Emily looked around. They hadn’t attracted any attention yet, but she was worried that they would. “Why don’t we go up to our room to talk about this,” she said. She didn’t want them to be the postparty hospital gossip. Besides, their bags were already upstairs, and she wouldn’t mind getting out of her heels. Getting out of this whole party that she hadn’t wanted to attend to begin with. To their left, Ezra’s parents were chatting with the head of cardiology and her wife. Emily wondered if it was about her piano playing or about something else entirely. She caught her mother-in-law’s eye and pointed toward the door. Dr. Gold nodded.

“Fine,” Ezra said, putting his hand on Emily’s back to steer her out of the ballroom, Emily grabbing a handful of her dress so she wouldn’t trip.

When they got into the empty elevator, he started up the conversation again. “You were in a band?”

Emily nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I was in a band for a few months. I played piano and sang. Then I fell out of a tree house, broke my hand, and eventually stopped doing both.”

The elevator opened onto their floor. They were silent again, walking down the hallway, until Ezra opened their hotel room door. Neither one of them noticed the elegant decor or the chocolate truffles left next to each side of the bed.

“What were you doing in a tree house when you were twenty?”

Emily closed her eyes. She’d never told anyone this story after she told it to Dr. West thirteen years ago. It was still painful. All of it. She did her best to work through it, get past it, and then lock it away. She knew it was part of what made her the person she was, but it felt private—and, if she was honest with herself, she still felt ashamed of how she’d acted then. She blamed herself for so much.

“What were you doing in that tree house?” Ezra asked, sitting down on the side of the bed.

“What happened at work today?” Emily asked him, stalling—and also wondering if dealing with that first might defuse whatever was going on with him now. “Hala mentioned something . . . and it actually made me feel pretty bad not to know what she was talking about. I had to pretend.”

Ezra took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then he put them back on and said, “You first.”