Another car drove past slowly, but it wasn’t Nick.

She wore no watch—who wanted a watch on her wedding night? — but the grandfather clock against the wall ticked away the minutes as she watched the hands make their rounds. Eight o’clock. Nine o’clock.

Clearly, the business deal or whatever it was, was taking longer than usual. Should she phone?

Start as you mean to go on. Charity had no intention of being a clinging, cloying wife, so she decided against it.

Ten o’clock. This was…odd. Nick was a courteous man. He knew perfectly well she was waiting for him, had been for five hours. It seemed impossible that he wouldn’t let her know he’d be late. Even if he was immersed in business, a quick phone call wouldn’t be out of place. Or he could have someone call her, a secretary or something.

Eleven o’clock. Charity finally broke down and called his cell phone, but only got a recorded message that the party she was dialing couldn’t be reached and to try again later.

Many of the candles were guttering, some had died. She’d overdone it. The fragrance of all those scented candles vied with the sharp scents of food and made her slightly nauseous. Something roiled in her stomach and she felt bile and the white wine start to come up. By a miracle she avoided vomiting but it was touch and go.

That would teach her to drink wine on an empty stomach.

By midnight she was pacing in a tight circle, thoughts racing, fists clenching and unclenching. She’d just picked up the phone to start calling local hospitals when the front doorbell rang.

It couldn’t be Nick. He had the key. Peeking through the living room curtains she saw a police car parked at the curb, lights flashing. She rushed to the door and found a highway patrolman on her porch. Not too tall, dark hair cut military-short. He looked about twelve and was nervously holding a big Smoky hat, twisting it in his hands.

“Ms. Charity Prewitt?”

“Yes?” Her hand went to her throat. Charity stared at him, wide-eyed. “Actually, Mrs. Nicholas Ames. What is it officer?”

He swallowed. “I’m sorry to have to inform you, ma’am, that there’s been accident.”

She could barely take in his words. “An…accident?”

He blinked and gulped. “Yes, ma’am. A Lexus drove off the cliff this afternoon, broke right through the guardrail. On Hillside Drive. The vehicle was…destroyed. We found the engine block number and the car was registered to a Mr. Nicholas Ames. Our computer system tells us you’d married Mr. Ames this morning. Is that correct?”

Charity stared at him, his words barely making sense. “I’m sorry?”

Ill at ease, the officer looked down at a notepad in his hand. “Did you marry a Mr. Nicholas Ames this morning, ma’am?”

“Yes, I—” Her throat was scratchy. She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. This couldn’t be happening. Nick was smart and strong. Surely he got out of the car before—“Yes, we married this morning. Is—is my husband, is he—?” The words wouldn’t come. Her throat simply closed up tight and all Charity could do was stare at him.

For an answer, the officer dug into his jacket pocket and held something out to her in the palm of his hand. Her knees buckled and she had to cling to the door-jamb for support.

“I’m really sorry to have to give you bad news, ma’am,” the officer said sorrowfully. “This was found in the car. There was nothing else left that could give us an identity. Do you recognize it?”

On his rough palm, the claddagh ring gleamed in the bright light of the porch lamp.

Parker’s Ridge

November 28

I buried my husband today.

Charity Prewitt Ames hugged her cold knees with her cold arms and shivered.

Husband. He’d been her husband for what? Five hours? Maybe six?

It wasn’t very long to be a bride. And now her husband was in the stone-cold ground and Charity wished she could follow him.

The phone rang. And rang and rang. Charity Prewitt Ames couldn’t pick up. She hadn’t answered the phone since the funeral. She didn’t want condolences, she didn’t want any gentle inquiries into how she was feeling. Everyone wanted to know if she needed something.

Why yes, yes she did need something, thank you.

Her huband back, alive.

Condolences were words. Mere words. They wouldn’t bring her husband back. Short of Nick back, there wasn’t anything anyone could give her that would make any difference whatsoever.

Uncle Franklin and Aunt Vera, bless them, stayed away because she told them she wanted to be alone. She loved them, but she couldn’t face them right now. Even knowing that Aunt Vera was probably hallucinating, out of control, and Uncle Franklin was dealing with it alone, she simply couldn’t face her aunt’s needs right now.

She couldn’t face anything right now. The only thing she could do was curl up on the couch in an aching ball of grief and sorrow. There was nothing in her to give to anyone.

Everything in her was crushed, broken. She could almost feel her rib cage caving in, sucked in by the collapse of her heart. Every cell in her body was rejecting the idea of Nick in the stony, frozen ground. A collection of charred bones in the place of her handsome, vital husband. She’d spent the past three days vomiting the notion out of her body. But however much she emptied her stomach, the reality didn’t change

The phone rang again. She counted ten rings before whoever it was hung up again without leaving a message. The cordless was nearby—all she had to do was stretch out her hand and grasp the cold plastic, punch the button to turn it on.

She’d listen to some tinny voice, tuning in and out. She’d absorb only the odd word or two. Terrible. Shocked. All the usual words. Sorry would definitely be in there.

There were proper answers to give. Little murmurs to say that she was bearing up, grief passes with time, thank you for calling.

The few times she’d answered the phone before the funeral, though, the words wouldn’t—couldn’t come out. They simply remained in her throat, like hot little knives, slicing her to bits.

The phone rang again.

Her hand stayed where it was.

The house was cold. She hated the cold. In winter, her heating bills were atrocious because she liked her house toasty warm. The fire was lit almost every evening, well into spring.

But now it was cold. She hadn’t had the energy to turn the heat on or light the fire after the funeral. She hadn’t had the energy to do anything but collapse on the couch in a miserable huddle.

The last time she’d sat on this couch, she’d been in Nick’s arms.

The cruelty of losing someone so suddenly, particularly a man as vital as Nick, was that it was impossible to take in the fact that he was dead. Not long ago, she’d been lying along her couch, Nick on top of her, kissing her neck, her breasts.

She grabbed one of the big couch pillows and buried her face in it.

It still smelled like him, like Nick. She could smell wood smoke from the blazing fire he’d built, his shampoo and soap and something that was simply…him.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine him back, the man who’d become her lover and then, crazily, her husband in the short space of a week.

Her husband.

Now gone.

Midnight, November 28

Sixty miles south of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada

The Vor had said the ocean journey would take about a week and he’d been right. Of course.

Arkady was a scientist. The rigor of science, the fact that the laws governing this world were knowable through reason, had kept him from going insane in the Gulag. But if the Vor woke up one day and said that the sun was going to rise in the west, why then Arkady would get up in the morning and look to the west for the sun.