The lead officer reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a small business card. He made a show of tapping the card against the table at the front of the room, then headed for the door. “If anything changes, Mr. Parcewell—or if you want to share something with us confidentially—call the number on that card.”

“Right,” James said, rolling his eyes.

Then, without so much as an apologetic glance in my direction, the officers left the room.

With the agony of the preceding hour now lifted, I lowered myself gratefully onto the edge of James’s bed. “Thanks,” I mumbled, “and good timing. If you’d waited much longer, I might have been calling from a jail cell.” I glanced at the monitors next to him, a blinking screen of scraggly lines and numbers I couldn’t decipher. But his heart rate looked steady, and no warning alarms flashed. I hesitated to admit it, but I set my pride aside and said it anyway. “I thought I might lose you. Like, really lose you.”

James’s mouth turned upward in a soft smile. “We’re not meant to be apart, Caroline.” He squeezed my hand, an expectant look on his face.

A long pause passed as both of us held our breaths, our eyes locked. It seemed the entirety of our future depended on my response—my agreement with his statement.

“I need some air,” I said at last, tearing my gaze away. “I’ll be back in a bit.” Then, gently dropping his hand from mine, I stepped away and out of the room.

After leaving James’s hospital room, I ventured down the hall to the empty waiting room and settled onto a sofa at the far corner of the room. A vase of fresh flowers sat on a table next to an oversize box of tissues. I’d be needing them; tears had begun to prick my eyes like needles.

I leaned back against a pillow and let out a small sob, pushing a tissue into my eyes to soak up not only the tears, but all the other things pouring out of me: relief at James’s wellness, coupled with the continued sense of betrayal about his infidelity; the unfairness of the officers’ questioning, and the knowledge that I didn’t tell them the full...truth.

The truth.

I wasn’t exactly blameless.

Was it really just last night that I’d dug my way into the depths of Back Alley? It felt like a lifetime ago. How did James manage to hide his infidelity for months? I’d kept my secret from James, Gaynor and two police officers for only a matter of hours, but it had proved almost physically impossible.

Why did we suffer to keep secrets? Merely to protect ourselves, or to protect others? The apothecary was long gone, dead for more than two hundred years. There was no reason for me to stand guard over her.