She noticed that at once, her back straightening as Greg placed the parcel on the coffee table. She was kneeling in front of it, her hands folded demurely between her thighs and her head held up, which meant that the box—in all its pretty, brightly colored wrapping paper, pink and festooned with hearts as befitted the holiday—was directly in her eye line. It seemed like a very big present, and concern tugged at Emily as she stared at it. Sometimes she didn’t feel worthy of the large, expensive gifts Greg liked to give her. All right, today was Valentine’s Day and people were supposed to give each other gifts, but the thinking part of her brain said the whole holiday was one big corporate shill, mostly to do with conning money out of people and guilting them into buying useless things. And yet Greg never did anything because he felt pushed or manipulated. That just wasn’t the way he dealt with the world. To her, Greg was Master, the monolith of certainty and security in her life, and she trusted him—and trusted in him—completely.
