I felt the urge to talk about her, standing there, staring, flanked by her men, but what could I say? We all knew her in vastly different capacities, but no one of us seemed to understand more than any other. We just looked at her for a long moment. Carlow put his phone back in his pocket and then turned and left the room without saying anything.

In the wake of his abrupt exit, I had the sudden terrible urge to tell James everything. I might’ve said it too—“Don’t you know he’s sleeping with her?”—if James hadn’t calmly placed his hand on the small of my back and said instead, “Come on, she’ll be fine.”

We walked upstairs together. He kept his hand on the small of my back, all the way to my bedroom door. It’s a polite little gesture, and yet a man could lead me anywhere with his hand there.

“I haven’t been in this room in a while,” he said, following me through the doorway.

I needed a distraction, and I felt interested to see where he was going with this. I was able to recognize the pattern easily enough—any time his wife was dangerously incapacitated his attention turned to me. His intentions were obvious, but it’s always amusing to see how men smooth over transitions.

I stood in the middle of the room, by the foot of the bed, as he walked around, examining the pictures on the wall, the view from my window. I didn’t feel nervous. The whole scene felt inevitable, as if I were watching a dream I’d had play out in real life. I guess I’d known it was going to happen since he’d kissed me in the hallway. I smiled when he looked at me, to let him know it was okay, and he stepped over, very close to my body. He’d been drinking too; I guessed they all had before I’d arrived. I could smell it on him, mixed with that cedar-scented aftershave or cologne.

“You’re very pretty,” he said, moving a lock of my hair away from my face. And then he said, “You know how pretty you are, don’t you? You must think about it all the time.”

I could’ve corrected him, explained that in fact I only thought about how pretty his wife was all the time, but an answer was not necessary. An answer wasn’t what he was looking for.