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"Barely."

"I've been down here on double shift. For all I know there's been a coup." She points her spoon at the chair she stole from radiology. There's a stack of death certificates on it, a sweater, and a tangerine. "Move all that."

I move all that and sit. Upstairs everyone's been using pure diplomacy with me since early morning, speaking with careful tones and treating me with a kid glove. But Daphne talks to me like I've wandered into her kitchen, which is the entire reason I'm down here instead of in my car.

"Coffee's fresh," she says. "Well, it's hospital coffee. Fresh is subjective."

"I'm fine."

"You're gray, that's what you are." She looks at me over the mug, one beat too long. The girl came down here two hours ago. Daphne knows exactly whose table that was, but she says nothing about it. That is the whole deal between us. She doesn't ask about the ones I request to be moved here, and I don't ask why she can't keep a desk neat but has never once misfiled a body since she worked here.

I’ve never been one for friends, or people in general. Somehow, for Daphne, I’ve found myself making an exception, even though she hasn’t been here long.

She puts the mug down. "So. Has your husband fucked you yet?"

"No."

That's not entirely a lie. We did it once on our wedding day, after he killed Charles, and it was the best sex of my life, but I will never admit that to him for as long as I live. These days he wants me, I know he does, but I'm stubborn. After all that happened, all he said, he can keep right on dreaming about having me.

"Still?"

"Still."

"Manon." She takes her feet off the cabinet, which for Daphne means standing up. "Six months, married to that. And nothing."

"There was—" I wave a hand, trying not to think about it, because the truth is, I've been climbing the walls. I'm attracted to Laszlo. The man looks like a god, and I'm holding out purely to make him suffer. Seven years of stalking me doesn't get forgiven overnight. "There was a thing. At my mother's. In the bathroom."

"A thing."

"We're not talking about the thing."

"We're absolutely talking about the thing⁠—"

"You've never even met him."

"I don't have to. A man that is determined to have you is not a man you run from, Manon. That's a man you use."

"He's a criminal, Daphne. I keep telling you that." Yeah, I even told her that. The only one I’ve ever spoke to about my background. Hope I won’t ever regret it. I’m either incredibly stupid or incredibly attuned to this friendship.

"And I keep telling you my last three boyfriends were accountants, so forgive me if I don't clutch my pearls." Spoonful of cereal. "He's rich, he's odd, he knows your schedule better than HR does. If that's a criminal, sign me up." She points the spoon at me. "One year, you keep saying. Six months left, you keep saying. That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard, especially since you're dying to fuck his brains out."

"I'm leaving."

"Course you are."

"I am."

"Mm." She goes back to her cereal. She won't argue with me. She just lets the silence sit there until I hear the thing she isn't saying, loud and clear in my own head.

I realize I've been lining her pens up. All of them, nib to nib, straight as a scalpel tray, and I don't remember starting. I know exactly whose habit that is, and how I caught it. I put them down. Daphne reaches over without a word and knocks them out of line with one finger, watching my face the whole time. The cow.

"Go home, Manon. You're no good to me like this."

I stand and head for the door, but then I hear her calling my name. When I turn around, the humor is gone from her face. She was the one who took the girl in this morning, washed her, laid her out, folded her hands. For a moment she isn't joking about anything at all.

"She wasn't yours to save, Manon." A beat. "Don’t drag her home with you."

"See you in a couple of days."