Part of me wanted to refuse immediately. Another part, the part that had spent two years interpreting Julian's every change in mood as something I might be able to fix, wanted to run toward him and hear him say this had all been a misunderstanding. I asked Amara to tell him I would speak with him for fifteen minutes in the open-air lobby, with no access to my villa and no private walk. It was not a decision made from confidence. It was a way of giving my fear boundaries before I went to meet it.
He was standing beside a fountain when I arrived. His linen shirt was crisp, his hair combed back, and he held a paper shopping bag from a resort boutique. He smiled when he saw me, the same welcoming expression that had undone so many earlier disagreements. For one heartbeat I almost believed our marriage could be returned to the place it had occupied before the airport.
"There you are," he said, reaching for me. "My wife."
I stepped back. His smile thinned, and he lowered the bag. In the space between those two movements, I saw the version of him who used affection to close a discussion before it started. I had arrived prepared to be honest, and I reminded myself that honest did not have to mean loud.
"We can talk here," I said. "For fifteen minutes."
Julian glanced around the lobby. "You really need an audience? Clara, I came all the way over here to fix this."
"You came from the hotel where you're staying with Sofia. I'm not sure what you think needs fixing first."
He made a weary sound and looked at the ceiling. The gesture had always been effective: it implied that my words were childish enough to exhaust a reasonable man. I had spent years responding by softening the very concern he was refusing to hear. This time I waited in silence.
"Nothing is happening between me and Sofia," he said finally. "She's helping with a report. You saw a white dress and decided to invent a story."
"I didn't ask whether you were sleeping with her," I said, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice. "I asked why you brought her on our honeymoon without asking me."
Julian shifted his weight. "Because I knew you would make a big thing of it."
The answer struck more deeply than a confession would have. He had not forgotten to tell me. He had anticipated that I would object and selected the moment when he thought my objection would be hardest to express. I looked at the man I had married and felt the room rearrange itself around that small, devastating fact.
"You knew I would say no," I said. "So you waited until the airport."
"I was trying to avoid unnecessary drama."
"You weren't avoiding drama. You were avoiding my choice."
Julian's mouth opened and closed. He looked toward the water as though searching for a better way to explain himself. Then he lifted the boutique bag and held it out. Inside was a bracelet with a pale blue stone, lovely and expensive enough to be intended as the final argument. I did not take it.