I lean toward carelessness, in the end, because carelessness was the truest thing about him.

He was meticulous about the parts of the plan that protected Beckett — the cameras, the payment, the alibi of the devoted husband — and careless about everything that was only about me.

It would not have occurred to him that lilies meant anything, because I did not mean anything; I was a step in a process, an obstacle to be cleared, and you do not think about the feelings of an obstacle.

So he stood there beaming over an armful of funeral flowers, pleased with himself for the gesture, and never once felt the horror of it, because the horror required seeing me as a person who could be horrified, and he had stopped doing that a long time ago.