“I haven’t been sleeping.”

“You worry too much.”

“Perhaps.”

The chef served dinner and left, as instructed. Vanessa spoke about wedding venues, honeymoon destinations, and a house she wanted to buy in California.

Graham watched her with an unfamiliar calm. He had expected rage. Instead he felt grief for the man who had loved her — the man who’d believed her tenderness was private and real, who’d read her ambition as strength and her obsession with appearances as discipline.

Now every memory seemed contaminated.