“Hi,” I said when he came into the house. And it was so odd. He smiled at me but he looked different, somehow. His smile was just too polite and he didn’t quite meet my eyes. Now, we’ve been together through thick and thin, but he’s never done that before. Immediately I was on high alert.

He dumped his bag down on the hall table. “Hi.”

“Did you remember we’re going out with Annie and Patrick tonight?”

“Yeah, sorry I’m late.”

Still odd. Still no eye contact. My skin started to prickle. I went up to him and kissed him on his cheek. He stood still to let me, not responding with a return kiss. With a jolt I remembered his crush on Ruby and realized that that fear had never really gone away. I quickly glanced at his face for signs of lipstick, took an inward breath to detect a hint of perfume. There was nothing; this did confuse me, I admit. I have a pretty good scent both for perfume and for danger—or I thought I had—and I could have sworn there’d be something there. But no, all I could smell were the traces of his cologne from that morning, and his shirt was still crisp and uncreased.

He pulled away from me. “I’d better get a shower.”

I followed him upstairs, telling him about my day and noting he wasn’t saying much about his own. I knew he had something on his mind. Something that I wouldn’t want to hear.

He waited until he was in the shower before he told me.

“Oh, by the way,” he said.

I steeled myself. Something was coming. Whenever someone tells you something you really don’t want to hear, they do it with their face covered, either in the shower, while taking off a sweater, or in the pitch-dark of a bedroom. It’s Psychology 101, isn’t it?

So, he said, “By the way, you know that trip to Paris?”

“No.” I knew perfectly well which one he meant. It was the following weekend. He’d put it on the kitchen calendar. Now I wondered whether this would be our own personal Armageddon. I felt my body, taut and wired, and didn’t know whether I wanted to run away or to fight. “Which trip is that?”

“It’s in a few days’ time.” From the careful way he spoke, I realized he knew exactly how many days it was. He probably had a little calendar he ticked off every day, like a child’s Advent calendar, though with a bigger incentive than a sliver of chocolate. “A week from today, I think. There’s a conference and I’m going to see about getting some French suppliers on board. We’re giving a presentation, too. Remember?”