He turns, his eyes tracking me. “There’s one thing I can’t figure out. Why were you so mad at me for what happened with Gita?”

Her name, inconceivably, still shivers through me. “I don’t know. Maybe because a part of me felt like I’d given up Wyatt years ago, and it wasn’t fair that you’d get to think about someone else.” I hesitate. “Maybe because you stopped short of…cheating. And I don’t know if I could have.”

At my confession, a shocked laugh bursts out of Brian. “Wow,” he breathes. “Okay.”

We sit in the silence for so long that it presses against my eardrums. “I know it’s not worth much, but I’ll always love you.”

“Just not enough,” he murmurs, and I flinch. When he looks up at me, though, it is with kindness. “You should sleep. One of us should, anyway.”

I nod, setting my glass in the sink.

“I know it’s stupid, but the house feels different with you here. More…right.”

When I turn around again, his hands are curled around his whiskey glass. “It’s not stupid,” I say quietly, and I leave him sitting in the near dark.

* * *

—

I AM SWIMMING in flames. Ash sits on my tongue, my eyelashes, my skin. I roll to my side and see a dragon made of smoke, fire belching from its jaws. I turn the other way, and stare into sightless eyes.

I stagger to my feet, trying to find my voice, but it’s muffled by the cries of others. I am walking on cobblestones made of the dead. I need to find him. I need to find him.

The soles of my feet are bare and pressed to glowing coals. I look down, squinting through a blizzard of cinders, and see a faint line. One blue. And beside it, one black.

I start moving.

Demons scream to me. One in the shape of a child without a face. One is a woman broken over a metal spike, her arms and legs still wheeling. I keep my eyes on my feet, shuffling one foot in front of the other, each ankle rocking on two syllables: Wyatt. Wyatt.

In front of me is an inferno. Behind me is an angry ocean. I am supposed to know the answer to something but I cannot remember it.

A monster rears up in my face, bloody and clutching me.

But this one is shouting to me. Dawn! Dawn.

I choke on his name.

“Dawn!”

My eyes open on a gasp. I am sweaty and trembling in Brian’s arms. “You were having a nightmare,” he says. His hand skates down my spine. He seems to realize that he is sitting on the edge of the sofa and that I am wearing a T-shirt and underwear, and he lets go of me as if I really am on fire.

I can still feel the shape of his hands on my skin. “You’re okay,” he whispers, and I believe him.

* * *

—

WHAT SURPRISES ME is how slow the break is. Not a clean cut, not a guillotine, but tugging and pulling and dislocation. So much has to happen before that final separation. I realize that, partly, this is because neither Brian nor Wyatt will force my hand. I can envision my future, but it’s superimposed on my past. When I am with Wyatt, it feels like seeing the world for the first time, in colors so rich they don’t have names. When I am with Meret and Brian, it feels like sifting through every treasured tapestry of memory. Who could ever choose one at the expense of the other?

The day after I get home, Kieran bullies me into going to the hospital for a CT scan to be read by his supervising doctor, the best neurosurgeon in Boston. Although I haven’t had any pain or complications, I know he will not trust my health until he sees me with his own eyes.

Wyatt takes me to the appointment and goes to the cafeteria to get us coffee while I’m in the waiting room. I am skimming an old magazine when my brother comes through the door, still wearing his scrubs from surgery.

He catches me up in a tight embrace. “Goddammit, Dawn,” he murmurs. “You don’t get to leave me like everyone else did.”

“Doing my best not to,” I say. I close my eyes, clutching him. I have been with my brother in Boston for fifteen years. I have been so busy thinking about Meret in this messy equation I have completely forgotten that if I go to Egypt with Wyatt, I’ll be leaving Kieran, too.

He draws me back at arm’s length and examines my scar critically. “Nice work,” he concedes. “Who’s the surgeon from North Carolina? When do the staples need to be removed?”

Suddenly, Wyatt is at my side, holding two coffee cups. He smiles widely, trying to figure out how to extend a hand for a shake while still holding the lattes.

