“So . . . if you’re not showing these paintings, does that mean you’re canceling the show?”

“No,” he says after a moment. “I have other work. Here. Come with me. I might as well show you what I’ve really been doing.”

He leads me across the hall and opens the door and turns on the lamp, and we both stand there, blinking in the light. On the art table in the center of the room are a bunch of little sculptures—lifelike sculptures of a woman, all of them six to eight inches high. It takes me a moment to focus on them, to see what they really are, and then I have to take a deep, sharp breath.

They are Anneliese.

Some of the sculptures show only her face with its sensuous planes, her cheeks sloping into a half smile. I see her eyes, the carved lankiness of her hair.

“This is the art I’m entering in the show,” he says. His voice trembles with . . . pride? Is that what I’m hearing?

I edge closer to them. There must be ten or twelve sculptures all lined up, like exquisite little dolls: some of them in which she’s sitting or thinking, lying back on a pillow with one hand over her face. Here, she is standing with her arms held up to the sky, her legs spread apart, her face a mask of triumph. Another shows her body curled up on the floor in a fetal position, her face hidden, her legs drawn up tight to her body. There are another few that show her torso, the gentle flow of her arms outstretched.

They are beautiful. They are sexy, they are genuine, they are human. Exquisite expressions of energy and life. And they are, every single one of them, depictions of his love for Anneliese.

And not one of them is me. Something constricts in my chest.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “You get it.” He walks around the table, so he can look at each one of them more closely. “So, this,” he says, “is what I’ve been trying to keep from you, that I’ve been reliving the whole experience with Anneliese.” His voice is halting.

“Patrick,” I say. I speak loudly, like maybe I can snap him out of this. “But why? What’s the problem here? This isn’t something shameful that you had to keep from me. Why are you acting like it was? We know each other. I’m on your side, remember?” I turn and look at him, but the air between us has taken on a dangerous feel. Like the crackling before a thunderstorm maybe.

He doesn’t drag his eyes away from all the Annelieses. “No. It’s not that simple. I’ve just been getting deeper and deeper. I feel like she’s right here with me. She feels so real to me now. Directing me.”

“Get real. She’s not here directing you! You were thinking about her and you did some sculptures, and they’re beautiful, and so you should show them.”

He looks at me mournfully.

“I need to tell you something,” he says. And I know, by the feel of the room, that he’s going to break up with me. And I am not having that today.

“No, no. Really, let’s skip it for now, and go in and have some soup. My mom made soup. You need to eat something. Look at you. You’ve been working so hard you’re not even eating, are you?”

His eyes look hollow. “I am so sorry,” he says, “but I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do what anymore? Make sculptures of Anneliese? Can’t eat soup? Of course you can. You just need to come back to yourself. This is all fine.”

Calm down, I say to myself. None of this is real. He loves me. I love him. This is not how it ends. The magic is going to kick in any second now. Just don’t let him say the final thing. Keep talking to him.

But he’s not feeling the magic. Yet. And so he holds up his hand to warn me away, and he says the Patrick version of the things guys say when they don’t love you anymore. All that mishmash of stuff, so jumbled I can barely listen. Phrases jump out at me through the buzzing in my ears.

“I’m disappointing you . . . not any good to anyone . . . can’t be a father to Fritzie . . . can’t stand it that the place is full of teenagers half the time . . . hate chaos . . . need to be alone . . . need to take a break.”

“Take a break?” I say. “What? No. We are not talking about this right now. I’m not having this. Because none of what’s going on right now is permanent. You don’t need to throw everything away when it’s all going to change in a few months’ time. Just wait it out.”

“Marnie. Face it. It’s not working.”

“What are you talking about? It does work! This is the crazy talking, Patrick. We’ve been together for years now, and I love you. You’re going to be okay! I know this more than I know anything else.”

“It’s not about love. I-I have to stay away, go back to the way things were before, being alone, living with Anneliese.”

“Living with Anneliese?” I say. “Excuse me?”

He nods, almost imperceptibly.

“Anneliese who—forgive me for mentioning this—is dead?”

“She’s dead, but she’s still in my head,” he says. He shifts his weight and looks out into the distance. I feel like snapping my fingers in front of him to bring him back to reality. Then I feel like hugging him, holding on to him for dear life. I wish I knew the emotional equivalent of CPR. But I just stand there.

“I do love you,” he says, “but it doesn’t mean anything when I’m still tormented by her, by what I did to her. I let her die, Marnie. I was standing right there, and I couldn’t save her.”

“You did not let her die,” I say. “You tried to save her, but the fire was too big, and you couldn’t. And you survived. But that doesn’t make it your fault.”

“No one understands.”

“Okay then. Back up here a minute, and let me get this straight,” I say. I decide to go for humor, of what might pass for humor. “Dude, am I seriously to believe that you, my boyfriend—a guy who says he loves me and who only recently emerged from his cave of doom to try to live a real life among the Family of Man—has now discovered a new sub-cave of doom, where you are secretly mind melding with a woman I have no chance of competing with? Is that what’s going on? You can’t see us together anymore because you’re going to stay in this room while you think about this—once more, pardon the expression—dead woman? How does that make any sense? Tell me that.”

“Technically,” he says gloomily, “it’s only an alcove of doom.”

“I get it that she gets to be perfect because she’s not here any longer, but the advantage of me is that I could still perhaps come up with some new, fantastic ways of being in your life and loving you, if you’d just open your eyes and let it in. The solution, it seems to me, is not in shutting life out again, but in letting yourself be loved. Maybe you could love life precisely because Anneliese can’t. You know, like a tribute to love.”

He’s silent for a moment, looking at his fingers and thinking, and I’m holding my breath, sure that any second now he’s going to turn to me and be regular, loving Patrick again.

But then he speaks. His voice sounds rusty and like something is hurting his throat, and he speaks so quietly, I have to lean in to hear him.

“There’s more to this. I have to tell you something. I can’t give you what you want.”