I looked at the recipe book lying on the kitchen counter.
The ticket was between pages stained by forty years of flour, butter, and handwritten measurements.
Mark had never opened that book.
He couldn’t cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs.
But I couldn’t afford to gamble on what he might search.
I slipped the ticket into the inside pocket of my cardigan just as his key entered the lock.
The door opened.
“Surprise,” he said.
He stood perfectly upright.
No trembling.
No desperate effort to breathe.
The man who had asked me to purchase a thirteen-hundred-dollar portable oxygen machine two weeks earlier looked healthier than he had in months.
I stared at him.
“What are you doing out of the hospital?”
“Doctors changed their minds.”
“Without telling me?”
“Things happened quickly.”
The woman stepped inside.
“Emily, I’m Celeste Vaughn.
I work with Mark on his financial affairs.”
