I watched him hear it, and I watched him understand, before I said another word, who had done the arranging — because he turned his head, slowly, toward Elke, and on his face was the particular horror of a man realizing that the person he had believed for ten years was standing right beside him and had not, in all that time, ever once looked surprised.

Chapter 8 — What He Didn’t Ask

“You,” Rhett said to her.

It was not a question.

Elke had been in that world long enough to know when a room had turned, and this one had.

But she had also built her whole life on the belief that a story told confidently enough becomes true, and she reached for that now, because it was all she had.

“Rhett, darling, listen to me,” she said, and her hand found his sleeve.