Rosalyn caught his eye and held it, losing her smile. “Because whenever I tell someone the whole story, they look at me differently afterward. They always promise it won’t happen and they’re always full of shit.”

She expected him to press, like they always did. She expected a big speech about how he was trustworthy and different. Instead, Edison nodded and finished his glass, then poured another few fingers.

“My wife left a year ago, just after my mother passed. Cancer that spread to her marrow, they slowed it down but eventually that wasn’t enough,” he said all in one breath. “She was adopted, hated her family, my dad had split, so I was the one that had to decide to pull the plug when she went into a coma.”

“Edison . . .”

“See? Now you’re looking at me differently, too.” He dredged up a smile for her, then quickly hid it behind his glass. “I’m okay. I think you’re okay, too. You don’t have to tell me, I just thought maybe if we both look at each other sideways, it would cancel it all out.”

Rosalyn walked deliberately away from the capsules and sat on the makeshift bunk pushed against the far wall. “That’s an interesting theory. I guess we can test it. It’s, uh, a long story but the condensed version is that I had a big, important job at a big, important biotech firm. My dad runs the place, and I made the rather poor decision to date a colleague. He was . . . not a nice man, let’s put it that way. Treated me terribly, but was all smiles on the outside. Nobody but my best friend believed me when I told them what happened. He got tired of me one night and just . . . All the times, all the little warnings, they all made sense then, that he could just hold me down and hurt me that way.”

Drawing in a huge breath, she let it out hard through her nose. “Dad didn’t fire him until, oh, a few days ago. For my birthday. But late, of course. At least he sent an apology of sorts.”

He pushed away from the table with his hip but then leaned back against it, checking his whiskey before looking across the shadowy floor to her. “So you got the hell out of there.”

She reached, reflexively, to push hair that wasn’t there behind her ear. Her fingertips bumped the shield and smudged it. “Yes, and I told myself I might go back, but even hearing about him getting fired didn’t make me feel much. He deserves so much worse.”

“Now, when you say ‘fired,’ do you mean set on fire or . . . ?”

At that, she gave a dry laugh. “Unfortunately, no. But I like where your head’s at.”