Ellie had been lifting her winegla.s.s, but her hand twitched so hard she nearly snapped the stem in two. She lowered the gla.s.s and stared at Curt. The candles fluttered, their golden light dancing across his face. He looked bleak.

I had s.e.x with another woman. The sentence a.s.saulted her, each word a blade slicing into her. Curt. Her husband. The only man she'd ever loved. He'd had s.e.x with another woman.

She tried to wrap her mind around the idea. It was preposterous. So unlike him. Didn't he love her as much as she loved him? In sickness and in health, in good times and bad? Wasn't that the vow they'd made to each other?

"You weren't in California?"

"I was." He averted his eyes, grabbed his gla.s.s and gulped some wine. Setting the gla.s.s back down, he grimaced, shoved away from the table and stormed into the kitchen. Ellie heard the clink of ice in a gla.s.s, the slosh of liquid being poured. He returned with a gla.s.s of Scotch. Evidently, wine wasn't his drink of choice when he was annihilating his wife.

"You were in California," she said. She could hear an accusation in her voice, a heavy layer of distrust.

"Yes." He drank some Scotch, then met her gaze. "So was the woman."

"Oh, my G.o.d." She felt nauseous, but there was nothing in her stomach, nothing but a sip of wine. Closing her eyes, she flashed on a picture of her husband, naked, his beautiful, rugged body stretched out alongside-who?

Another woman.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You're sorry?"

"I am. Really."

Her steak knife lay temptingly close to her right hand. She nudged it away. "What is this, an act of contrition? Do you expect me to exonerate you? Cleanse your soul? What?"

"I'm telling you because I love you," he said. "Because we've always been honest with each other. I didn't want to have s.e.x with her. I wanted you. But I couldn't have you for so long-"

"So you went looking for someone else?"

"I didn't go looking. She was there, and she offered."

"Oh, my G.o.d." The image of Curt flickered through her imagination again, only this time she visualized the woman-pet.i.te, dark-haired, with bright red lipstick. "Moira? Your old law partner?"

He closed his eyes and exhaled. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"I'll bet you are," she muttered. Her mind spun, her thoughts flying out in all directions, as if her brain were a centrifuge.

"It wasn't what I wanted."

"It wasn't? What happened, did she force you? Did she rape you? What do you mean, it wasn't what you wanted?"

He cursed under his breath. "Okay, yes, I was willing. What I wanted was you. But you made it very clear over the past year and a half that that wasn't an option."

"Don't lay this on me," she retorted. "I didn't betray you."

"You locked me out, Ellie. I was going crazy."

"You were h.o.r.n.y."

"Yes, I was h.o.r.n.y," he retaliated, his anger rising to match hers. "I felt as if I had no wife anymore."

"You had a wife who was hurting, who was broken-"

"I had a wife who shrank from me whenever I touched her. How do you think that made me feel?"

Tears burned Ellie's eyes. She'd been so hopeful about his homecoming. But this man who came home, this man who looked like Curt and sat at her dining-room table-he couldn't possibly be the man she'd trusted with her heart and soul, the man she'd promised to love as long as they both lived.

"Why are you even telling me this? Why didn't you just lie to me?"

"I couldn't lie to you. I love you, Ellie."

"You sure have a funny way of showing it." She shoved away from the table and stormed into the kitchen, carrying her wine. Not that she could taste it, but if she drank enough of it, maybe it would numb the pain a little.

Pain. She'd grown so used to it that not suffering had been like waking up to a new world. Now she was back in the old world, the pain world. She'd climbed out of the hole and Curt had shoved her back in.

He didn't follow her into the kitchen. Standing by the sink, staring at her ghostly reflection in the dark window above it, she heard muted thumps and movements. He was moving around the dining room, taking care of things. Blowing out the candles, stacking the plates. She closed her eyes, clung to her winegla.s.s and hugged her ribs with her free hand, as if that arm could hold her together.

Moira Kernan. His old colleague, his friend, that aggressive b.i.t.c.h.

