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“She came to us. She did her work. Damian was so good with her. So devoted. Exactly as he’s being with you.”

She let a pause stretch between us. “And then he got attached, the way he does. He decided too late that he’d be the one to save her.” Her eyes flicked to me, then returned to two birds on a branch watching her. “He wasn’t quick, and he wasn’t brave, not when it required self-sacrifice, and so he did nothing useful until it was far too late.” She turned to me, almost tenderly. “He didn’t save her, dear. He’s been mourning her on his arm for a year instead. It’s the only real thing he ever managed to do for her.”

I thought about the hand trowel leaning against a planter. I fantasized about driving it into her eye.

“That’s a terrible thing, but it’s not the same as—”

“No,” she said, cutting through my sentence cleanly. “A boy who tries and fails, that’s only sad, isn’t it?” The warmth left her all at once. “But that isn’t the whole of it. I think you already suspected that.”

“What are you trying to say?” I said, frustratingly close to a stammer.

She turned to face me fully. “When it came to the end, and he had to choose between her life and his own self-preservation, he chose himself. He came to us, in the very place I’m standing now, and he told us exactly where she was hiding, because the alternative was his own throat.” She gave a small, sorrowful tilt of her head. “And only when it was done, when it was far too late, he decided to grieve. To let his heart break, in front of anyone who’d watch. He didn’t lose her, dear. He gave her up. And the only thing that little bird on his arm does is prove to all of us exactly how much he values his own skin.”

The birds went on singing while I wondered if the floor would hold me. I didn’t speak; she’d already been given too much.

“You don’t believe me. You’re deciding I’m a cruel woman saying vicious things to frighten you away from my son.” She took the leaf of a lemon tree between her fingers, inspecting its waxy gloss. “Perhaps you should ask him. Watch his face. He’s never been able to lie about the things trapped in his heart. Watch him, then decide if I’ve made it all up.” She patted my arm. “That’s all I ask. Watch his face.”

She casually walked away from me, toward the door, expecting me to follow.

My fingers had gone numb. My stomach hollowed, leaving behind a cold, malignant emptiness that opened wider the longer I stood there, as if some part of me refused to be present, the part that thought it would be better to evaporate than think one second longer about what I’d heard.

I followed her back along the path of beautiful foliage that had been so exquisitely browbeaten to submission, to find Damian still talking to Aurora. He stilled as soon as he saw me.

Something passed between us as he read me.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Already?” his mother said, pointedly.

Much too late, I thought, but at that point, I only half-understood what I was telling myself.

I nodded at Damian, ignoring her, because ignoring her was the only defiance I could gather.

Nora arrived a moment later. How she knew, I don’t know. We followed her down the hallway, which now felt twice as long and twice as narrow. I couldn’t look at Damian, and that made the squeeze he gave of my hand near unbearable. I couldn’t face him, and he knew it, and that was worse than being alone in it.

I exhaled as soon as we walked outside, but breathing didn’t feel any easier, as if those little birds had lodged themselves right inside my chest, their wings batting against my ribs.

We drove the long, shaded drive in silence, the fog suffocating the branches that reached for us.

I found myself counting how many days I’d known him. Thirty-four. It suddenly didn’t feel like many days at all.

Perhaps it wasn’t enough to know someone. Or perhaps it was just enough to convince me that I did.

Just as the silence felt palpable enough to grow its own pulse, Damian spoke.

“What did she say?”

I clung to my purse strap.

“Nothing good,” I said, looking out the window because I couldn’t look at him.

I replayed every word his mother had said to me, asking if I’d heard her right. Asking myself why I would believe a word, and why, on the other hand, I wouldn’t. Asking myself if I was his love or his absolution, or if what he’d done could ever be absolved. And for the first time, I felt truly, deeply trapped in reckless, terrifying love for a man with a past that made my spine shudder.

I’d always promised myself I would never become one of those women. The ones who fall for men who’ve done unspeakable things. The ones who look away because the pain of leaving is so much worse than the pain of staying.

“Marlowe,” he said, almost like a prayer. Like a question he needed answered.

“Wren” was the only thing I could say.