Eve’s entire bearing crumbled in a thunderstruck instant. She took a graceless step backwards, hitting the closed bedroom door as though Keegan had physically pushed her. She pressed her back against the door then, like she needed it to keep her footing. “What did you say?” she said, her heartbeat somehow sounding in her voice.

Keegan crossed his arms and willed himself cold. “Judging by your reaction, you heard me just fine,” he said. There was ice in his voice, and he didn’t much like it—but what did tone matter now? What did anything matter?

Eve felt her way over to the bed like a blind woman. She sat down hard, inelegantly, knees buckling. She began to sob, hard and heedlessly, gulping for air.

Keegan, still by the window, was caught up short. How could this be an act? For a few paralyzed seconds, he watched her sob convulsively. It was raw and unflattering, utterly convincing. Her emotion seemed to surge up from some deep, secret fissure inside her.

Warily, Keegan went over and sat beside her on the bed. He took one of her hands from her lap and squeezed it. It was cooler and drier than Keegan’s own. She fell against him, her head on his shoulder, shuddering. Keegan felt called upon to do something, but what? This was the kind of fraught moment that required a finesse Keegan simply lacked. It was the kind of moment that had doomed his brief marriage. He put his arm around her shoulder, clumsily, and felt her small body heave against him.

He sat with Eve that way a few long minutes until her crying subsided, and she took a few steadying gulps of air. He got up and fetched her a couple of white handkerchiefs from the top drawer of his dresser and sat beside her again while she used them. When she was done, she leaned against him and pressed her damp face to his shoulder. He put his arm around her again.

“Oh, Jim,” she said. “I try to hold myself together, but you have no idea what an unholy mess I am.”

“Tell me,” he said. He pulled her closer and put both his arms around her.

She pressed the side of her head against his chest. He could smell that lavender shampoo again.

“The man they found in the Bay was my lover,” she said. Her voice cracking on that final word, as though saying it tore something out of her. “His name was Merrill. Merrill Newsome.” She sagged against him, and he held her tighter. “We were going to marry,” she said. “But we had to keep it a secret. I suppose I didn’t want to upset my mother, sick as she was.” She sighed. “It sounds ghoulish, but it was only a matter of time before she’d be gone, and we’d be free to do as we pleased.”