Ellie knew her a.s.sessment wasn't fair. She'd met the woman a few times and she hadn't been b.i.t.c.hy at all. She'd been smart and funny.

And she'd been in Boston when the negotiations on this deal had begun.

She heard footsteps behind her and opened her eyes. Curt's ghost had joined hers in the window's reflection. He stood behind her, keeping his distance. No hugs tonight, no affectionate nuzzling.

"Did you sleep with her in Boston, too?" Ellie asked. Why she was pressing him for more information, she couldn't say. Hearing the details only made the pain worse.

"Yes."

His answer told her why she'd had to ask. She needed to know that he'd been unfaithful to her right here, in her territory, on her turf. He'd sneaked behind her back while she'd been at home, in this house, in their bed.

"Do you love her?"

"No."

"Then what? You used her?" Could he be that selfish?

"I didn't use her. She doesn't like attachments. It was just...a thing."

"A thing."

"s.e.x. No strings attached. No emotions."

"Like hiring a prost.i.tute, only no money changed hands," Ellie said bitterly.

"It was not like hiring a prost.i.tute. She's an old friend. She saw I was in bad shape. She offered to help."

"How charitable of her." Each word snapped from her, like brittle twigs breaking off the branch of a dead tree. "I know, you're trying to be mature and civilized about this, and you want me to be mature and civilized, too. We're having this charming little chat, you're telling me you slept with another woman and I'm supposed to-what? Thank you for your honesty? Congratulate you for scoring? I don't know. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to deal with this, Curt-except to tell you this hurts as bad as losing Peter. Something else has died-and you killed it."

Unable to say another word, she abandoned the kitchen, walked up the stairs, entered Peter's clean, tidy bedroom and closed the door.

She didn't feel safe in here. The pain was just as excruciating. But she figured that as long as she remained in that room, Curt wouldn't come after her....

THIRTEEN.

CURT STARED AT THE SCREEN without really absorbing the images that paraded past his eyes. A few photos of Katie's graduation from college. A scene from Ellie's parents' fiftieth anniversary party a month later. A photo of him perched on a ladder outside the house, cleaning the gutters along the roof's edge, while Ellie held the ladder steady below them.

Moments in a marriage, he thought. Judging by the evidence Katie and Jessie's movie presented, no one would guess that Curt and Ellie were drifting further and further apart, that the foundation of their marriage was developing cracks that would soon expand into chasms, jeopardizing the entire structure. If Ellie had known that less than two months after that afternoon when he'd cleaned the gutters, he would have s.e.x with another woman, would she have knocked the ladder out from under him?

The screen went black, and large white block letters appeared: Eleanor Frost's Excellent Adventure. The sign faded, replaced by footage of Ellie's parents, seated next to each other on the peach-hued brocade sofa in their living room.

"Africa!" Ellie's mother sounded astounded. "All of a sudden, out of the blue, Ellie decided to go to Africa!"

Beside her, Ellie's father shook his head. "She never seemed interested in Africa before."

"All of a sudden, she told us she was going to go to some medical center in-what was the name of that city? Kinshasa?"

"k.u.masi," Ellie's father corrected her. "It's in Ghana."

"Ghana. Right. Where is that, anyway? Somewhere in Africa, I know. When she told us she was going, I was so shocked you could have knocked me over with a feather. I know that's a cliche, but that's how I felt. Absolutely shocked."

"She never said a word about Africa," Ellie's father chimed in. "Never in her whole life that I was aware of."

"But you know Ellie. She gets an idea in her head and there's no talking her out of it." Ellie's mother reflected for a moment, then added, "Maybe she went to Africa because she was bored here at home."

"I think she went because she wanted to save the world. You know Ellie."

"Yes, maybe that was it." Ellie's mother smiled. "Either she wanted to save the world or she was bored. One of those two things, that's my guess."

Ellie chuckled, and Curt found himself grinning at her parents' inanity. Of course her parents couldn't have guessed the real reason Ellie had gone to Africa-to save the world, sure, but also to get away from Curt, from the shambles he'd made of their marriage. Ellie had gone to Africa to put thousands of miles between herself and the husband who'd betrayed her.

