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“Henri’s wound is infected. He has a fever.” I glare at Yvette. She slept beside him. In theory he can’t keep his hands off her. How could she fail to notice it? How fucking stupid is she? “I need gauze and tape and some kind of alcohol,” I tell Marie. “And we need an antibiotic, so call Dr. Nadeau.”

I push Henri toward the room. “Lie down,” I demand.

His mouth opens to object but then he glances at Yvette, standing in the doorway, and complies. I begin to unbutton his shirt.

“I’m his wife—” she begins, but when she sees the gauze soaked through, her words fall away and she turns slightly green. “It might be best for the baby if I, um, wait outside.”

I take the alcohol Marie’s handed me and soak a fresh piece of gauze with it before applying it to the wound. He stiffens, but his eyes never leave my face.

“I wasn’t trying to say you were worse,” he says through gritted teeth. “Just that you’ve changed.”

I prefer the angry Henri. The kind one makes tears spring to my eyes and I have to keep my head down so he won’t notice. “I know I’ve changed,” I reply. “And I’m definitely worse.”

Marie returns to the room. “Dr. Nadeau says there’s nothing he can do,” she tells me. “They made him send all his penicillin to the front.”

“And you believe him?”

She’s as wide-eyed as a schoolgirl. “Why would he lie?”

I shake my head. How she can have such faith in human nature after what we went through? Perhaps because she wasn’t conscious for it. I envy her that.

“He has children, and grandchildren,” I answer. “Do you really believe for a moment that he didn’t set something aside for his family?”

She blinks. “But then it’s for his family.”

“No,” I reply. “Anything he has is mine, if I want it to be. And right now, I want his goddamn antibiotics.”

If they’re unsettled by my harsh answer, neither of them say so. Marie walks out and I continue to bandage Henri’s stomach. “How do you know so much about this?” he asks.

“I don’t,” I reply. But I apparently know more than your useless wife.

I smooth the gauze down and tape it, thinking of the last time he lay in bed like this, shirtless, in daylight. I’d been making scones when he called out to me. I came to the room to see what he needed and found him much like he is right now, naked from the waist up, pants unbuttoned.

“You made it sound like you were injured,” I’d said, perching beside him.

“I’m in a great deal of pain, which is similar,” he replied with a grin, his hand moving between my thighs. “Let’s discuss a cure.”

“Perhaps you’re dehydrated.”

His fingers slid beneath my panties, sliding in small, torturous circles. “How fortunate for us both that you’re not.”

It was like that with us. He just had to touch me, and I’d abandon every other plan.

Now he is someone else’s, but I want him just the same, and he’s looking at me with the same expression he had that day. His eyes hungry, desperate. He is gravely ill from a gunshot wound, yet looking at me like all of this—his wound, his marriage—is as meaningless as the scones that burned that day and stunk up the house until nightfall.

“You shouldn’t be looking at me like that,” I tell him, rising.

“I know,” he says, flinching. “I’m sorry.”

I feel his eyes on me, though, until I’ve walked out of the room and shut the door behind me.

In the kitchen, Yvette’s gaze sweeps over me, head to foot, and she gives me a tight smile. “Already done?” she asks. “Such a treat. My husband never takes a day off. I’ll go see if he has need of me.”

My jaw grinds. There’s absolutely no question in my head what kind of need she means. And yet I resume my place at the table, because a part of me wants to hear it. Wants to hear his noises, wants the pain of accepting that he loves her and enjoys her as much as he did me. I want to scrape myself raw with his sounds until I finally accept that it is over with him and meant as little as it must have for him to have moved on the way he did.

But within a few seconds, Yvette returns. “You could have told me he was asleep,” she says with pursed lips.

Henri couldn’t possibly be asleep yet. Which means he’s pretending to sleep to avoid his wife.