and found them studying plans beneath the library lamps.

"We're redesigning my music room," Diana explained. "Come and give us an opinion."

"I have microscopy results to review."

"Of course you do." She tapped a calculation on the plan. "Vincent always did my numbers for me. Remember our entrance exams?"

"Your arithmetic was criminal."

"And yours wasn't?"

He laughed. "Mine at least made money."

They had an entire language made from years I hadn't lived with them. I took my water upstairs.

Vincent followed much later.

I was sitting against the headboard with my laptop open when he loosened his tie and leaned over me.

"You're wearing yourself out."

His thumb moved across the back of my neck. I hated the relief that passed through me. A little attention, and four years of waiting offered themselves again.

He closed the laptop. I let him kiss me.

Then nausea rose so suddenly that I pushed him back and covered my mouth.

"What's wrong?"

It passed before I could answer.

"Something from the campus café."

I had taken my contraceptive pill every morning, even during the stomach illness that had ruined a week of experiments in February. Pregnancy wasn't an explanation I allowed myself to consider. Diana's perfume on his collar seemed explanation enough.

He reached for me again.

Downstairs, glass shattered.

"Vincent?" Diana called. "Please come down. I think someone opened the terrace door."

He was off the bed in an instant. His pistol came out of the bedside drawer.

"Lock this behind me."

A maid had dropped a serving bowl. There was no intruder. I learned that from the housekeeper the next morning, because Vincent didn't return until I had stopped listening for him.

At breakfast he was reading the papers I had left beside the coffee machine.

My application papers.

"A four-year fellowship?" He turned a page. "The Aster Institute. Austria."

I made myself reach for a cup before answering.

"A colleague wanted a second opinion on the application."

"Innsbruck," he read. "You wouldn't last a winter. You hate the cold."

Two years earlier, I had saved for a weekend in the mountains because I wanted us to see the first snowfall together. Vincent had spent most of it in a hotel conference room, arguing about customs seizures. I watched the snow from our window alone.

"Do I?" I asked.

He looked up.

"If you want a laboratory, I'll give you one. Romano Health needs a research director. There's no reason to go begging strangers for a position."

There it was: an entire career, purchased before he had asked what I studied.

Diana swept into the room in a borrowed silk robe.

"The port contracts are ready," she told him. "Your lawyers are waiting."

He laid down the application.

"We'll finish this later."

After they left, I pulled the pages toward me. The question about marital status was still blank. By the start date, the solicitor had assured me, the answer would have changed.

I entered the answer that would be true when I arrived.

Single.