Not that she'd ever said so to Curt. A few weeks after he'd come home from California, she'd stunned him with her announcement. He'd been waiting for her to take some appropriately dramatic action: demand that he move out of the house, perhaps, or that they see a marriage counselor, or that they get a divorce. She'd issued none of those expected demands, though.

He'd sensed that something had gone cold inside her. But she hadn't slipped back into her depression. No retreat into moping, compulsively gobbling Goldfish crackers or staring moodily at the screen saver on Peter's computer while she listened to his hip-hop music. She'd appeared full of vigor and purpose, as energetic as she'd been before Peter died.

She'd gone to work each morning, come home each afternoon, fixed supper, watched a little TV with Curt and then retired to bed, she on her side, he on his, like tolerant, well-behaved strangers. She'd kept their conversations focused on impersonal matters-the sprinkler system needed to be winterized, and she wanted to get her car in for a tune-up before the season's first snowfall, and did Katie need any financial a.s.sistance from them? Those New York rents were insanely high, and her internship at the TV station paid ridiculously little.

Then one evening, she'd said, "I'm going to Africa."

She'd learned about the program through an old friend of hers from Children's Hospital, researched it further online and submitted an application. Of course she'd been accepted. A woman with her credentials-they wanted her yesterday. How soon could she get there?

She'd had to arrange for a sabbatical with her school, but the superintendent had found a replacement and given her the semester. In mid-January, while Jessie was still home from college on her winter break, she and Curt had driven Ellie to Logan Airport and waved her off.

Sure enough, the TV screen displayed one of the photos Jessie had taken of Ellie at the airport, standing near the security checkpoint, wearing khaki slacks, a sweater and a fleece jacket and holding up her pa.s.sport. In the picture she looked happy, but also a little scared. Or else maybe Curt was reading into her expression the fear he'd felt that day, that she would never come back. That fear had remained with him the entire time Ellie was gone, and with good reason. She'd returned to the United States the last day of July that past summer, but she never really did come back.

"Ellie traveled to k.u.masi, Ghana, to work at a pediatrics clinic in an outlying village." Katie's voice emerged from the television's speakers while a map of Africa appeared on the screen, followed by a map of Ghana, followed by a street map of k.u.masi. The civics-lesson ill.u.s.trations ended with the appearance of photos that Ellie had sent home via e-mail while she'd been in k.u.masi. Curt had seen all these photos-she'd sent them to him as well as the girls, attached to brief, cheerful notes describing her work and living situation. One photo showed the clinic where she'd worked, a bland, boxy white building constructed of stucco or cinderblock-hard to tell from the picture. Another showed the residence adjacent to the clinic, where she'd lived with the other volunteers. Another showed her in an open-sided, roofless Jeep, her hair held off her face by a colorful scarf and her eyes shielded from the bright sun by dark gla.s.ses. Another showed her sitting on the concrete front steps of the clinic, dressed in cargo shorts, a tank top and sandals, with a chubby brown toddler perched on her lap and several other children seated around her on the steps. She'd cut her hair at some point, and in that photo it was short and breezy.

Jessie's voice took over the narration. "After a few weeks in Ghana, Ellie learned to coexist peacefully with snakes-" a photo of a green snake slithering up the side of a palm tree appeared "-and exotic insects." Another photo showed a brightly hued b.u.t.terfly resting on a palm frond. "She developed a taste for mango-" the next photo depicted her with several other volunteers in the residence kitchen "-and since k.u.masi is located in a major cacoa-producing region, she also enjoyed a lot of chocolate." The next photo showed Ellie and a starchy older woman with thick gray hair proudly displaying a chocolate sheet cake. A single candle protruded from its center, and "Happy Birthday, Adrian" was written across it in white icing.

