By ten o’clock I was out the door, dressed, hair blown straight, makeup applied. In my office, I sipped a latte and returned calls and e-mails for an hour and a half, revising a press release announcing my jewelry company’s new line of charm bracelets (“The perfect gift for Mother’s Day!”), calling to confirm receipt for the invitations we’d sent for a cocktail party in honor of a bridal magazine’s new editor, their fourth in three years. I was taking my assistant Daphne to lunch at Michael’s. Then I’d head to the salon for a bikini wax and a facial. On Friday, Marcus and I were flying to the Bahamas for the fiftieth birthday of one of Marcus’s partners’ wives — a first wife. Seeing one of those was sort of like glimpsing a rare bird or monkey, a member of an endangered species, upright and uncaged and walking among us.

Daphne and I were halfway through our salads, and I was listening to her tell me about her latest boyfriend’s new job — something to do with corporate branding and search-engine optimization — when my phone trilled from inside my bag. I bent down to look at the number. When I saw that it was Marcus’s office, I picked up fast, pressing the phone against my ear and bending my head close to the table. Marcus and I emailed. The only times he’d call me during the workday was when it was an emergency.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Croft?” Kelly, one of Marcus’s executive assistants, was on the line, and she sounded as rattled as I’d ever heard her.

I was on my feet before I knew it. Daphne stared at me. What’s wrong? she mouthed. I hurried through the restaurant without answering, not even sparing a glance at Barbara Walters at the table by the window, and stood on the sidewalk as Kelly gave me the details. Chest pain. . called the doctor. . Beth Israel. . intensive care. “Does his cardiologist know? Is it the same blocked artery?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Croft, but I told you everything they told me.”

“I’ll be right there,” I told her. I ran out the door and into the first cab I saw, snapping out the hospital’s address, hardly able to breathe.

What would I do without him? I thought, as the cab made its way downtown. How would I live? How would I pay the bills, how would I manage the staff? I had no idea how any of it worked. I hadn’t wanted to learn. I’d been superstitious, thinking that too many questions would be asking for trouble. I’d turn myself into Bluebeard’s wife. If I went poking around, I’d find. . what? A row of my beheaded predecessors rotting in the basement? Documents showing that Marcus was secretly broke? And what was I doing, thinking this way at a time like this? Marcus. My husband. The man I’d come to love, with all my heart, in spite of myself.

Through the windows, I saw a man with a plastic bag over his hand holding a little dog’s leash, a boy and a girl walking side by side, one earbud of the iPod she carried in each of their ears. I pulled my telephone out of the purse and called Trey at the office and Tommy on his cell phone and Bettina at Kohler’s, saying that I didn’t know what was happening, but that I’d been told it was urgent; that I was on my way to the hospital and that they should probably join me.

“I’ll leave right now,” said Trey.

“Be there as soon as I can,” said Tommy.

Bettina hadn’t said anything before she’d hung up. I knew she was thinking that this was, somehow, my fault, even though I’d been the one to call the doctor that first time, and I’d been the one to monitor his diet, to make sure he took his medication, to buy a treadmill and hire a trainer, to tell him, every night, how much I loved him.

The cab dropped me off by the emergency room. I ran through the automated doors. “Marcus Croft,” I said to the receptionist. My chest was as tight as if someone was squeezing it, the skin of my forearms pebbled with goose bumps. The receptionist pecked at her computer, then gave me directions: elevator to the C wing, down the second hallway, left and then another left, check in at the blue desk, and I hurried away, not feeling the floor underneath me or seeing the faces of the people I passed.

When the elevator doors slid open, there were three nurses gathered around a desk, talking quietly. A blue light flashed in the hall, and an orderly pushed an empty stretcher. “Marcus Croft,” I said. All of them looked up, guiltily, like schoolgirls caught passing notes, and I knew, in that instant, what had happened.

“Oh, God.” My knees felt like they’d melted, and I would have fallen if I hadn’t managed to grab the edge of the desk.

“Where is he?” My voice was loud and high and frantic. I could see my reflection in the pane of glass behind the desk, skin pale, hair disheveled, eyes unrecognizable.

“I’m so sorry,” said the nurse. She was short, round-faced, copper-skinned, wearing white clogs and pale-pink scrubs. I knew exactly how I must have looked to her: too pretty, too thin, too young. I might as well have been wearing a tiara that spelled out the words TROPHY WIFE in flashing neon bulbs above my head.

There was a waiting area up there, a few benches, a few people, the inevitable television bolted to the ceiling, blasting talk-show noise into the hallway. That hospital smell of chicken-noodle soup and industrial cleansers, of blood and rubbing alcohol, filled the air. A mother sat with a toddler in one corner, a little girl she bounced on her knee. I’ll remember this, I thought, trying to catch my breath. I will remember all of this forever.

“Do you want to see him?” asked the nurse.

I did not. I wanted to hold in my memory the way he’d looked the first time I’d seen him in the Starbucks: healthy and fit, splendidly dressed, completely in control of the world around him, confounded by the coffee. Still, I nodded and let the nurse lead me down a hallway and into the tile-floored room where my husband had died.

Marcus lay on a bed, on top of dirtied sheets, alongside a single inside-out rubber glove. There were stickers pasted to his gray-furred chest, wires hooked up to box on a wheeled stand, an IV plugged into his arm. The room smelled like shit. His eyes were closed, his hair sticking up on the back of his head, and his face seemed to have somehow collapsed, giving him the look of a much older man.

