For four years he had told himself he was the luckiest fool in the state — an aging manufacturer who had somehow been chosen by a woman like that. He had believed every soft word.

He had built the belief the way he built everything, carefully, over time, until it felt load-bearing.

Now she was standing over his deathbed telling him the truth, and the truth was that none of it had been real.

Chapter 2 — The Confession

Demi crossed to the door, opened it a few inches, glanced both ways down the corridor, and drew it firmly shut. Then she came back and looked down at him, and the face she wore now was not the one the nurses saw.

That face was drawn with worry, brave in its grief, the devoted young wife keeping vigil. This one was smooth and cool and faintly amused, as though she had finally set down something heavy she’d been carrying a long time.

“There,” she said. “No audience. Just us. Isn’t that nicer?”

He tried to answer. His throat produced only a dry rasp, a sound with no words in it. His hand moved a few inches across the blanket and stopped, too weak to do more.

“Don’t strain yourself, sweetheart.” She pulled the visitor’s chair close and sat, crossing her legs, settling in as if for a chat. “You don’t have to say anything.

For once you can just listen.”

She let the silence stretch, watching his face, enjoying it.

“Your factory,” she said at last, ticking the items off lightly, almost fondly. “Your properties. The stock, the accounts, all of it — mine. Well. Mine and Gareth’s.

We’ve already picked out a house in San Diego, right on the water. You’d hate it. Too much glass, too much sun. You always liked things dark and serious.”