“She seems like a wonderful kid.”

“She really is,” he said, his face softening.

“Well,” she said, self-conscious about being in a room alone with a man besides Grant, suddenly aware that Christopher looked very different in a suit from the way he did in a winter coat. “I should probably—”

“You need a refill,” he said, gesturing to her glass. He pressed a button on the side of one of the bookshelves, and a row of books slid aside, like something out of a 1920s speakeasy, to reveal a shelf of bottles and glasses. He frowned at them. “Hmm. No champagne. Scotch or gin?” He caught her staring at the hiding place and held his hands up in the air. “Not my doing.”

“Gwen’s?” Whitney asked, incredulous. “And gin, please.”

“Her father’s. Gwen grew up here. She likes to keep things how they were.” He poured a stream of gin into her champagne glass, the glug of it into her flute so much more immediate than the faint sounds of the party below them, and said in an offhand way, “It’s like living in a museum.”

“So does that make you a tourist or an exhibit?” she asked. He looked at her, cocking an eyebrow, as her stomach dropped. Every so often, to her own horror, her tongue sprinted ahead of her brain, hurtling over pleasantries and all the other barriers she’d erected, exposing the ill-mannered little girl within. She blushed. “I am so sorry. That was inappropriate.” She indicated her glass and tried to make a self-deprecating face. “My tolerance seems pretty weak lately.” He didn’t answer, just put the cap back on the gin and put it away, sliding the cabinet closed as the silence grew oppressive. Conversation had always come so easily when they were sitting in the open air, the bustle of people around them distracting from what lay underneath. “You’re not having anything?” she asked.

“I don’t drink,” he said.

“Oh.” Against the almost indiscernible hum of Christmas carols from downstairs, a grandfather clock in the corner began to chime the hour. “That’s a lovely clock. An antique?”

He sat on the edge of the desk. “You want to know if I’m an alcoholic, but you’re too polite to ask.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not—”

“Don’t worry.” He smiled a sly grin, like he was fully taking her in. “I won’t tell anyone your secret.”

“What?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “My secret?”

“That you’re not as nice as you pretend to be.”

“First of all,” she said, “that’s incredibly presumptuous. Second, are you an alcoholic?”

He laughed. Then he shook his head and pointed to the odd bent of his nose. “This happened in my early twenties, when I was drunk, and it seemed like a good idea to climb a rotting tree.” She winced. “After that, I decided that I wanted to be aware of my decisions. So now, if I climb a tree, I haven’t wiped away any inhibitions beforehand. I don’t have any excuses to fall back on afterward. I own what I do. I’m in control.”

She did feel like she was in a museum, but not during the bright, good-for-you daytime. Like she was trespassing after-hours, and everything was shadowy, suffused with a sense of exciting menace. “But being in control all the time is no fun,” she said.

“I’m not in control all the time,” he said. “I have children.”

“Right.” She laughed. “Nothing like a baby to show you how powerless you really are. Maybe what I mean, then, is getting carried away. Don’t you ever miss that?”

“No,” he said, leaning back, the glow of the lamp casting his face into shadow. “I’d argue that thoroughly weighing an action makes choosing to take it even more rewarding.”

Gooseflesh prickled the backs of Whitney’s arms. “So, screw spontaneity? Hurray for pros-and-cons lists?”

“I’m not saying there’s no room for spontaneity. But, for example,” he said, standing up from the desk, “say I were to kiss you right now.”

“Oh,” she said, unsurprised and dismayed and tingling all at once.

“A hypothetical,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I wouldn’t be doing it because all the alcohol in my body gave me a momentary, ill-considered impulse or because whiskey made me want to touch someone, and you were the closest person around.” He was inches away from her now, nearer with each word, the smell of him heady around her. “I would kiss you,” he said, “because I think that you are interesting and sharp and very, very beautiful in that dress and because I don’t think anyone has kissed you well in months. Because I—clearheaded and totally alert—want to and have wanted to since I met you. And that would make the kiss so much better than if I had just, as you say, gotten carried away.”

“I’m still not convinced,” she said, breathless.

“I’ll prove it to you then,” he said, and closed that final distance between their lips.

It wasn’t that she forgot she was a mother. (Was such a thing even possible?) But as he backed her into the shelf, pressing her up against book spines, his hands in her hair and on her neck, she forgot the necessary skills of motherhood: the self-sacrifice, the pushing away of one’s own needs. She was all need now. The rush of real desire came to her again. Over the past couple of years with Grant, sex had grown into a habit. And then, once Hope had been born, it had turned into a duty. She never particularly wanted to have it anymore. Breastfeeding had sucked out all the moisture in her body, and she had a hard time getting wet enough for sex not to sting a little bit at best and actively hurt at worst. But when she turned down Grant enough nights in a row, she saw herself turning into one of those cold shrew wives who always “had a headache” and made their husbands wait all year for a birthday blow job. For the good of her marriage, she just sucked it up and faked her pleasure.

Now, though, she was practically dripping, as a pant of anticipation escaped from her mouth. And the triumph of unexpectedly being desired came back too with the catch of Christopher’s breath as he hardened against her.

But when he ran his hand up underneath her dress, his fingers inching toward that raw, wet place where she wanted him, remorse rose up in her, and she pushed him away, slapping his face once, hard, and then wiping her hand against her lips.

“Stop that,” she said. “We aren’t doing this.” She rushed past him before he could say anything, afraid of dooming herself if she looked back. She wanted to cry from the shock of it. She clattered back downstairs to Grant’s side, back to the role of compliant, pleasant wife.

But she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. She’d started seeing Christopher’s face when she’d closed her eyes with Grant (or, as she’d regained more and more energy, by herself during the day when Hope was down for a nap, sometimes multiple times in an afternoon, a voraciousness she hadn’t felt since her first adolescent discovery of masturbation). She liked imagining that he thought about her too in similar moments. A crush, she’d told herself. People get crushes. The important thing is not to act on them.