“ After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice that while all its other features changed, this one consistent feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.”

James did not know how long Cordelia had been reading: he had kept his eyes shut, his free arm flung across his face, willing himself to sleep. But sleep had not come. It seemed an impossibility. He could not stop thinking of Cordelia, though she was beside him. Of the feel of her, her heavy hair gathered in his hands, her body against his. But not just of that—memories of all their minutes together came like flashes of lightning, illuminating the darkness behind his eyes: the nights they’d spent game playing, the times they’d laughed, exchanged glances of understanding, whispered secrets. The bracelet on his wrist felt as heavy as a two-ton weight. But you love Grace, whispered the unwelcome voice at the back of his mind. You know that you do.

He pushed back against the thought. It was like pressing on a bruise, or a broken bone. He had kissed Grace that day, but the memory of it felt faded, like old parchment. Like the shadow-memory of a dream. His head throbbed, as if something hard were pressing at his temples; the voice in his mind wanted him to think of Grace, but again he pushed against it.

He thought of Daisy. He had missed her when she was gone; when he woke this morning, he had thought first of her, of laying his troubles before her so they could be shared and sorted out together. That was something more than friendship, and besides, friendship did not make you want to seize someone the moment you saw them and ravage them with kisses.

But he owed Grace. He had made promises to her for so many years. He could not recall specifically what they were, but the certainty was as real as an iron bar rammed through his heart. He had made them because he loved her. Loyalty bound him. His wrist ached where the rope crisscrossed her bracelet, sending a cold pain up his arm. You have always loved Grace, came the voice again. Love is not to be abandoned. It is not a toy to discard by the roadside.

You have never loved anyone else.

There was a soft murmur in his head. It was Daisy, reading Dickens.