At other times, though, she planned her moves meticulously, working through all the possible combinations—of what might happen, how people might react, what she should do and say next—in the hope of being able to respond effectively whatever turn events should take. Before coming here she’d considered all the ways this moment might play out. The arguments Ash might marshal to confound her. The clever, tortuous ways he might find to avoid the unbearable fact that the wife whose loss he had mourned to the brink of madness had betrayed him. That she’d been living comfortably in a smart Cambridge apartment paid for by her lover while Ash crucified himself. Hazel had thought he would hear her out until he realized what it was she was actually suggesting. But then all her calculations failed, like the math of physicists trying to map the Big Bang. The closer she got to the moment of truth, the more her predictions broke down, the wilder the extremes to which small variations on the theme might fling her.
What do You think about Desperate Measures: A Mystery?
