She was talking to Mark on the phone the next day about the three shoots she had lined up for November, and the future show at the Tate Modern, and he made a comment about Finn.

“That’s too bad about his contract. He must be upset about it.” Hope was confused the minute he said it. They had celebrated his signing it only a few days before.

“What do you mean?”

“I hear they dropped him. He failed to deliver his last two books, and his sales have plummeted. I guess people think the subjects are too weird. They scare the hell out of me,” he added. “There was an article about it in The Wall Street Journal yesterday. They dropped him, and they’re even threatening to sue him to recover monies for the two books he didn’t deliver. It’s amazing how people can fuck things up for themselves, not having discipline and living up to their contracts.” Hope felt sick as she listened, and wondered if he was embarrassed again about what had happened. But he could have shared it with her, and celebrating a new contract was pushing it. She wondered what he had signed and sent back.

From what Mark was saying, it certainly wasn’t a new contract. Maybe it was legal papers. Or nothing. She didn’t want to admit to Mark that Finn hadn’t told her. And she never saw The Wall Street Journal in Ireland. Finn knew that, so theoretically, he was safe. She hardly read the papers at all, except the local ones. They were living in a bubble at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains. Finn had counted on that. But it was a pretty shocking story, and if it was true, she knew he must be in dire financial straits, and even more so if they sued him, which was probably why he hadn’t told her. He was like a kid hiding a bad report card from his parents. But Hope also realized this was far more serious. He was lying to her about what was happening in his life, not just the past. And all he wanted to talk to her about was getting pregnant.

She thought of something else then, and checked the bank records after she talked to Mark. Finn hadn’t paid the rent he owed her monthly since they bought the house in April. She didn’t care about the money, and she never mentioned it to him so as not to embarrass him, but it was a clear sign that he was having money troubles and hadn’t told her. She knew that if he had the rent money, he would have paid. And he hadn’t. She had never thought to check, since it was just a token payment anyway.

She used it as a way of opening the topic of conversation that night, and asked him if everything was all right, since she had noticed that he hadn’t paid his rent. He laughed when she asked him.

“Is my landlady getting impatient?” he asked as he kissed her, and sat down to dinner with her in the kitchen. “Don’t worry about it. The signing money for my new contract should be here in a few days.” He didn’t tell her how much it was, but her heart sank. He was lying to her again. She didn’t know whether to be angry with him, or frightened, but his ability to skirt the truth, distort it, or just fabricate it, was beginning to unnerve her, and a red flag went up in her head. She didn’t ask him about it again, but he had just flunked the test, and it remained an obstacle between them for the next several weeks while she worried about it, and then packed for her trip to New York.

Finn walked in while she was closing her suitcases and instantly looked like an abandoned child.

“Why do you have to go?” he asked petulantly, as he pulled her onto the bed with him. He wanted her to stop and play, and she had a lot to do before she left in the morning. But she was upset with him anyway. He still hadn’t told her the truth about his contract, and if everything Mark said was true, his current publishing situation was disastrous. He was still working on his book, but she had never realized, when she saw him do it, that he was already two books late. He never told her, and seemed almost cavalier about it. It was stressful for her knowing he wasn’t telling her the truth, and she didn’t want to confront him yet again. His publishing life really wasn’t her business, but knowing he was truthful was important to her. And for the moment, he clearly wasn’t. “I want you to cancel your trip,” Finn said as he held her down on the bed and tickled her. And in spite of herself, she laughed. He was like a child sometimes, a big, beautiful boy, but he was also lying to his mommy, and they were man-sized lies and getting bigger. The current one was huge. And she was sure that he was lying to her out of shame. There had never been any real competition between them. They both had successful careers, in different fields, and were stars in their own right. But if he had been fired by his publisher and was getting sued, it put him at a disadvantage, and probably hurt his ego, in the face of her steady, solid, constantly rising career. She didn’t know what to say, and he wasn’t talking about his publishing problem at all.

“I can’t cancel my trip,” she told him. “I have to work.”

“Fuck it. Stay here. I’m going to miss you too much.” She almost asked him to come with her, and then realized that she needed a break. They were always together. And it was hard to work with him around. He needed constant attention, and wanted her to himself. That was fine at the house in Ireland, but it was impossible when she was trying to work in New York, and she was actually looking forward to a few weeks in her SoHo loft. She had promised Finn she would be back in Ireland by Thanksgiving, which was three weeks away.

“Why don’t you finish your book while I’m gone?” The weather was depressing in Ireland that time of year, and it sounded like he needed to do that. Maybe it would keep him from getting sued by his publisher. She had looked up the Wall Street Journal article on the Internet after talking to Mark Webber, and the situation sounded frightening to her. In his shoes, she would have been panicking, and perhaps he was, and so hiding it from her to save face. They were suing him for more than two million dollars, and interest, three million in all. It was a very, very big deal, and he had no way to pay for it, she knew, if he lost. Fortunately, the house was in her name. She had thought of putting it in his, and was planning to as a wedding present, but now she was glad she hadn’t, and she would keep it in her name if he was still being sued by the time they got married. But she was feeling uneasy about the marriage too. He had told too many lies, and it was hard to put it out of her mind. She also knew how unusual it was for a publisher to sue an author, and not handle it behind closed doors. They had to be truly furious with him to have it go that far.

