It was a beautiful New England landscape, like a January calendar scene, except for a slight macabre detail: there were no fish in the pond and no encircling vegetation within six feet.

Inside the picturesque white house, the pale morning light diffused through lace curtains. By degrees the gathering dawn gently nudged Charles Martel from the depths of a satisfying sleep. He rolled over onto his left side, enjoying a contentment he’d been afraid to acknowledge for the past two years. There was a sense of order and security in his life now; Charles had never expected to experience this again after his first wife had been diagnosed with lymphoma. She had died nine years ago, leaving Charles with three children to raise. Life had become something to endure.

But that was now in the past, and the awful wound had slowly healed. And then to Charles’s surprise, even the void had been filled. Two years ago he had remarried, but he still was afraid to admit how much his life had changed for the better. It was safer and easier to concentrate on his work and the day-to-day necessities of family life than to acknowledge his newly regained contentment and thereby admit to the ultimate vulnerability, happiness. But Cathryn, his new wife, made this denial difficult because she was a joyous and giving person. Charles had fallen in love with her the day he met her and had married her five months later. The last two years had only increased his affection for her.

As the darkness receded, Charles could see the placid profile of his sleeping wife. She was on her back with her right arm casually draped on the pillow above her head. She looked much younger than her thirty-two years, a fact that initially had emphasized the thirteen years’ difference in their ages. Charles was forty-five and he acknowledged that he looked it. But Cathryn looked like twenty-five. Resting on his elbow, Charles stared at her delicate features. He traced the frame of her provocative widow’s peak, down the length of the soft brown hair to her shoulder. Her face, lit by the early morning light, seemed radiant to Charles and his eyes followed the slightly curved line of her nose, noticing the flare of her nostrils as she breathed. Watching her he felt a reflex stirring deep within him.