“You must be Kieran. I’m Wyatt Armstrong. I’ve heard so much about you.” He passes me my coffee. “Here, Olive.”

“He doesn’t know your name?” Kieran murmurs. “Did he have a head injury, too?”

“He knows my name. It’s a long story.”

Stunned, Kieran shakes Wyatt’s hand. “I didn’t realize he came back with you…”

“He came to meet Meret. He’s her biological father.”

Kieran’s eyes widen. “Did not see that one coming.”

“That makes two of us,” I murmur.

The nurse behind the desk looks up. “Ms. McDowell?”

“Back to the maiden name?” Kieran muses.

While I change into a hospital gown and robe, Kieran waits outside the little dressing room. “So let me get this straight,” he says. “You brought your boyfriend home to your husband?”

“Shut up, Kieran.” I step out of the dressing room and let him lead me to the imaging suite. “I had a plan. And then I wound up having brain surgery.”

“If I had a dime for every time I heard that excuse…” He talks to the radiology assistants, who help me climb onto the table and lie down. I am covered with a sheet. Kieran steps into the glass booth, his arms crossed, watching me as I slide into the metal tube.

“Okay, Dawn. This won’t take long.” I hear his voice over a speaker. It’s even and calming, but I know him well enough to hear the thread of anxiety. He is just as afraid of what he might see as I am. “Hold still. Don’t move.”

As if I am not already paralyzed.

I close my eyes and hope that whatever Kieran is seeing on that computer screen is normal, and clear, and perfect. Please let it be all right, I pray.

I’ve only just found him again.

After a few minutes, I am wheeled back out. Kieran pushes a button and speaks to me through the glass. “I never thought I’d say this, but your brain is perfect.”

I let out a long breath of relief. Now if I only could figure out my heart.

“On the other hand,” Kieran continues, “your hair looks like a freak show.”

I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest. “Dr. McDowell,” I say. “Fuck you.”

* * *

—

THE NEXT DAY, when Brian is at work, Wyatt comes over. He uses my laptop to write a draft of an article while I read a novel; we take a slow walk around the reservoir. We pick up Meret at camp. In the late afternoon, Wyatt and Meret play Monopoly until he insists he’s going to die of boredom and begs me for a deck of cards so he can teach her Spite and Malice. “Okay, the goal of the game is to clear your personal deck,” Wyatt says. “You’ve got five cards in your hand. You have to play your aces and twos. Jokers are wild, but can’t be an ace, two, seven, or king…” He laughs. “Get ready to throw shit.”

Meret’s eyes light up when he swears. “Dammit. I’m probably not supposed to curse,” he says, and he smiles twice as wide.

We are careful not to touch each other when Meret is nearby. Or maybe I am careful, and Wyatt respects my space. It lets me hover at the edges of their conversation, pretending to do things like clean the kitchen counter or answer email.

I am sitting in an armchair, chipping away at the mountain of unanswered messages in my inbox, when they finish their game and Wyatt shuffles in preparation for another.

“That was beginner’s luck,” he says sourly.

“You’re a sore loser.”

“That’s what you think. You’re going down, sukar.”

“Sukar?”

He looks surprised to have said it himself. “It’s Arabic. For sugar.” His cheeks redden. “Like a…nickname.”

Over the edge of my laptop I watch the blur of cards in his hands—a waterfall, a fan, rising against gravity.

“Are you going to go back to Egypt?” Meret asks, and the cards fly all over the place.

He glances at me sidelong as he begins to gather them together. “I plan to, eventually.”

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I hear Meret’s response: “Can I come?”

Wyatt grins. “I’d like that.”

“I want to see the Great Pyramid.”

“No, you don’t,” he insists. “It’s cramped and touristy. I’ll take you to see tombs that haven’t seen the light of day in thousands of years—”

“But the Great Pyramid is the one where they found that new inner burial chamber by using muons.”

“Using what?” I ask.