Finn was in a black mood the next day when he took her to the airport, and for the first time since she had met him, she was relieved when the plane took off. She put her head back against the seat and spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out what was happening. She was feeling confused. Most of the time, he was the most lovable man she had ever known. But then there had been his viciousness when she lost the baby, his anger, and blaming her unfairly. His obsession with getting her pregnant again, his sudden willingness to spend her money, the lie he had told her about owning the house, the one about bringing up Michael, and now this huge mess he was in with his publisher that he hadn’t said a word about. There was a knot in her stomach the size of a fist, and she was relieved to get back to her comfortable apartment and her own life, just for a few weeks. She suddenly needed space and air.

It was too late to call him when the flight got in, and for once she was relieved about that too. Their exchanges seemed dishonest to her, because there was so much he wasn’t saying, and that she couldn’t say, because he had no idea what she knew. The dream was turning into a nightmare, and she needed to sort it out before it irreparably destroyed what they had.

She had given herself two days to get organized before she had to do the first shoot, and she went to see Mark Webber the next day. He was surprised to see her in his office. She never dropped in without calling first, and he could see she was upset. He led her into his private office and closed the door behind him. She sat down across the desk from him, and looked at him with worried eyes.

“What’s up?” Mark always cut to the chase, and so did she. She didn’t beat around the bush. And she was way too worried to do so now.

“Finn never told me about the lawsuit with his publisher, or the canceled contract. In fact, he told me he just signed one, which is apparently bullshit. I think he’s embarrassed to tell me, but it makes me nervous when people do that.” Listening to her made Mark nervous too. He had always been uneasy about Finn. He had only met him once or twice. He thought he was very charming, and a little slick. “I’ve never done this in my life,” Hope said, looking apologetic. “But is there some way we could get some kind of investigation, to tell us everything, past, present, whatever? Some of it is none of my business, but at least I’d know what’s true and what isn’t. Maybe there are other things he’s not telling me. I just want to know.” Mark nodded, and he was relieved to hear her say it. He had always meant to suggest it to her, ever since she said she was in love with him and planning to get married. Mark thought an investigation was a good idea in some circumstances, and in her case essential.

“Look, Hope, you don’t need to apologize to me,” he reassured her. “You’re not being nosy, you’re being sensible. You’re a very rich woman, and I don’t care how nice the guy is, you’re a target. And even the nicest guys in the world run after money. Let’s just find out what kind of shape he’s in, and what he’s done with his life.”

“He doesn’t have any money,” Hope said quietly. “Or at least, I don’t think so. Maybe he does. I just want to know everything, right from the beginning. I know he grew up in New York and Southampton, and then he moved to London. He has a house there, and he moved to Ireland two years ago. The house we live in was his great-great-grandfather’s. And he was married about twenty-one years ago, he has a twenty-year-old son named Michael. His wife died when Michael was seven. That’s about all I know. Oh, and his parents were Irish. His father was a doctor.” She gave Mark Finn’s date of birth. “Do you know someone who could check all this stuff out, so no one ever knows?” It was still embarrassing for her to be prying into the life and history of someone she loved as much as Finn, and wanted to trust. She had in the beginning, but less so now, because of his lies. Finn had an explanation for each one, but she was uneasy about it.

“I know the perfect guy for this. I’ll call him myself,” Mark said quietly.

“Thank you,” she said, looking miserable, and a few minutes later, she left Mark’s office, feeling overwhelmed with guilt. She felt terrible for the rest of the day, especially when Finn called and told her how much he loved her and how miserable he was without her. He said he almost wanted to get on a plane and come to New York, but she reminded him gently that she had to work. She was even nicer to him than she would have been normally because she felt so guilty about what Mark was doing on her behalf. But Mark was right, it was smart. And if they didn’t find any skeletons in his past, or problems, except the lawsuit, Hope knew she didn’t need to worry and could marry Finn in peace. It was getting down to the wire, and they had been talking about getting married on New Year’s Eve, less than two months away. She wanted to know before that that everything was fine. And nothing was feeling good to her right now. Her instincts were screaming, and she was feeling sick and stressed.

Hope found it unbelievably hard to work the next day. She was nervous and distracted, and couldn’t make a decent connection with her subject, which was unheard of for her. She finally forced herself to concentrate with enormous effort, and she managed to do the shoot, but it wasn’t one of her best days. And the rest of the week was pretty much the same. Now that she knew someone was checking on Finn, she wanted to get the information, deal with it, and put it behind her. The suspense was killing her. She wanted everything to be all right.

And that weekend she went to Boston to see Paul, who was in the hospital at Harvard. He had caught a bad respiratory flu on the boat, and they were afraid of pneumonia. The captain of his boat had arranged to have him sent to Boston by air ambulance, which had probably saved him.

Paul was doing better but not great, and he slept through most of Hope’s visit. She sat next to him, holding his hand, and now and then he opened his eyes and smiled at her. It was painful to think that he had once been a vital man, brilliant in his field, full of life in every way, and now it had come to this. He looked so old and frail, and had just turned sixty-one. His whole body was shaking. And at one point, he looked at her and shook his head.