“You're not going to starve. Your kids are going to be okay, and so are you, and you have each other.” But if Doug left, she would no longer have a husband. And for nearly twenty years now, her identity had been entirely tied up with him. She felt as though a part of her had just been torn away, and she was left with a gaping wound now, no matter how unhappy he had made her. This wasn't going to be easy either. It might even have been easier to give up her career, and shrivel up and die inside, doing what he told her, she told herself. But even she knew she didn't believe that. She was just scared now. But Paul was helping. Even his anger at Doug put things into sharper focus for her.

It also made her wonder for a moment if Paul was going to be there for her. But he had said nothing about that. They talked to each other almost every day, about everything that crossed their minds, and shared their most hidden secrets, but nothing had ever been said between them about the future. And this hardly seemed the time to ask him.

“Do you know where he is?” Paul asked, as she blew her nose.

“I have no idea. He never called to tell me.”

“He will eventually. Maybe this is for the best. I think you should call a lawyer.” But she didn't feel ready to do that. There was still a chance that Doug would calm down and come back, and they could still limp hand in hand into the future. “Can you get some sleep?” he asked sympathetically. He wished he were there to comfort her. She sounded like a frightened child as he listened to her.

“I don't think so.” It was already four o'clock in the morning.

“Try, before the kids get up. I'll call you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Paul,” she said, as tears filled her eyes again. She was still feeling overwhelmed by everything that had happened, but he understood that.

“Everything's going to be all right,” he told her, sounding confident. He had the confidence for her that he no longer had for his own life.

After they hung up, she lay in bed for a while, thinking about him, and about Doug, and everything that had happened in the past six months. And all she could think of in the dark of night was that she was going to be alone now.

And on the boat, Paul was staring unhappily out to sea, thinking of her and the constant abuse she was taking from Doug. He was sick of it on her behalf, wished he could say as much to Doug, and tell him never to come near her again. But he knew he had no right to do that.

He took the tender out after a while, and went to the Cipriani, and found the magazine her photos were in. He stood and looked at them in the lobby. They were sensational, and if Doug objected to them, as far as Paul was concerned, he was crazy. Paul couldn't have been more proud of her, and he called her at nine o'clock, her time, to tell her.

“You really like them?” she asked, sounding incredulous and pleased. Doug still hadn't called, and she was standing barefoot in her nightgown in the kitchen, making coffee. The kids were still sleeping.

“I've never seen anything so moving or so impressive. You made me cry when I read it.”

“Me too,” she admitted. But all Doug had seen was the sleaziness of the prostitution ring and somehow associated India with it.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked, still sounding worried.

“Not much. About an hour. I fell asleep around seven.”

“Try and take a nap today. And give yourself a big pat on the back from me, for this story.”

“Thank you,” she said. They talked for a few more minutes, and then hung up. Raoul called her a little later, and said essentially the same thing Paul had about the story.

“If you don't win a Pulitzer for this, India, I'll invent a new prize for you myself. This is the most powerful thing I've ever seen in pictures.”

“Thank you.”

“What did your husband say?” he asked, sure that this would finally convince him to let her do the work she was so good at, and that meant so much to her.

“He left me.”

There was a long pause as Raoul listened. “You're kidding, right?”

“No, I'm not. He walked out last night. I told you, he means business.”

“He's crazy. He should be carrying you around on his shoulders.”

“Not exactly.”

“I'm sorry, India.” He sounded as though he meant it. He had always liked her, and never had understood her husband's position about her working.

“Me too,” she said sadly.

“Maybe he'll come back after he calms down.”

“I hope so,” she said, but she no longer knew what she did hope. And Paul was slowly becoming part of an ever more tangled picture. She no longer knew if she wanted to fix it with Doug, or dare to believe that somehow, somewhere, she and Paul would manage to crawl through their respective griefs and manage to find each other. The hope of that, slim as it was, was becoming increasingly appealing. But he had never made any indication to her that that was even a remote possibility, and most of the time, she was fairly sure it wasn't. She couldn't leave a seventeen-year marriage for a vague fantasy she had about a man who swore he would never again have a woman in his life, and was determined to spend the rest of his life hiding on a sailboat. Whatever it was she had with Paul meant a great deal to her, but it was only a slim reed to hang on to. And in truth, it was more friendship than romance.

