Chapter 6

Caroline spent two weeks recovering. Blake never returned. His assistant dispatched expensive, anonymous floral arrangements and gift baskets, which Caroline instructed the nurse to donate to other patients. Her own recovery was measured in the slow mending of bone and tissue. His was documented on Ariana's social media feed: a sun-drenched convalescence on a white sand beach, his arm-not in a sling, but draped protectively over Ariana's shoulders.

When she was discharged, she went home to the silent house. As she walked up the stone path to the front door, she heard voices from the back patio. It was Mark and another of Blake's friends.

"He's really going all out for her," the friend said. "I heard he got his family's lawyers to bankrupt Ariana's ex-husband. A bit of revenge for how the fellow treated her."

"He has always been that way about her," Mark sighed. "But he was in a damnable state right before they left. I came over and found him three sheets to the wind. Kept saying he'd made a mistake."

Caroline paused, her hand on the doorknob.

"About Ariana?" the friend asked.

"No," Mark said, his voice lowered. "He was calling for Caroline."

The other man made a noise of dismissal. "Guilt, then. A common symptom."

Caroline walked inside. The house was dark. She found Blake in his study, passed out on the leather chesterfield, a cordon of empty liquor bottles standing sentinel around him. He must have come home before leaving with Ariana.

He stirred in his sleep, muttering. A name escaped his lips, a low groan of a word. "Ariana... forgive me... five years... wasted..."

He was dreaming of the wrong woman. Mark had been mistaken.

The friend's words echoed in her mind: Why doesn't he see what's right in front of him? From the couch, a final, definitive murmur, the pronouncement of a judge in his own dream.

"She's not the one."

The words did not strike her; they passed through her, leaving a void where a heart had been. The truth, arriving so late, was no longer a weapon. It was a release.