“There’s weather coming.” He smiled, sure it was the empty threat of a dependent wife, and turned on his heel.

He could not have imagined what was already in motion, because for three years he had never once been curious about me — and incuriosity, it turns out, is a very expensive habit.

But the thing I noticed most in that room was smaller than the threat, and more important.

It was Dorothea’s sentence — you will not speak to her directly again — and the way my whole body loosened when she said it.

For three years every conversation with Zane had been a negotiation I entered already braced, already calculating how to phrase a thing so it wouldn’t set him off, already tired before it began.

And here was a woman in a charcoal suit simply closing that channel, telling him he no longer had the right to speak into my ear whenever he pleased.