Costanza had noticed this previously when she’d returned to her studio after long breaks, but now she was also struck by how the studio seemed to contain so much of her old unhappiness. Her unhappiness alone, before she met Morton; her unhappiness coupled, when she slipped away to try to think matters through without interference; her unhappiness when she became temporarily uncoupled from Morton; and her unhappiness when she was on her own again after he died, and she’d needed to flee Fifth Avenue.

Her unhappiness with Henry: Was that now to take its place with all these other unhappinesses? Maybe she had come down to the studio to bring her unhappiness here, to unpack it and look at it coolly, analytically. And possibly, with any hope, or luck, to leave it with its kind. Or maybe she had come down to try out what it felt like to be alone, even just for a few hours, though this was a fake aloneness, a pretend aloneness; she had come in body, but in her spirit, in her heart and in her mind, she was still caught up—deeply and intricately—with Henry.

She had entrusted not only her heart to this man, Henry Weissman, but her body also.

And who was Henry, exactly? A man who captivated and provoked her and interested her. A man she felt compassion for and was attracted to. A man she loved but did not at the moment entirely trust.

Why, then, had she gone ahead and allowed him to give her the injection of HCG?

The injection: that was probably the only question she could answer with any reasonable certainty. She had felt it would have been too emotional, too impulsive and dramatic, to decide in the middle of the night, in the aftermath of what he’d told her, to give up on this cycle. After all those drugs and appointments, all that wear and tear on her body, all that hope, and worry, and hope again, and worry again—not even to try? Henry had agreed to her terms, anyway. He had said he would talk to the boys. He would correct what was, to her mind, a grave mistake; but this was a matter between Henry and his sons, she reminded herself. It was their story, their problem; their challenge—not hers.

Yet how would she feel, what would she think, if this cycle also didn’t work? What if Henry had made ICSI sound more hopeful—more probable—than it actually was, because of his yearning to have a genetic child of his own? What if, knowing the truth about his own body, he had put his needs, his desires, before hers?

If that was the case, then he was malevolent, a demon, and she was tragically blind and stupidly naïve.

That couldn’t be right. She wasn’t that woman, so he couldn’t be that man.