My husband be@t me for refusing to live with my mother-in-law. Then he calmly went to bed. The next morning, he handed me a luxury makeup kit and said, “My mother’s coming for lunch. Cover that up and smile.”

Four places. Him, his mother, me.

And the fourth, which Georgiana always insists on for “anyone who might drop by.”

I laid it very neatly. I thought, while I was laying it: that’s for the officer.

Lunch.

Georgiana arrived at five to one in pearls and a cream jacket and kissed her son on both cheeks.

And then she turned to kiss me.

And stopped.

Because I had not used the kit.

I was sitting at the dining table in a white shirt with my hair pulled back, and my face exactly as he had left it, and nothing on it at all.

And Dorian came in from the kitchen with the wine and saw me, and his face did something I had never seen it do before, which was lose its expression entirely.

“Liesel,” he said. “Go upstairs and sort your face out.”

And I did not move.

I took the black box out from under my chair, and put it in the middle of the table, between the bread and the salad.

Unopened. Ribbon retied.

And on top of it, I put the receipt. Flat. Face up. With her name on it and the date.

And nobody said anything.