“She didn’t want to give the murder-pornography frame by frame. Didn’t want to recite her route across Manhattan, the length of the knife blade and the number of times she pulled the trigger, the color of the blood-splattered wallpaper in the hotel room, the man falling to the floor, the baby crying in the next room, the woman emerging and dropping the bottle, its nipple popping off and the milk spilling onto the carpet, the woman pleading “Por favor,” her hands up, shaking her head, asking— begging— for her life to be spared, her big black eyes wide, deep sinkholes of dark terror, while Kate trained the Glock on her, a seemingly eternal internal debate, while the baby sounded like he was the same age as Jake, late infancy, and this poor woman the same age as Kate, a different version of herself, an unlucky woman who didn’t deserve to die.”

“But Kate was wide awake, chased by the same demon that haunted her regularly, especially when she was trying to forget it.”

“The new man was again staring at her, staring at him, challenging her, knowing that she was considering him, wanting her to know that he was considering her. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to be with a man who absolutely didn't need her, but merely wanted her.”

“That was not her husband; she knew him, and that was not him. But of course she didn’t really know him.”

“Kate was beginning to put distance between her sense of betrayal, her anger, and Dexter’s behavior. She was beginning to take his side. Or at least beginning to be able to see things from it.”

“But there’s this giant deception at the foundation of their relationship, their happiness. This impure motive. There was that small mistake that the woman made, uttering the wrong number. And then the man reconstructed an entire intrigue, a big thick plot— a seduction and affair and relationship and marriage proposal, a whole life— around her error and his notice of it. Taking advantage of her lie.But does that make their relationship less real? Does that make it impossible that they genuinely love each other?”

“She spent so much of her new life wanting to get a break from the kids, then the rest of her time impatient to get back to them.”