I set my hand flat on the cold surface of the desk.

I had heard Ferdinand’s voice say a great many things over eight years — tender things, early on, and then cool ones, and then contemptuous ones.

But I had never heard the voice on that recording before.

It was not the voice of a man in the heat of an affair, or the careless cruelty of a husband who’s stopped trying.

It was calm.

Businesslike.