Chapter 1 — The Grounded Flight

The storm did what my husband’s assurances never could: it told me the truth.

I was supposed to be in the air over the Rockies, bound for a two-day conference in Salt Lake City, when a late-season blizzard rolling down off the Front Range grounded every outbound flight at Denver International.

Desmond thought I was gone until Thursday.

He had told me, that morning, that he’d be fifty miles south in Colorado Springs, closing the final clauses on a commercial acquisition, and I had kissed his cheek and believed him, because eleven years of marriage teaches you to believe a man by reflex.

Chapter 2 — The Truffles

I did not call to tell him the flight was scrubbed.

I don’t know exactly why.

A small instinct, the kind you can’t explain until later, when it turns out to have been the only part of you still paying attention.

I had a car take me back up the winding foothill road to our house, and on the way I stopped for a velvet box of the imported caramel truffles Desmond loves — a peace offering for the two days I’d have been gone, or maybe just a habit of tending a marriage I still thought I had.

The house was dark when I came in through the side door, snow melting off my coat onto the slate floor.

And from the top of the stairs, from the direction of our bedroom, came a sound that did not belong to an empty house.

A soft, breathless laugh.

A woman’s.

Chapter 3 — The Arctic Calm

I did not scream.

I want to be honest about that, because it surprised even me.

Something in me went very cold and very quiet, the way a lake goes still under ice.