Janis was scheduled for a double mastectomy, to be followed by chemo and radiation. For a private person, she’d been surprisingly open about this to everyone. She had declared that she was stepping away from all her duties at the Rocque in order to address her health. (“You won’t miss me scowling at your staff meetings unless you’re a total suck-up,” she’d told the museum’s executive committee.) I’d worked up the courage to ask to see her, and she’d invited me to her estate.

“Lucky you,” said Yegina. “Was that all, though?”

That wasn’t all. I also wanted to say how different I felt now. Not different exactly, but deeper into the self I wanted to be. The self with a purpose.

“I’m happy,” I said cautiously. “Not the giddy kind, but the real kind.”

“I can tell.” By the fragile, pained pleasure on Yegina’s face, I could see how much she’d worried for me. “What about Ray?”

Ray had left the hospital the day after his surgery, arm in a sling, and requested a medical leave from his job in North Carolina to recuperate and follow the investigation of Nelson de Wilde. We’d made a plan to catch up next week when he was in less pain; he promised he had somewhere to take me. I explained all this to Yegina.

“Anyway, we’re even now. He saved my life. I saved his.” I shrugged to cover up the waver in my voice.

“Actually, I think that makes you in enormous debt to each other,” she said with a knowing smile.

“I’d rather hear about you and Hiro,” I said.

“I said yes,” she said.

“You did?” I whooped.

The smile grew on her face.

“You set a date?” I said.

“Next December,” she said. “After the groundbreaking of the new museum.” She rose, too, and went back to the bouquet, plucking out the most wilted stems and putting the vase in the sink.

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to keep anything but joy from my voice. “I’m so thrilled for you,” I added truthfully.

I expected details, but instead she pulled the remaining lilies loose from the vase. She let water rush into the silt and dried leaves at its bottom, pushing them up, brimming over, then ran the faucet until the vase filled clear. Then she dropped the lilies gracefully back in.

“You’re waiting for the real news, aren’t you?” she said.

“Getting married is real news,” I said, then grinned. “Okay, yes.”

She put the vase back on my counter but stayed standing, like she was pitching me at a board meeting. “Promise you’ll listen to the whole thing?”

I promised.