For the last ten minutes or so there had been a new flow of visitors circulating through the room, coming in and out of the entrances on adjacent sides of the gallery. And so I paid no particular attention to the couple that entered the room just then until I felt, rather than saw, one of them falter. I glanced up just as Lucian twined both arms around mine once more.

Aubrey.

I HAD DREADED AND anticipated this day. Would it be at Old Beijing on a weekend? On the pedestrian mall outside Macy’s, or coming out of Peet’s? Would I look up in the T station to see her waiting across the track . . . or would it happen at all?

In the weeks since Lucian’s intrusion into my life, I had found new fears to rival my dread of running into Aubrey. Since then there had even been a growing number of days when I thought about Aubrey only once or twice. I panicked upon realizing this at first, feeling that the last traces of her were slipping away from me completely, too quickly. Later I tenuously congratulated myself, thinking that in the midst of this new madness I had begun to move on.

Even so, I was invariably conscious of her specter almost every time I left home—following me down Tremont or into the Harvest store in Cambridge, seeking me in places we had never been together before—whispering in my mind, Is today that day? And though I had exhaustively premeditated it, I knew when that day happened, I would not be prepared.

But I was less—so much less—prepared for it today. Especially upon seeing her with a man, the arm of whom she had instinctively clasped upon seeing me.

Richard.

Now at last I would confront him. But what I saw confounded me more than the faceless man he had been to me all these months: Other than his height, he did not resemble at all the chiseled-featured lothario of my imagination. Granted, he was tanned as if he had just come in from Saint Martin, and he had a full head of sporty brown hair. But his features seemed somehow soft, his eyebrows ill-formed over the pale color of his eyes. I thought his chin receded a little bit as well. In fact, other than the obvious understated quality of his clothing, he was disappointingly average, which evoked in me first relief and then incredulity. And I wondered, as I had a thousand times before, what the draw had been, that thing that caused Aubrey to gravitate toward him when she compared the two of us side by side as she must have done.

As I did now.

I noticed the black cashmere scarf draped around his neck: Aubrey’s trademark gift. She had given one to me and her boyfriend before me. I wondered if he knew that.

Aubrey was tanned, too. They must have just come from some no-doubt exotic location. And it irritated me to think that as I wondered almost daily if and when I would run into her, for part of that time she had not even been in the city.

The introductions went smoothly—thanks, surprisingly, to Richard. The Richard. Smooth as Richard. To his credit, he stuck out his hand, congenially and formally, as though it were a peace offering. I saw my hand clasp it, heard myself say something not nearly as clever as I had said in my rehearsals for this moment.

It was then that I caught the scent of her perfume, the bottle of which, shaped like a blue star, had sat every day on the bathroom counter. I was suddenly besieged by memories: her shoulders in the dress she wore to her office party our last Christmas together, the indentation of her pillow in the morning, the hair across her face as she slept, her clothes, pooled by the side of our bed.

“Clay,” Richard said. I detected, in the single syllable of my name, a slight accent. British. Wouldn’t you know it.

“You look good,” Aubrey lied. She seemed flushed, as though too warm in her cable-knit sweater and corduroys, a mixture of slight confusion and what I would recognize later as benign detachment in her eyes. Her lips, glossy and pink, were parted, as if on the cusp of a remark. I remembered the shape of that mouth, found myself first gazing and then staring at it. She had a front tooth that had always been at a slight angle so that it nudged her upper lip. She had been self-conscious of it, but I had thought it endearing. It kept her otherwise aristocratic look somehow approachable, more human. But now I was certain there was no discrepancy between those white edges. She had gotten it fixed! The lips closed, parted again as her blue gaze flitted from me, to Richard, and back like a moth, settling at last on the woman coiled at my side.

“Yvonne.” The demon smiled in that magnanimous way women do when they know they’re the prettier of the two. Her head tilted just perceptibly then, and I recognized with alarm a faint buzzing in the air. Her smile broadened. “Clay was just telling me how you used to come here together.”

I was mortified. I wrapped my arm around her. Aubrey gave a slight smile.

“I’m surprised to see you in the mummy room.” I wanted to accuse her—of getting her tooth fixed, of coming to the mummy room though she didn’t like it.

“I insisted, having never seen it before. Quite spectacular, really,” Richard said, coming to her rescue.

I hated him.

“So nice to meet you, Yvonne.” Aubrey’s expression was benign, betraying no insecurity or envy, only a bare hint of surprise. “Are you from the city?”

“Yes. I’m an attorney,” the demon said.

“Ah.” Aubrey was obviously impressed, her gaze bouncing from “Yvonne” to me, and back. And with ex- husband perception I heard her thinking that she would never have thought an attorney to be my type. “What kind of law?”

“I litigate product liability lawsuits,” Lucian said with a smile. I had no idea what that meant but felt an instant alignment like gratitude toward her that both surprised and unsettled me.

Richard checked his watch. “Well, I’m a bit peckish. Do you mind much, Bree, if we head up to the restaurant for some lunch?”

Richard to the rescue again. Aubrey excused them both with a smile and nod. “It’s good to see you, Clay.”

When their footsteps had receded out into the American galleries, I turned on Lucian. “You had no right,” I hissed, feeling the heat of the initial meeting still in my face.

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