I crossed the room to the window and leaned against the sill and watched the rise and fall of his chest. It was as if I’d wandered into a stranger’s room. I tried to retrieve a memory of him the way he used to be, the way we used to be, and it came to me, our happiest moment—after the first night in our new apartment, when we rose naked to the dawn and stood hand in hand at the window, ready to meet the world, and ready to conquer it. I could see myself so clearly in the memory, I could see all of Manhattan spread out in living color before me, but when I turned to look at David in my mind, he was only a flickering image, as insubstantial as a wisp of cloud.

He seemed barely more solid as I gazed at him in the hospital bed. He was a shell of what he used to be. Or maybe he was always a shell and I’d simply filled him with my own manufactured perfect man. I’d taken Mrs. Casco’s advice—wear the face you want the world to see, and that’s who you’ll be—and tried to apply it to David. But it didn’t work that way. I’d put the face on him that I wanted to see. I’d created an illusion and expected him to become it. Disappointment was inevitable.

“David,” I said.

He started at the sound of my voice, but he didn’t open his eyes. Tears squeezed out from between his lashes.

“David,” I said again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am so, so sorry.”

I didn’t speak again, and he finally opened his eyes and moved his gaze through the room until it landed on me by the window. “Don’t hate me, Shay, please.”

“I don’t hate you,” I said, and it was true. I didn’t feel hate or anger or even disappointment anymore. I looked at him and felt nothing at all.

“It’s not my fault,” he said, and the tears streamed out of the corners of his eyes and down his temples to drip onto the pillow under his head. “I couldn’t help it. I’m not like you, Shay. I’m not strong like you.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “We’re nothing alike.”

“I thought it would last forever.”

He started to sob, and I knew he wasn’t talking about us or our marriage. He was talking about the money Barrett paid him to sell me out.

“How much was it?”

“Thirty thousand,” he whispered.

I nearly laughed. Barrett must have been feeling biblical when he settled on that figure. Thirty thousand dollars, thirty pieces of silver. The price of betrayal.

A doctor swept in from the corridor and stopped when she saw me there. “Oh. You the wife?”

I shrugged.

She was a Black woman in her forties with a severe hairstyle and a stern mouth. In quick, terse terms, she laid out David’s prognosis. He would need to remain hospitalized until he was stable and his detoxification complete. She could recommend several reputable addiction treatment centers. Fees varied. She left me with a fistful of brochures and a final warning: “He can’t do this many more times. The next time might be the last.”