Malcolm had been disappointed in the film, which captured none of what he’d loved in the book. Phoebe agreed it was a mistake to crop out the text, but she’d been too taken with the film’s opening shot to notice. It was a marvel of restraint. None of the fancy camerawork Ted was known for, the panoramic tracking shot in battle, the epic chase scene. Instead, there was a quick close-up on the boy’s face. Cut to a shot from behind the boy. A diva sings while the camera pulls slowly back. As the aria builds, you see the street the boy is standing on, the apartment building across from him, the arrondissement around it. His home. The tension grows, almost painfully. One hundred and twenty seconds of the boy standing there. The push-pull of the music swelling and the boy immobilized—Phoebe thought her heart might leap out of her chest. Finally, the diva hits her high note and a wrecking ball swings into the frame, demolishing the boy’s home to make way for the new opera house. Phoebe had gasped. It was an emotional crescendo told entirely through sound. Ted had always loved Jaws and had hoped to top it someday.

Later, she’d lain awake while Malcolm reached for her and eased her toward sleep with his own steady breaths. She’d known the truth instantly, that night in the theater, that Ted’s talents had eclipsed hers and there might never be enough time to catch up.

“The opening shot...” Phoebe said now.

“I’d been wanting to do that forever.”

“I know.” She couldn’t help the edge that crept into her voice.

“You want to sit?” he asked.

She sat down in one of the two Barcelona chairs facing his desk. They were probably real—why buy a knockoff when you could afford the real thing? One chair wasn’t worth three months of rent to Ted, as it would’ve been to her. She thought of the great big mansion outside, how much he must have paid to fill it, and with what? This minimalist office gave her no indication of how his style had evolved since their days of indecisively thrifting at the swap meet, disagreeing over a kitchen table, coming home with nothing but a mirror with the paint chipped.

“We need to talk,” Phoebe said.

“What is it?”

It was still difficult to say his name.

“Jerry.”

Ted let out a swoosh of breath.

“Everything I’ve done has been about getting past that,” she said. Getting past it had been Ted’s idea, but her burden, hers alone. Nothing and no one had held him back.

Ted looked as if he were waiting for permission to breathe again.

Phoebe’s heartbeat gathered, strong and steady like kettle drums on a war horse. “Twenty years. But I finally made it,” she said. “Warrior Bride.”

“Your film?”