Robin’s arms were clamped to his chest. He was scanning my face as if he’d never seen it before. Is this how the end comes? Misdeeds on every side, a souvenir in the wrong place, fury in search of a worthwhile cause? Calamity breeds calamity. Another one could happen just like that, and no one would be much surprised, least of all me.

“Go to London,” he jeered. “Go back to the lake. Go see your ex. Do what you have to do. I’ll be here. I’ll take whatever you dish out—” His scornful tone was so unlike him, and so closely matched my own, that I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. He swatted the air with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what you did over there. I can guess.”

I found the table’s edge and held on to it to get the spinning room under control. I felt like someone coming out of a fever dream. “Nothing,” I said meekly.

“Nothing!” He bit off the word. “I’m the one who did nothing! Not that I wasn’t tempted.”

“I promise you—”

A warning palm. Come no closer. “You know what the problem is, Eve? The problem is you.”

Barely above a whisper, I said: “So am I wrong?”

“You think you’re the only one who lost someone?” His arms locked again over his chest. “You think you’re the only one who misses her? It’s all about you. You’re incapable of seeing anyone else. You don’t care about anyone else. The problem is you.”

I asked it again, as though an answer to this one question would fix everything: “So I’m wrong?”

He gave me a look of such derision that it was hard to imagine he had ever loved me. I knew then without a doubt that whatever the truth was, whatever had happened or not happened in my absence, I was the one who was wrong, profoundly, grotesquely, irreversibly wrong. Loyalty to Robin had not stopped me from seducing Antonio. I had stopped because of Maddy. I had been prepared all along to sacrifice Robin, though in my arrogance I never believed it would be necessary. He was right. I was wrong. Wrong to the core, wrong at the cellular level, the kind of wrong that brought about disaster and ushered in ruin even as I protested my innocence. Maddy’s death had stripped off the veneer and exposed what was really there: cheap, second-rate, nasty.

“Find a handyman,” said Robin. “Get yourself a babysitter. It’s not going to be me.” Sucking the air like someone about to weep, he quit the room without looking back and I did not dare try to stop him.

•  •  •