“We need to get him cleaned up before the children see him.” My voice came out just right: clear and cultured, a voice used to being obeyed.

“Of course,” said the nurse. She went to the corner and picked up a phone. I reached out, smoothing my husband’s hair and realizing that what I’d suspected was undeniably true. He had been the love of my life. Every night, I’d fallen asleep with his arms around me and his face nestled in my neck. Every morning he’d brought me tea and kissed me. You’re my favorite person in the world, he would say. What will become of me? I wondered again, touching his forehead, feeling his skin, already cool and waxy, underneath my palm.

“What do I do now?” I asked.

The nurse looked at me, not unkindly. She had a ring on her left hand. I wondered if she had children, where she lived, what her life was like, if she was happy, if she was loved. “There’ll be a social worker coming along soon. She can talk to you about arrangements. Do you know what his wishes were?”

I almost laughed. His wishes were that we’d live together for years and years, that we’d travel, go to parties, go to dinners, go dancing. He wanted to buy a house in Vail and take his kids skiing. He wanted to sleep in on the rare Sunday morning he didn’t have to work, and then be woken up with a blow job. “I’m a simple man,” he’d always say when I was done.

“We’re having a baby.” My voice was faint. My hand was still on Marcus’s hair. He’s sleeping, I told myself, even though it didn’t look like that at all. His features had already started to change, to become somehow cruder. The nurse looked at me, surprised, first at my face, then at my belly.

“Oh, not me. A surrogate. She’s — we’re — due in May.”

The nurse looked like she didn’t know what to say to that. I sympathized. Congratulations? I’m sorry? Nothing was right.

There was a sink against the wall, a container of hand soap bolted beside it. In the bathroom, I found paper towels and, in a cabinet along the wall, a kidney-shaped plastic pan. I filled the pan with soap and warm water. Someone had sliced through his shirt and pants, and they lay like a discarded wrapper against him. “Can you help me?” I asked.

“Oh, ma’am, we can take care of that.”

“Please,” I said, and found that I was crying. “Please.”

She helped me shift his body, pulling off the clothes, throwing them away. I wiped off the backs of his legs and pulled the sticky plastic pads off his chest, found a brush in my purse and brushed his hair. “You’re going to be a wonderful mother,” said the nurse, helping me cover him with a clean sheet. She stepped into the hallway, murmuring briefly with one of her compatriots from the desk. Then the kids filed in, Tommy pale and sick-looking, Trey with his wife beside him, Bettina weeping, thin lips trembling over her buck teeth.

“We should call Mom,” she said. “Mom should be here.” They huddled together, and none of them noticed when I slipped out the door.

I left my contact information at the desk. If the nurse there seemed surprised to see me go, she kept it off her face. Maybe she was used to all kinds of strange behavior from the recently bereaved; maybe she was just glad that I wasn’t screaming or tearing at my clothes or threatening to sue someone.

Outside, it was still daytime. The sun was still shining; I could hear music coming from a passing car’s open windows and construction workers shouting as they gutted the building across the street. I texted Manuel and sat on a bench until the big black car glided to the curb. He held the door, and I slid into the backseat. “Mr. Croft died.” It was the first time I’d said it. I imagined it would be the first of many.

He gave a small sigh, and crossed himself. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. He was a good man.” I wondered about that. I knew Marcus was generous to all of his employees. He gave raises and holiday bonuses and paid vacations. I also knew he expected his people to work as hard as he did, to be available whenever he needed them, at five in the morning or in the middle of the night, or on Christmas or on weekends. I didn’t know whether Manuel had a family, whether he’d resented Marcus, or liked him, or felt protective toward him, or jealous of him, or absolutely nothing at all.

“Home?” he asked, and I nodded, wondering how much longer it would be my home. The decorator had finished the nursery the week before. Nice, Marcus had said — a single-word assessment of a room that had cost more than thirty thousand dollars to put together, six thousand for the antique rocking horse alone. It’s crazy, I’d said. . but I’d loved it, and Marcus insisted that I buy it.

As we drove, I felt a bleakness settle through my body. Probably I wouldn’t even be able to stay in the apartment — it would, I guessed, give Bettina and Tommy and Trey a great deal of pleasure to make me leave. Just until the will is probated, they’d say. Just until we get things sorted out. The sorting out would take months, maybe years. There’d be lawyers, hearings, court dates, newspaper stories, unflattering pictures, all my history, my secrets exposed. It was paranoid, I knew — Marcus and I were legally married; this was legally my home. . but I couldn’t shake the feeling, swelling into certainty with each passing block, that his children had never liked me and that they’d do whatever they could to harm me now that their father was dead.

I hurried past the doorman with my head down, hair obscuring my face, and was grateful to find the elevator empty. Upstairs, I took off my high heels and set them neatly by the door. Then I sat on the couch, cross-legged, my head hanging down, my eyes squeezed shut. I didn’t open them until I heard the front door slam. I raised my head and saw Bettina glaring at me. Anger had reddened her cheeks and darkened her eyes. Her hair stood out around her head in ropy tangles. Her lips curled back from her gleaming teeth. In her fury, she almost looked beautiful.

“Did he find out about you? Is that what happened? He found out the truth and had a heart attack?”

“He was at a business lunch,” I said slowly, repeating what I’d been told, before her words could register. Found out about you. For the second time that day I started to shiver. Bettina pulled a folder out of her purse and threw it in my lap. Papers and photographs spilled out onto the carpet. . and there was my old face, staring up at me from the floor.