“But fast-forward a few years, and the dynamic has shifted. The older person still has the vision, but the younger one has heard it all before. And they’re probably not so sweet and fresh anymore, either. So, inevitably, they move on.”

“Why’s it called Galatea syndrome?”

“From an ancient Greek myth. About a sculptor called Pygmalion, who rejected all the women of Cyprus as frivolous and wanton. Until one day, he carved a statue of a woman so beautiful and pure, he couldn’t help falling in love with it. At which point the statue came to life and loved him right back. He called her Galatea. I guess today we’d say he fell in love with an ideal, rather than a person.”

“I think I know how that feels. On the receiving end, I mean.”

Megan nods. “I did suggest to Tim that jumping into marriage with a woman a decade younger than him, someone he’d only known for a few months, wasn’t wise. But Tim believes in being decisive. The best I could do was get the two of them to sit down and talk through a prenup.”

“I did wonder about that. I read it this morning. It seemed quite…draconian.” You’d wondered if Megan even deliberately set the marriage up to fail, hoping for repeat business.

“The point of the prenup is never the prenup,” she says flatly. “The point of the prenup is, first, to get two idealistic, loved-up individuals to be honest about what their expectations for this relationship are. And second, to provide some kind of road map for a healthy marriage.” She waves a hand in the direction of Silicon Valley. “Most of my clients couldn’t navigate a cocktail party without a list of step-by-step instructions, preferably written in Python or JavaScript. I like to think that by incorporating things like date nights, vacations, and non-work days into a prenup, I’m giving them some sort of blueprint for normality.”

   “I think Tim may have taken it more literally than you intended. Getting Abbie to take a drug test every time she seemed a bit too cheerful.”

“Yes. Well, I did what I could to get them both over that particular road bump.”

“What do you mean?”

Megan only lifts an eyebrow, but you immediately guess. “Abbie failed the drug test. She failed, but you told Tim she’d passed.”

Megan hesitates, as if deciding how much to tell you. “Not exactly. According to the hair analysis, she was clean for coke and other class-A drugs. But it showed high levels of alcohol. That wasn’t covered by the prenup, so officially it was none of my business. But I sat her down and read her the riot act anyway. Even though it wasn’t her who was my client, I felt responsible for her. Protective, even. She was always this sweet, optimistic person, and then her kid got that horrible condition…It can’t have been easy.”

“What did she say when you did that?”

“She swore she was talking to her drug counselor about it. That she was determined to make the marriage work, for Danny’s sake if nothing else.” Megan shrugs. “She was probably lying. All addicts lie. Drinkers, too—to themselves, mostly. I should know. I used to be one.”

You think. Megan assumed Abbie was lying because she was a drinker who wasn’t going to stop. But what if Abbie had been planning to leave, even then? And what if the drinking wasn’t the cause of the marriage breakdown, but a consequence of it?

“When was this?” you ask.

Megan pinches the bridge of her nose while she thinks. “Roughly the middle of July.”

Three months before Abbie left. Perhaps it wasn’t only Tim who’d been in love with an ideal, you reflect. Perhaps Abbie, too, had had a kind of fantasy of a perfect life: a perfect marriage, perfect children, a wealthy and successful husband. When that dream collapsed, had her first response been to dull the reality with alcohol, and her second to flee altogether?

   You feel a flash of sympathy—sympathy you’re careful to suppress. Abbie’s flaws were human, certainly. But her flaws are also your strengths. You will never be addicted to alcohol or drugs. Your decisions will never be clouded by medication or idealism or lust.

“If you thought Abbie was wrong for Tim,” you say, “who would have been right?”

Megan’s smile fades. “Pygmalion fell in love with his own creation. Because only his own creation could truly live up to the ideal inside his head. Not to mention, remain untainted by all the weakness and vanity he perceived, or thought he perceived, in flesh-and-blood women.” She points an elegantly manicured finger at you. “Frankly, I’d say you’re a far better match for Tim Scott than the real Abbie could ever be. He just hasn’t realized it yet.”

52

   You’re heading back to the city in another Uber, thinking over what Megan told you, when Tim calls.

“Where are you?” he wants to know. “Is that traffic I can hear?”

“Just doing some shopping.” An idea occurs to you. “For tonight. I’m cooking something special. Can you be home by eight?”

“Hmm—sounds intriguing. I’ll try.”

After he hangs up you pop open the SIM holder and remove the card. You don’t want Tim going on Find My Phone to check your whereabouts.

“Change of destination,” you tell the Uber driver.

* * *

—

There’s a customer in the phone shop, so you wait for her to leave before going in. As soon as Nathan sees you, he comes out from behind the counter and locks the door.

“I was wondering when you’d show up again. I’ve unscrambled some more material.”

“First things first. I want a burner phone.” You’d meant to get one before, but the argument over whether Nathan could look at your code had distracted you.

   He raises his eyebrows. “Know all the lingo, don’t we? What sort of burner?”

“What have you got?”

“That depends on whether you need international roaming.” He starts describing different models. But you’re not listening.

You’ve had an intuition—a flashback, almost. You were here once before, buying a secret phone, just as you are now.

Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. This is the nearest phone shop to the house on Dolores Street. It’s only natural that this is where Abbie would come.

“Well, you tell me,” you interrupt. “Did I get international before?”

You stare him out.

“Yes,” he says, dropping his eyes. “You got one of these.”

He passes you a small blister pack containing a cheap flip phone. It would have looked dated even back then.