“I’m just going to hop in the shower,” I say. “And then maybe we can think about dinner?”

I take a short, bracing shower, but for once I take the time to actually do my hair and put on a little makeup. This is the beginning, I tell myself. This is the start of a new chapter. If I’ve learned anything from the past few days, it’s that life is short and you don’t get do-overs. So now it’s time to make the most of things.

I open the bathroom door and go back into the bedroom, wrapped in my towel, glancing up at Oliver to see if he has any playful remarks to make about me being all dolled up with no clothes on. But when I look at his face it’s not playful at all. He has his head half-cupped in his hands, hiding the lower half of his face but not the expression in his eyes. It’s the expression I’ve been afraid of, except now it’s writ large and unmistakable. My mouth goes dry.

“Oliver?” I say. “Oliver, what is it?”

He clears his throat.

“I…Gillian, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Something I need to tell you.

The human body is amazing, isn’t it? The fact that those six little words can ricochet from my ear to my brain to my heart so that it’s pounding before he’s even finished the sentence.

“I…I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it.”

So it’s true, I think with a dull horror. Hannah Feldman.

I’m just another blind-wife cliché. I just thought…I thought Oliver was different. Now his eyes scan the room, looking everywhere but me.

“Gillian…you know how I asked you what you’d have done—if you were in Lorna’s shoes?”

My brain feels fuzzy. Why is he saying this? What do I care about Lorna now?

He clears his throat.

“I asked because, well, because I’m kind of in her position, you could say.”

I blink. Everything’s a fog. Is he not having an affair?

“I don’t understand,” I say, my voice sounding high and sharp, not like my own.

“I got some news last week,” he says. “I mean: Jeff got some news. That night I came home. You asked me why he’d called…I was so shell-shocked, Gill, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” I say faintly.

“Gillian, you know how Jeff and Dinah did those tests? The DNA tests?”

I stare at him. Obviously I know. The stupid voucher they gave us was what led to all this upheaval.

“Somebody,” Oliver says, “contacted Jeff on the platform.”

I wait, not getting it. Jeff found some distant relative? What’s the big deal; why is Oliver almost shaking right now?