Two weeks pass in contemplation and similar activities. The Strausses research adapting the Inquisition's glass-bead-and-planchette ritual that they have learned about with B level clearance to track the cliomancer woman, after having their sneaks roll her hotel room for hair (and coming up with two pillow cases, the contents of the wastebasket, and a tub-hair-clot). It seems doable, though they will need someone to make them special glass for the planchette, and to sort out her hair from any other hair. They spend a few days sorting hairs and figuring out which ones could be hers. Then they contract to have the glass made, but it will be a month before the specialty glass maker they find can do it. They also talk to Esteban about providing the power for the ritual, and he's happy to do that.
Meanwhile, Dr. Atsui arrives to have intensive therapy for Esteban and Gavin. Esteban, in particular, gets straightened out about how the unnatural is unnatural. Gavin gets a milder sanity buffing.
It's early May. One Friday morning Gwen finds Esteban and Angelina in the kitchen and starts talking to them about Gavin. Specifically, that she's confused about what he feels about her, what she wants, whether she loves him or not, the whole nine yards. Esteban comes out on the side that she should go date around and figure it out, while Angelina thinks she should talk to Gavin about it. Gwen goes back to her room to think about it.
Esteban and Angelina go to talk to Gavin, but find him practicing and chicken out. On returning to the living room, they find the Strausses, and ask about clockworks and free will and so on. There's some initial attempt to conceal that they're asking about Gwen, but it's very clumsy and they give up. The Strausses say that clockworks have free will like people, though like people they can have deeply ingrained behaviors and personalities. But those can change with enough pushing. Gavin finally comes in back from his practice, and Esteban and Angelina scurry like cockroaches.
Gavin talks to the Strausses and they get around to asking him about Gwen and how he feels and there's some general life-living philosophy bandied about. Meanwhile, Esteban and Angelina go to talk to Gwen again and come back having been asked to find out how Gavin feels. They listen at the door. After a little while, Gavin realizes that there's someone sneaking at the door and they realize that he's realized, so they come in. Some guns are pointed as Gavin mistakes them for attackers and then realizes they've been listening at the door and chastises them for it.
Finally Gavin admits that he really doesn't want to force Gwen into anything, and wants her to be happy. He's worried that she doesn't have free will about the whole thing. Esteban understands that but the Strausses are having none of that argument. Orchid arrives somewhere around this time and decides that Gavin has internalized the whole Arthurian love-triangle, taking the roles of Arthur and Lancelot. Some people buy that, some think it's bunk. Someone finally explains the Arthur-Guenevere-Lancelot thing to Esteban.
"So that's why he called her Gwen!" - Esteban
Gavin leaves the room after his last pronouncement. At that point, a rental car pulls up to the ranch. Esteban goes outside to see that it is a woman an a young child. She asks if this is where Gavin is and Esteban says yes. She then introduces herself as Michelle L'Or. Gavin's wife. Esteban flees inside, leaving the Strausses to let her in and be hospitable. He runs upstairs to tell Gavin, who is shocked by the whole thing.
As Alexandra tells Michelle an amusing story about coyotes, Esteban comes back, tells her he's in the shower, and then goes to badger him out of his room and down the stairs, which takes some doing. Meanwhile Angelina has gone to Gwen and is giving her a pep-talk about figuring out what she wants and maybe doing it soon and if it is love then love conquers all. Gwen seems to be buying it, but not immediately.
Gavin goes downstairs and on seeing the woman and her child remembers that he did marry her for her money back when he was the Betrayer. Then she got pregnant, and he didn't want the mystic vulnerability of a child, so he was going to make her have an abortion, and she fled. He used her money for something that seemed important at the time.
Everyone else takes the boy (Chretien) to the kitchen to play with the cats. Thielo goes outside and breaks into the car, finding two suitcases of worn clothing and nothing particularly incriminating aside from a paper-fortune-teller with a bit of an aura.
Meanwhile Michelle is telling Gavin that she thought that if he saw Chretien he might finally do the right thing. She tells him about living on the run for a while, taking terrible jobs to keep together. Apparently a former associate named Lino made her a fortune-teller which gave her the address a few days ago. She also had some assistance from other former associates of Gavin, some of whom gave her money to live on for a while. Dmitri is mentioned specifically (Gavin remembers some unpleasantness with a Faberge egg, but only vaguely). Gavin tells her that he's had an accident since then and doesn't remember well. And there are a lot of awkward silences.
Finally Gavin tells her she should return to her hotel for now and he will come talk to her in the evening, that it isn't quite safe here. Then Gwen comes in and wants to talk to him. He tells her to wait and she looks disappointed. Gavin drives Michelle and Chretien back to their Best Western, while Angelina and Esteban claim not to know anything about who the woman was.
Finally, Gavin returns and goes to talk to Gwen. He asks her to just listen for a while and tells her all about previously being a bad betrayer and passing through the room and turning to a new path. Then he says that one of the bad things he did was marry this woman and take her money. And he says a bunch of stuff about atoning forever and so on.
"I don't care!" - Gwen
Apparently charged by Angelina's pep-talk, Gwen says it doesn't matter because that was old Gavin and the new Gavin is different and people can change and remake themselves. And she wasn't even alive then anyway. And he's a good man now and will do the right thing and she loves him and so on. Gavin takes her into his arms and the log will turn to one of those Victorian pauses between paragraphs in which a lot happens and nothing is mentioned.
In the evening, Gavin goes downstairs, reassures everyone that Gwen will be all right, and goes to deal with his wife. He's pretty sure he divorced her at some point, for some reason... which is a bit worrying, but he doesn't think about it.
At the hotel he talks about being a different person than he was then and wanting to make sure that they are provided for. Michelle is confused, interpreting the first part as "You're not part of my life now, go away" and the second as "I'm going to provide for you". She says that all she wants is for Chretien to have a better life.
"I swear to you, as long as he shall live, he shall never have a material need." - Gavin
This mostly satisfies Michelle, who seems somewhat exhausted. Chretien is introduced to Gavin, but that he is his father is not mentioned to the boy. Michelle then wants Gavin to go.
Gavin returns and explains a bit to Damien in the course of arranging for an advance on his salary to give 100K to her and plane tickets back to France for the two of them. Damien says it can be arranged.
That night, the Strausses have a big discussion, Thielo ranting about how could Gavin have forgotten his wife! Alexandra is more sympathetic with forgetting. Perhaps because of this discussion, that night she dreams of coming home to find a husband who isn't her husband, and then going into the basement and finding another, better husband, then going back upstairs to find another husband and trying to kill the false one but harpooning another one who turned out also to be false but the wrong one instead.
That was how Angelina ended up giving Gwen what is apparently becoming an infamous pep talk. Gwen seemed clearer on her feelings but not so clear on Gavin's, so Angelina launched into an exasperated litany of all the ways Gavin shows how he cares about Gwen. It is not clear whether all of them were true, but Gwen seemed to buy it.
Later on, I recall that Thielo and Angelina were in the same room sans Gwen and Gavin, and Angelina admitted that she had a talk with Gwen, then claimed "I overdid it."