After she talked to Raoul, she and the children managed to get through the day, and she told them that Doug had had to go out of town on business to see clients. She never heard from him all weekend or from Paul again, and on Monday morning, she called Doug at the office.

“How are you?” she asked bleakly.

“I still feel the same way, if that's what you're asking,” he said tersely. “Nothing's going to change, India, unless you do.” And they were both beginning to realize that was unlikely.

“Where does that leave us?”

“In pretty deep water, if you ask me,” Doug said unsympathetically.

“That's a pretty tough thing to do to the kids over Christmas. Don't you think we could at least put this aside until after the holidays, and then try to resolve it?” It was a reasonable solution, if not to the problem, then at least to not ruining Christmas for the children.

“I'll think about it,” he answered, and then told her he had to meet with clients. He had told her the hotel where he was staying, and she didn't hear from him for the next two days. And on Wednesday he called her, and agreed to come back, at least through Christmas. “For the kids' sake.” But he made no apology to her, and held out no olive branch, and she guessed correctly that his return to the house would be extremely stressful.

She talked to Paul every day that week. He called her most of the time, but she called him occasionally for moral support, and on Friday night, a week after he had left, Doug returned to Westport. It was only four days before Christmas, and the kids were beginning to wonder why he had been gone since the previous weekend. The excuse that he had to see clients had been wearing thin, and they all seemed pleased to see him.

But Doug's return complicated things for India. It made it impossible for Paul to call her again, but she went to a phone booth every day over the weekend. On Monday, it was Christmas Eve, and on her way home from the grocery store, she called Paul collect from a pay phone. He sounded as depressed as she was. He was keening for Serena. And she was miserable with Doug. He had devoted himself to making the holidays as difficult as he could for her, and she just hoped they made it through Christmas, for the children.

“We're a mess, aren't we?” Paul smiled wistfully as he talked to her. Even being on the boat no longer cheered him. He just kept sifting through his memories, and had even gone through some of the things she had left in their cabin. “I still can't believe she's gone,” he said to India, sounding bereft. And she still couldn't believe she was about to lose her marriage. It was hard to understand how lives got so screwed up, how people made such a mess of things. Paul, of course, didn't have to blame himself, or feel it was his fault. But India still wondered in her own case. Doug was so willing to blame her for everything, that at times she actually believed him.

“Are you going to do anything nice over the holidays?” she asked, wishing she could think of something to cheer him. But staying on the boat, as he did, she hadn't even been able to send him a present. She had written him a silly poem, and faxed it to the boat that morning from the post office, and he'd said he loved it. But that didn't solve their larger problems. “Are you going to church?” Venice certainly seemed a good place to do that.

“God and I are having a little problem these days, I don't believe in Him, and He doesn't believe in me. For the moment, it's a standoff.”

“It might just be pretty and make you feel good,” she suggested, stamping her feet in the freezing cold in the outdoor phone booth.

“It's more likely to make me angry, and feel worse,” he said, sounding stubborn. In his opinion, if there was a God, he wouldn't have lost Serena, and India didn't want to argue with him about religion. “What about you? Do you go to church on Christmas Eve?”

“We do. We go to midnight mass and take the children.”

“Doug should be doing some serious soul searching for the way he's been treating you in the last six months.” Not to mention before that. And then, out of the blue, “I miss her so much, India, I can't stand it. Sometimes I think that the sheer pain of it is going to blow me to bits, I feel like it's going to rip my chest out.”

“Just keep thinking of what she would have said to you. Don't forget that. Listen to her …she wouldn't want you to feel like this forever.” And he wouldn't, but right now was the worst. She had been gone for less than four months, and it was Christmas. India felt helpless in the face of his agony, and at this distance. If they were together, at least she might have been able to put her arms around him, and hug him. That might have been something. But Paul couldn't even find solace in India's words now.