Dear Antonio Jorge Romero, I read. You don’t know me . . . Dear Maddy, Naturally I was very, very surprised . . . I flipped through the pages, scanning. I’m not sure what I should call you . . . As a scientist I am gravely concerned . . . Do you always email me from work? You can never trust an English summer . . .

I replaced the pages and closed the folder. Kneeling on the mattress, I slipped it back down between the bed and the wall. I stood on Maddy’s rug, shame thumping its way through me. I could walk away. Pretend I’d never come in. Forget what I’d seen. Instead I rushed to the bed, snatched the folder from the crevice, and holding it in front of me like a shield, made my way downstairs, calling for Robin.

•  •  •

He sat on the piano bench, swiveled around to face me. His sand-colored hair was still springy enough to do a convincing comb back; its thinness was visible only from above. Another five years, if we lasted that long, he would join the rest of the domed population. He’d fare better than most because he had so little vanity and such a characterful face. He read the two pages I handed over and whistled through his teeth, waiting for me to come to him.

“I’m going back to the lake. I need to be alone,” I said. “I need to think.”

Our intimate life had pretty much ground to a halt once Maddy fell sick. There were times, when she was at church with my parents, or at Jack’s, when we managed it, generating a precarious hope that lasted for days. But mostly I couldn’t bear to indulge in the comedy of sex; I couldn’t stand joy.

Robin reached for my hands and swung them. “Can’t you think with me? I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”

I whipped my head side to side.

Robin let go of me and stretched his arms out, tinkering behind his back with the highest and lowest keys. When he’d moved in with his Boston upright, we’d demoted the old piano Maddy had learned on to the basement. Her lessons had dropped off by that time, and once she was ill, she had no interest in practicing, or in acquiring knowledge about music or composers. She wanted to go to concerts and to lean forward, carving out with her shoulders a private space to remove herself to. She hushed me if I tried to speak to her. To the music itself she gave a hungry attention I could only observe from the corner of my eye, shut out of her world and sick with pity and fear.

“You don’t have to hide away, Eve.”

“Maddy wrote to him for months and I never knew! She never told me.”