"Most important, of course, Ellie had the chance to help children who weren't like the privileged middle-cla.s.s children she treated back home. She a.s.sisted in surgeries, gave physical examinations, vaccinated children and worked with their families on general health issues." A series of photographs showed Ellie in various poses with her patients. In one, a toddler hugged her leg. In another, she held a thumb-sucking youngster high in her arms. In another, she leaned over a bed, where a toothy little boy lay waving at the camera. In yet another, she sat on the floor in a play area filled with toys and children, several of whom were climbing on her while she laughed.

"Ellie also developed close friendships with her fellow volunteers," the narration continued, accompanied by a series of photos of adults: the starchy older woman with whom she'd presented the cake in the earlier photo; in this photo, the woman stood beside a desk in a cramped office. A trio of college-age girls, vamping for the camera. A tall, thin African man in scrubs. A sixty-something white woman with wiry gray hair and a bulldog face. A white man with sun-bronzed skin and long hair framing his face in rippling waves, standing beside the Jeep, a stethoscope dangling around his neck and his face set in a serious pose. The same man, standing with Ellie in front of the residence, his arm resting on her shoulders. In that photo he was smiling. So was Ellie.

Curt leaned forward, his pulse drumming inside his head. "Pause the movie," he said.

"What?"

"Hit the pause b.u.t.ton."

Ellie did. Curt stared at the photo. Tell me, d.a.m.n it, he wanted to shout. Just tell me if you fell in love with the guy. All he said was, "That was the doctor, right?"

"Adrian Wesker," Ellie said.

Curt took a deep breath, and another. Why did he need to know? What did it matter? Ellie was leaving him. Whether or not she loved some other man-whether or not she was still in love with him-was irrelevant. Once she and Curt were divorced, she would be free to fall in love a million times, with a million other men. He couldn't do a d.a.m.n thing about it.

But...he had to know. Call it a compulsion. Call it the same m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic urge that made a person touch a sore again and again, just to determine if it still hurt. He'd already lost Ellie before she'd gone to k.u.masi. He'd probably lost her the day Peter died. If she fell for some other man-someone who hadn't been by her side, trying to prop her up during the long, dark days of her overwhelming grief, trying to reach her, trying to nudge, push or drag her back to sanity-he had to know.

"Tell me about him," he said. "Tell me about Dr. Wesker."

Five months ago "ADRIAN NEEDS YOU," ROSE announced, barging into an examining room, where Ellie was scrubbing an infected sore on a little girl's hand. The girl was sniveling and flinching, even though Ellie was rubbing the wound as gently as she could.

"Why don't we soak this for a bit, and then I'll come back and dress it," Ellie said, half to Rose and half to herself. "That won't hurt you, sweetie. We're just going to stick your hand in a bowl of warm water-" she prepared the bowl as she spoke "-and you can suck on this lollipop while you soak, and when I come back I'll put some ointment on it and bandage it up." She placed the girl's hand in the bowl and glanced at Rose. "She'll need a dose of amoxicillin, too. How's our supply?"

"Adequate. Adrian's in the surgery. Go." She waved Ellie out the door.

Ellie raced down the hall to the clinic's small operating room. Any surgery that required general anesthesia was performed in one of the hospitals in the city, but Adrian could perform minor procedures that required only local anesthesia.

Ellie stopped outside the room to scrub at the sink, then shouldered through the swinging door. She was greeted by the frantic screams of a boy of about nine, who sat on the table, wearing only a pair of briefs. Adrian stood beside him, his face gleaming with perspiration. "Calm the boy down!" he shouted to Ellie above the boy's howls.

Ellie immediately moved to the table and hugged the boy. "What's going on here?" she asked in a soothing voice. "What's your name?"

"Abrafo," the boy whimpered, hiding his tearstained face against her shoulder.

"Abrafo." She stroked his wiry black hair, then peered past him at Adrian. "What are we doing for Abrafo today?"

"Removing a mole from his back," Adrian told her, his terse tone reflecting his exasperation. "If he deigns to let us."

Ellie turned back to Abrafo, easing his head away from her chest so she could gaze into his terrified eyes. "That's nothing, Abrafo. You won't feel anything. Just a little pinch when Dr. Wesker gives you a shot."

"He's cutting an animal!" Abrafo wailed.