“Thank you.” I wipe my nose, my eyes. “You were saying?”

“I’m sorry about General Briggs. I’ve actually said it a couple of times. I understand he trained you.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Then I was asking how you’re doing, since rumor has it you were in pretty bad shape out there, got heat exhaustion.”

“I’m fine.”

“And after that I was curious about what people call you. Kay or Doctor Scarpetta? And can we get you anything? Food? Something else to drink?”

“No thank you.”

“To which question?” He’s being flirty right in front of my husband.

Or literally behind his back.

“I don’t need anything,” I say to whoever the man is, and I don’t want to look at him.

And I don’t want him looking at me as I see myself the way he must. Wilted, my makeup gone and forgotten, my hair out of control. My deodorant stopped working hours ago, and the only scrubs I could find inside the trailer are too big. Not dressed but draped, I constantly find myself tugging at the V-neck of my salty sweat-stained shirt because if my bra strap doesn’t show, cleavage does. And while I’m used to Marino staring, I’m not so forgiving to a perfect stranger.

“Tell me your name again.” He hasn’t told me at all, and when he answers I think he’s kidding at first.

“Andrew Wyeth,” he repeats, and then I wonder if he’s making a nonsensical joke or a snide allusion to my husband’s wealthy late father, an art investor.

There were Andrew Wyeth watercolors in the Wesley house when Benton was growing up. I stare at the back of his head as he looks down at his phone, and he has no reaction to what the man next to me is saying. Benton is ignoring him. He’s ignoring all of us even as he follows our every word and intonation with the keenness of a hawk. I know it for a fact because that’s what he does.

“Just think of the painter and it’s not me,” Special Agent Wyeth says as he shakes my hand a little too long, a little too tenderly, and his humor doesn’t penetrate my smoldering mood.

I don’t want to be in this car. I don’t want to be with them, and it’s not easy when Benton has to act this way. When we’re forced to pretend we have something different with each other than we really do, it makes me feel cheated and dishonest. As if we’re having an affair again. As if I’m a home wrecker again.

Sometimes our little games make me feel alone and unsupported, convinced nothing will be handled properly unless I do it myself. That’s the way I feel now. I’m on my own.