I keep thinking this, like a mantra. It should be me.

Seven years ago, crossing the Atlantic, I imagined myself sinking beneath the waves, my body sliding past the great gleaming hull, sucked into the froth. But this feels different. This feels like running toward instead of away.

Maybe it’s just my way of pretending I have any control over this at all.

Once the great front door is shut behind me, I let my voice spill into the void. “Hugh?”

“Here.”

He answers more quickly than I’d expected. He’s on the ground floor, not upstairs after all. I’d been imagining his silhouette lurking behind the bay window curtains this whole time. There go my infallible instincts again.

I find him in the old leather armchair in the sitting room, his hands resting on his knees. He stares at his open palms as I come around the corner, fingers opening and closing, over and over.

“How many?” he asks, not looking up.

“Four.” I’m surprised he doesn’t know. How ridiculous, that I’m the one staying on top of all this. “You saw—”

“Avery, yes, I was just hoping there would have been more by now.”

“Hoping.”

He stares at me like I’m a stranger. “Of course. To lessen the odds.”

I turn away as the air is sucked from my chest. The silence between us grows roots and tendrils.

I think of the pictures upstairs. His mother. His friend. All the other silences between us.

I think of that great leather-bound book.

“What do the red dots mean, Hugh?” I address the question to the curved banister of the stairway, knowing that if I look at my husband, as angry as I feel right now, I still might not have the courage to ask it. “And the crosses?”

I hear him behind me, his foot tapping against the wooden floor. He doesn’t answer.

“The Xs,” I clarify.

“I know what you mean.” His voice is bone dry. “I am only trying to process the fact that you’ve been in my study, looking through my ledgers. How long have you been wondering, Nina? And you’re only just now asking me.”

Now I turn, forcing myself to look at him.

“What do they mean?” My throat is tight, but I push myself on. If all of this can hit me, it can hit him too. “Matthew Clare had an X through his name.”

I don’t know what kind of accusation I’m making, only that I’m making one.

Hugh blinks twice, quickly, then stares right back as if daring me to flinch first. “A cross … beside … his family name.”

He’s not usually so pedantic. He’s on the defensive, and he’s not answering the question. He’s got the master key ring dangling off one of his belt loops for some odd reason. He jangles it idly with his fingers as he watches me.

“Hugh—”