“It’s interesting,” he said, “she’s got a very particular kind of gift.”

“What’s that?”

“She sees what a given situation requires, and she adapts herself accordingly.”

“So she’s an actress?” The conversation was beginning to make Olivia a little uneasy. It seemed to her that Jonathan was describing a woman who’d dissolved into his life and become what he wanted. A disappearing act, essentially.

“Not acting, exactly. More like a kind of pragmatism, driven by willpower. She decided to be a certain kind of person, and she achieved it.”

“Interesting,” Olivia said, to be polite, although she couldn’t actually think of anything less interesting than a chameleon. Vincent was lovely but not, Olivia had decided, a serious person. Since her late teens she had been mentally dividing people into categories: either you’re a serious person, she’d long ago decided, or you’re not. A difficulty of her current life was that she was no longer sure which category she fell into. Vincent was returning now with another round of cocktails. The lights of the Carolinas slipped past on the shore.