Simon Reamer, Clare Collins’s husband and literary agent, sat at their kitchen table listening to his wife’s voice echo through the hallways of their massive home. Think, think, think, he pleaded with his brain to come up with an acceptable excuse that she would believe. Because if she knew he had unplugged their modem to keep her from reading the New York Times Book Review—she would kill him.

“Simon!”

“In here!” he called back, his eyes closed, dreading the whole rest of this Sunday.

He couldn’t keep it from her forever. He had slipped from their bed while it was still dark out, long before her alarm was set to go off, careful to take Charlie from his dog bed with him so the six-month-old Maltese wouldn’t wake her. He had a bad feeling about this book. He needed to see for himself before Clare did.

With the puppy curled on his lap, Simon had pulled up the review section prepared to scan for the write-up of Clare’s latest release, If You Knew Her. He didn’t need to hunt for it; If You Knew Her was this week’s lead title.

With one hand resting on Charlie’s soft head, he scrolled down the page as his eyes raced over the recent National Book Award-winner, Donna Mehan’s, scathing takedown of Clare’s book. He finally reached its painful final conclusion, “Collins seems to have lost her footing, or perhaps worse, taken on characters and subjects beyond her ability to effectively convey.” Simon sat back in his leather office chair and tilted his head back, eyes focused on the ceiling above him where his wife, and client, still slept, blissfully unaware of this public fallout.

She would hide it, even from him—but this was going to devastate her.

Without thinking, Simon stood up with Charlie cradled in his arms, opened the cabinet on the wall, and pulled the plug on the modem. “Come on, Charlie, let’s get you outside.”

“Simon,” Clare said again, arriving at the entrance to the kitchen still in her midnight-blue satin pajama set with the matching robe cinched tight around her waist. Her hair, not yet brushed, hung over her shoulders just past her breasts.

Before they had gotten married, he had wondered if his amazement about this woman would eventually fade—if waking up to her every day for a lifetime might become commonplace. From his place at the kitchen table, his coffee still steaming, his toast now cold, he looked up into her frustrated expression. It had been fourteen years since he met her and six since their wedding day—she still devastated him. His chest tight with fear, he looked into her dark brown eyes.

“Yes? What’s up?”

Her eyes flew wide with irritation. “Didn’t you hear me? The internet! It’s down!”