My wife is sleeping with who?

She fell silent, but I could still sense her unhappiness.

After a few moments she looked up at me again. “The last three years have been hard in several ways. I had . . . well, I guess you’d call him a lover back in Tel Aviv, and we had talked about something more permanent once I left the service. But when I went home to recuperate from my wound, he couldn’t take it. He never said anything, but he would never look at my face. I guess he wasn’t the man I thought he was.”

I could tell that she was trying to pass off what had happened as insignificant, but her expression told me she was still hurting. I pulled up a chair beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. We sat there in silence for a long time, looking out at the city and the harbour below.

Finally I asked the question that had been on my mind the whole time. “So how did you find me here in New Zealand?”

“I pulled a few strings with some old contacts and tracked you down.” She gave me a little smile. “You certainly did a good job of getting away.”

I smiled back. “At the time I just wanted to put as much distance between me and my old life as I could. But I’ve built a new life for myself here, and now this is home.” Then I looked at her carefully. “You haven’t told me why you tracked me down.”

Her face grew pensive. “You were such a surprise to me, Thomas. When I first met you I thought you were just a nerd who was clever with computer code. But I kept discovering depths in you that I never expected. I saw you face danger and handle situations that would have made most people falter. I was sorry when I had to leave that I didn’t get the chance to learn more about you.”

She paused and stared out at the darkness. “The other reason is that the time we spent together, as crazy and dangerous as it was, was better than any time since.” She turned around to face me. “I missed it and I missed being with you.”

Then her face took on an expression that I didn’t recognize at first. “Besides,” she said huskily, “we still have unfinished business. We never got a chance to celebrate.” Suddenly she pulled my head toward hers and kissed me with so much passion that it was hard for either of us to breathe. I stood up and pulled her body to me, and we clutched each other like we were drowning. After a minute I led her inside and back to my bedroom, both of us panting and aflame with desire. It took us three tries to douse those flames.

When I woke up the next morning, dawn was pushing through the windows, casting a reddish light in my bedroom. I felt Esther’s body snuggled up to me and I smiled as I remembered our celebration.

Carefully I sat up, trying not to wake her. As I did, I noticed that her eye patch had slipped off her head during the night, and I picked it up curiously. Just then she woke up, and when she saw what I was holding, she cried out, “Give it back!” Then she sat up and snatching the black band out of my hand. “Don’t look at me!” she said desperately as she turned away and tried to get the band around her head and the patch back over her ruined, empty eye socket.