A devastating clarity seized Costanza’s mind. It was as though a chaotic room—after a move, or a rigorous cleaning—had been put into order. Only it wasn’t a room—it wasn’t a metaphor. It was her life, ordered, clarified, made logical, in a single aching vision. She saw what she had been missing, for years; perhaps forever. She saw the shape of things, their awful commonality. The pattern. First there was Morton—no, first there was her father. Because wasn’t his suicide—the depth of his anguish and suffering, his hidden intentions—the original cruelly kept secret, a betrayal of her love for him, the earliest and still the deepest love she had felt for any human being on this planet? Then Stefano: three years of fidelity, intimacy, connectivity, love—and then, just like that, another woman. Then Morton, who held back part of himself from her, part of—maybe in the end all of—his heart, and his story too. And now there was Henry.

What was it about these men, whom she loved differently but profoundly, yet who remained closed to her, secretive, ultimately unknowable? And what was it with her that she missed all the darkest corners in the characters of the men who came into her life, the men she chose to love?

She thought she might vomit. She thought she might faint. She thought she might beat something, or someone, to a pulp.

She took a huge gulping breath into her hormonally juiced, angry, hurting body, with its strange, awful flares of emotion, its swollen stimulated follicles ready to release their eggs in less than a day, in hours …

She looked at Andrew. Tears were spilling down his cheeks. And now they began to spill down hers too.

Andrew turned and put his arm around her. She felt comforted. She let out a long heavy breath.

In the stillness she breathed and he breathed.

Then his grip tightened.

She wiped her eyes. She was beginning to regret drinking that wine now. The alcohol was playing with her perceptions, slowing them down, confusing her. She thought Andrew’s tightening grip was drawing her closer. Was it drawing her closer? Was he?

She didn’t feel so comforted now.

He leaned his forehead on hers. And left it there.

“Andrew…”

He didn’t say anything. She tried to ease back. But he held on.

“Andrew, what are you doing?”

Forehead to forehead they sat. His eyes were closed. Hers remained open.

“I’m holding you,” he said finally. “I’m holding on. I need to hold on.”

A moment passed. Another. And then—and then he raised his head. He lifted up her chin, and he kissed her, on her lips. Despite herself, she felt the kiss. Simply that. She felt it—she allowed herself to feel it.