I stood, giving up on eating lunch. “Apologies,” he said, not looking at all apologetic. “I think we’ve put Olive off her feed.”

I took a bite, just to be contrary, and nearly broke my tooth on some grit.

“You do know it’s called a sandwich,” he said.

I left the tent and walked into the wadi to pee. I was just buttoning my pants again when I heard Wyatt’s voice behind me. “Don’t stop on my account, Olive,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“The same thing as you, I imagine.”

I stalked past him, wondering if someone’s penis could get a sunburn, wondering why it was so easy for Wyatt to annoy me. At lunch he’d been showing off, but nothing worse than I’d heard before, and the other students found him entertaining. “Why does everything have to be a joke to you?”

He stilled, his hands at his belt. “Maybe it’s not, Olive. Maybe that’s just what I want people to see.”

“I really don’t think you have to work harder to get attention.”

“You’ve probably heard that my grandfather has a wing at the Met named after him, and that I come from four generations of Yalies?”

What an egotistical asshole. “So what?”

“What you haven’t heard is that my father effectively wiped out the family fortune in a single generation and he hates my guts because one of his sons died and it wasn’t me. And that I graduated with a double-starred first from Cambridge because I worked my bloody arse off, not because I was given a free pass. But it’s easier for people to assume I’m just another entitled idiot.” He blinked. “Why am I even telling you this,” he muttered.

“You should tell everyone. They’d like you more.”

Wyatt was quiet for a moment. “You know, the Ancient Egyptians believed that words were so powerful that if you spoke them, things might happen you didn’t want to happen. It’s why when you read the texts about Osiris being murdered, they only allude to it. And it’s probably why we keep secret what we wish for on our birthday candles, and why we never tell our wildest dreams out loud. It’s too bloody terrifying to think how our lives might change, if you just put it all out there.” I heard the buckle of his belt jingle. “I’d recommend you take your leave, unless you’re kinkier than I thought.”

As I walked out of the wadi I realized that although I had been working in close proximity with him for the past three years, I had only just met Wyatt Armstrong.

* * *

—

I DON’T SLEEP well, and finally give up the battle an hour before sunrise. I sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and picking at a stain on a place mat. I know why I dreamed what I did. All this discussion of the unfinished past with Win—no matter how hard I keep trying to focus on Brian, the memory of Wyatt keeps surfacing.

Brian pads into the kitchen in his pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, bleary, looking just as exhausted as I feel. He stands in front of me, rocking on his heels. “Hi.” He sees the look on my face. “Did I do something wrong?”

I hate that this is his first assumption; that I’ve driven him to that. But it’s not him; it’s us. I force myself to look into his eyes. “Do you ever feel…broken?”

Brian stares at me for a long, quiet moment, the way I’ve seen him focus on a puzzle in his lab when he doesn’t know why an experiment isn’t coming out the way it is supposed to. Then he pulls me into his arms. “I know you by heart. I can put you back together.”

He has made the assumption that I am talking about myself, not our marriage. Because our relationship has always been rock-steady. It’s why he didn’t think twice about going to Gita’s apartment; it’s why he was so shocked by how upset that made me. I’ve always trusted him with my heart; why would that stop now?

You are so lucky, I tell myself. You have this wonderful man. Stop obsessing over what might have gone wrong and focus on what could go right. I lean into him. “Brian? Even if I forget to say it…I love you.”

His hand strokes up and down my spine. “I know,” he says.

I know.

Suddenly I am in a rainstorm in Cairo, watching the world swim in front of my eyes. I start shaking.

Feeling me tremble, Brian holds my shoulders in his hands. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I tell him. I tell myself. “Yes, yes, fine.”

* * *

—

WIN IS ASLEEP when I arrive, and Felix is working, so I clean up the kitchen and check her medical supplies. Then I go to the desk in the hallway and take the ribboned key out. I enter the locked room with all its canvases.

I know exactly where the painting of Win is, the one that Thane created. I pull it free from its hiding spot behind three other canvases and I look at the secret in her eyes. She’s almost daring the viewer to become complicit with her.

Or maybe I’m just reading into it.

I look at the gentle slope of her breast, the divot of her belly button, her hand between her thighs. I have helped Win dress and undress. I have bathed her. Her body, to me, is a responsibility, and I watch it for signs it is failing her. But this—this is an altar built to Win, to worship what he saw.

I put the canvas back, close and lock the door, and return the key to the desk. By the time I get down the hall to check on Win, she is awake and sitting up in her bed.

“I wrote something down for you,” she says. “It’s in my vanity.”

I mentally note that she is not wearing makeup. She has dark circles under her eyes; Felix has told me she isn’t sleeping well, but she is sleeping more. I cross the room to the little white mirrored table with her jewelry box on it. In a drawer, lying amidst a jumble of eye shadow and lipsticks and face creams, is a list.

THINGS I DO NOT WANT

1. Lilies

2. Religion

3. Pallbearers

4. Mosquitoes

5. Black

6. An open casket

THINGS I DO WANT

1. Red velvet cake

2. Fireworks

3. Sidecars

I pull up a chair beside her. “I’m assuming this is about your funeral,” I say. “Mosquitoes?”

“I don’t want people wishing it was over because they’re getting eaten alive.” Win grins. “Or maybe I should say getting bitten to death.”

“What shouldn’t be black?”

“The clothes. Tell people to come dressed in bright colors.”

“I can do that,” I tell her. “And by sidecars I assume you mean the drink, not the motorcycle attachment?”

“Do I look like a Hells Angel?” She pushes herself up higher on her pillows. “Oh, that’s something else. I don’t want one of those photos of me on an easel that looks like it was airbrushed.”

“We can pick a photo that you like,” I suggest.

“Maybe later,” Win says. “I remember thinking at my wedding that it was the only time, other than my funeral, that all the people I cared about would be together in one room.” She turns to me. “What do you think happens? After?”

“I have no idea,” I say. “But then again, in utero, we probably can’t imagine any other existence. And once we get here, we don’t remember that.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Win asks.

“I believe in the figments of someone’s grief,” I tell her. “I had a client whose wife died, and she still set her a place at the dinner table every day.” I hesitate. “I think people assume death is all or nothing. Someone is here, or they’re not. But that’s not what it’s like, is it? The echo of you is still here—in your children or grandchildren; in the art you made while living; in the memories other people have of you.”

“Well, I think ghosts stick around because there’s something they didn’t finish,” Win says. “Which is why you’d better help me write that letter to Thane. If you don’t, I’m going to haunt the fuck out of you.”

I picture that painting in the locked room.

“I’ll help you find him,” I tell Win.

* * *

—

EVERYTHING I KNOW about tears I learned from Meret, who had to do a science presentation on them once. She had four giant photographs on easels, X-ray crystallography of onion tears, tears of change, laughing tears, tears of grief. Close up, they look completely different from each other, because they are. Emotional tears, for example, have protein-based hormones in them, including a neurotransmitter called leucine-enkephalin, which is a natural painkiller. Onion tears are less sticky, and disappear more quickly from a person’s cheeks.

Although all tears have salt, water, and lysozyme—the main chemical in tears—how the crystals form differs, due to other ingredients. So onion tears look as dense as brocade. Tears of change resemble the fervent swarm of bees in a hive. Laughing tears are reminiscent of the inside of a lava lamp, with smarter angles. And tears of grief call to mind the earth, as seen from above.

* * *

—

BRIAN IS GIVING me a lecture. Well, technically, he’s practicing in front of me. I am supposed to be paying attention, but I am also on my computer, trying to find Thane Bernard, the man Win left behind.