THE MORNING SUN LIT A THIN FILM OF DUST ON THE INSTRUMENT. SSIÂN opened the cover, breathed the wood. Last night she’d invited Will to haunt her, her need so strong that she was sure he’d come back and sit here. Coiled in an armchair, she’d watched and waited, listened for him after too much wine: not for the first time. But she was no Heathcliff and he no Cathy. As before, no sound came. She wished she could play the piano and reanimate the sounds he’d left there. She folded the cover down, stretched her arms over the wood, and pressed her face against its scent, straining for a note in the silence. Where were the angels who were said to come in a crisis when you called? Calvin told her about them when Will died, and she believed him, too; but she couldn’t reach one now. Even the tears wouldn’t flow.

What perverseness had made her resent his playing? She had thought he retreated into the piano to escape her. Now she realized that this was how Will thought, and voiced his emotions, when words couldn’t express his reality. Returning from foreign assignments he’d sometimes played for days without speaking. She’d felt walled out—though their sexual relationship never suffered. Lost in shadow, producing bittersweet sounds, he’d sense her confusion and take her wordlessly to bed. She knew there was no one else, but she was excluded from this place Will went to. She was emotionally careless with him, pushing her insecurities too far until they forced a battleground. She wasn’t able to translate the silences into a language she could understand.

Now his death appeared in a new light: had she played a part? From Alex’s words last night on the phone, connections were emerging between Calvin’s associates and the events concerning Max and Lucy. And while he hadn’t said so, his questions told her Will’s accident could also be related. She was horrified. She knew she wasn’t a stupid woman, but she was critically unthinking—and there was nowhere to hide from this realization. For the first time since Will’s crash, she felt utterly alone, and the loss was greater now than at the start. Echoes of their past arguments distressed her.