And I felt, looking at him, no anger at all, which surprised me.

I felt only a kind of vast, quiet distance, as though I were looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, a small man very far away.

“Ten minutes, Luca,” I said.

And I stepped past him, through the front door, into my home.

“Pack your bags.

This house has no room for a leech.” I gave him his mistress’s words back, gently, on my way inside, and I did not stay to watch his face receive them.

Chapter 13 — Six Months Later