“When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.”

“You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.”

“CanI tell you something? Off the record?”Alex nodded.“Before I took this job, I used to work in Maine. And I had a case that wasn’t just a case, if youknow what I mean.”Alex did. She found herself listening in his voice for a note she hadn’t heard before-a low one thatresonated with anguish, like a tuning fork that never stopped its vibration. “There was a womanthere who meant everything to me, and she had a little boy who meant everything to her. And whenhe was hurt, in a way a kid never should be, I moved heaven and earth to work that case, because Ithought no one could possibly do a better job than I could. No one could possibly care more aboutthe outcome.” He looked directly at Alex. “I was so sure I could separate how I felt about what hadhappened from how I had to do my job.”Alex swallowed, dry as dust. “And did you?”“No. Because when you love someone, no matter what you tell yourself, it stops being a job.”“What does it become?”Patrick thought for a moment. “Revenge.”

“Ross was a firm believer that you could not force circumstance. You could buckle your seat belt, but still crash the car. You could throw yourself in front of an oncoming train, but somehow survive. You could wait for years to find a ghost, and then have one sneak up on you when you were too busy falling in love with a woman to pay attention. To that end, he made the conscious decision to stop waiting for Lia. When he least expected her, that was when she would show up.”

“Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.”

“And when your wife is not the same person you fell in love with eight years ago, where exactly does that leave you? Do you try to get to know who she has become, and hope for the best? Or do you keep deceiving yourself in the hope that she might wake up one morning and have gone back to the woman she used to be? May be, Caleb thinks with a small shock, he isn't the same person he once was, either.”

“It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help?I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?”