A devoted wife would have found a way.”

I knew exactly where Julian was, and precisely why he could not be reached.

But I said nothing to any of them.

I let them stand in the room I had filled with lilies, drinking the coffee I had made, and pass their soft, sanctimonious judgment on the only person who had actually been there, and I said nothing at all.

I slipped the small silver key deeper into my coat pocket, and I closed my hand around it, and I endured — the way I had endured everything, for twenty years, as though endurance were the same thing as strength, when I was only just beginning to learn that sometimes it is the exact opposite.

Chapter 7 — Miami