“He had stood in the hallway for ten minutes, his hand raised to knock, before lowering it and going to the guest room instead. He didn't sleep. He lay on the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about Mira -- a woman he had never particularly liked, whose laugh he had found too loud and whose influence on his wife he had resented -- and felt a grief that surprised him with its intensity. Not grief for Mira herself, he was honest enough to admit, but grief for his wife's pain. For the world that had just become darker and more dangerous. For the stark, terrifying realization that the people you love can be taken from you between one heartbeat and the next.”