There were always extremely important, and later hard to recall, big trials requiring her to stay in the city while Greg squired his two children from a previous marriage to wondrous spots around the world. He decided he liked London best and took a flat there, and then it turned out what he’d really taken there was a mistress, a young English barrister he’d met several years earlier while she was spending a few weeks at Berger’s office during an excessively stressful trial.

Berger had never thought twice about it when the young barrister and Greg had dinner together while Berger worked until the hands fell off the clock. As he used to put it.

She remained in a state of conjugal unconsciousness until Greg dropped by her office unannounced one day last winter to take her to lunch. They walked to Forlini’s, a favorite hangout of criminal-justice potentates and politicians, and husband and wife sat across from each other, surrounded by dark paneling and heavy oil paintings of the Old Country. He didn’t tell her he was having an affair and had been for years, just that he wanted out, and at that time and of all things, Berger’s thoughts shifted to Kay Scarpetta. There was a logical reason.

Forlini’s named booths after influential patrons, and the booth where Berger and Greg sat, coincidentally, was named for Nicholas Scoppetta, now the fire commissioner. Seeing the name Scoppetta on the wall made Berger think of Scarpetta, who Berger felt sure would have gotten up from that damn dusky rose leather booth and stalked out of the restaurant, instead of subjecting herself to, if not encouraging, blatant lies and humiliation.

But Berger didn’t move or lodge a protest. She was her usual poised, controlled self listening to Greg make the insane bullshit point that he didn’t love her anymore. He had stopped loving her after Nine-Eleven, probably because he was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, even though he was well aware he wasn’t in the country when the terrorist attack happened, but the constant replays on the news made it almost as bad as being there.