He shook his head. “In a way I wish it had been. Drug dealers, straightforward villains—perhaps I would’ve dealt with those better. But it was more complicated than that. It was more . . .” He seemed to grapple for the right word, then choked out, “It was hard.”

“Did you have a relationship?” Steph asked, replacing The Question with one that had troubled her almost as often over the years—for different reasons, perhaps, and without realizing then that Paul might have been with someone who didn’t even know his real identity.

She felt the pew move and creak. “What makes you ask that?”

“I’ve always had this feeling . . .” She gazed toward the stained-glass window. In it, three people were lying side by side. Steph couldn’t tell if they were praying or sleeping or dying. “. . . that you loved someone before me. Someone you didn’t want to tell me about.”

He seized her hand. “I love you. And Freya. You’re my world.”

Sadness exploded through her. The man who’d learned her favorite passage from Jane Eyre for their wedding, who could still make her tingle by kissing her neck, who’d had damp eyes on Freya’s first day of school, he was receding from her again. Or maybe it was her who was retreating. Shutting down because it was all too much.

Paul stood up and paced back and forth, like an impassioned minister delivering a sermon, except that he was murmuring, “Fuck,” over and over. His curses echoed in the crest of the ceiling, as if they were collecting up high.

“Did you kill someone?”

The Question had broken free.

Paul stopped abruptly. “What?”

Steph didn’t want to repeat it. She was already regretting asking, but she was also breathless to hear his answer, as though she was detaching herself from the conversation, watching two unknown people and wondering, What is he going to say now? And what will she say?

Then she looked at her husband and recognized what he was doing. His shoulders were drawn forward. There were pain lines in his face. He was trying to keep himself upright, like someone who’d been struck in the stomach and didn’t want to fold.

Steph got up and stepped toward him but he flinched away as though wary of a second blow. Suddenly all she felt was blistering guilt. “Paul, I . . .”

He straightened and they looked at one another. Then a loud beep startled them. It was just a text message alert, coming from Paul’s pocket, but the acoustics of the church and the tension of the moment made it feel like a small explosion. Paul blinked as if waking from a confusing dream. His hand hovered toward his pocket, his gaze still on Steph. Finally he broke eye contact and drew out his phone. The moment seemed to cave in.

“I have to go,” he said, staring at his screen.

“No, Paul—”