"She's a supervisor, right? A tall woman, like you, given to matching her shoes to her outfits as exactly as possible."

Tess stalked over to Crow's bureau, where his childhood collection of Star Wars figures had been laid out on a rough woven cloth. "See? You even know how my mom dresses. That's more than I knew about Felicia. How can you say I knew Crow at all?"

"Crow is one of the world's listeners."

"He chatters all the time," Tess objected.

"Yes, he does. But he never really gives out any information about himself, does he? He talks about the latest thing he's read, the song he's working on, something strange and wonderful he saw on the street. But he doesn't talk about himself. He's unusual that way. He fools a lot of people into thinking they're close to him, but few really are. All the words, all that chatter, is a way of keeping people at a distance."

"So I'm right-I never really knew him. I'm even less suited to finding him than I thought."

Chris stood up. "I need to show you something. Down in Felicia's studio. Do you mind?"

The night was cold and crisp, one of the first true autumn nights this season. Their breath was visible as they walked through the garden, to the cottage from which Felicia had materialized that afternoon. Chris Ransome unlocked the door and flicked on a light.

"Crow had his own studio here." Chris grinned with a rueful self-awareness. "We've always been a little indulgent, I suppose."

"Would I understand your theories?" Tess asked suddenly, stalling for time. She felt uneasy, almost frightened of seeing whatever Chris Ransome found so urgent. "Your ones about economics, I mean. Could you make them so simple that a bonehead like myself could get it?"

"If I can't, then it's my failure, not yours. The basic premise is plenitude."

"Plenitude?"

"Simply, there really is enough."

Tess's mind balked at this. "Everything I see says we live in a time of scarcity, that there are too many people and not enough resources."

"Well, the theory of plenitude begins with changing one's definition of what ‘enough' is. Look, I brought you here to show you Crow's studio. To convince you that you did know him, and he knew you."

He opened a door on the far end of the large room where Felicia worked. Moonlight poured through the windows, and before Chris flicked on the light, Tess had a sense of hundreds of canvases, from large to small, surrounding her. When the light did come on, she saw there were no more than a dozen, and they were all quite small.

But every face looking back at her was hers.

There she was, in pastels, in pen and ink, in oil, in crayon. She was clothed, she was nude, her hair was braided, her hair was undone. Even Esskay, who had arrived so close to the end of what would be her time with Crow, had managed to creep into a few of the pictures. There was one of the two of them sleeping, their bodies mirroring each other. It made Tess blush to look at it, to think of Crow standing over her and the dog, studying them, remembering all the details, including the dirty white socks she wore to bed. The only thing she wore to bed.

"We didn't know they were here until a week ago. We've always respected his privacy, but after he stopped calling and writing…well, we thought he might have left some sort of clue behind."

"You know I did try to make amends," Tess said, feeling a little defensive. The etiquette of the situation overwhelmed her. She was standing in a room with an ex-boyfriend's father, looking at naked pictures of herself. She had never read Emily Post, but she was pretty sure this situation had not been covered. "He didn't want to try again. He said it was too late for us, and he was probably right."

"These things happen. Felicia and I are the last people to be judgmental about the ways of the human heart. What did Faulkner say in his Nobel speech? ‘The heart wants what the heart wants.'"

"Actually, I think that was Woody Allen, at the press conference about Soon-Yi. Faulkner said the conflicts of the human heart are the only thing worth writing about." Every now and then, it helped, being an English major. Not often, but sometimes.

"I know they're the only thing worth living for." Chris Ransome picked up one of the smaller studies, a nude that had been exceptionally kind to Tess's rounded figure, narrowing the waist just a shade, deepening the almost-dimple in her chin, removing any dimples farther south. But the leg muscles were hers, Tess thought, and that little dent by her tricep. She had worked hard to get her arms cut like that.

Ransome studied the picture, then looked at Tess thoughtfully. In another man, the look might have been salacious, offensive. But Chris Ransome looked at Tess as if she were merely another in the series of beloved objects his son had toted home over the years. The arrowheads, the rock collection, the Star Wars figures, the Nature Store telescope. A swallow's nest.

"Felicia and I know we could hire someone else, Tess. We probably should. But there is something unfinished between you and Crow. I won't put a name to it, but whatever it is, it's like a divining rod. You'll find your way to him. Or he'll find his way to you. No other private detective can offer us that."

He pulled something from his pocket. "This is the last postcard Crow sent to us, before he disappeared."

The card wasn't a photograph, but a hand-tinted drawing of blue flowers dotting a green field. "Texas blue-bonnets," said the legend on the front.

On the back, Crow had written: "I feel as if I'm starting over. Things here are not as expected, but that doesn't make it bad, right? As Dad said, I am following in an outlaw tradition by coming here. GTT, Crow."

"GTT?" Tess asked Chris.

"Gone to Texas. It's what outlaws wrote on their doors when they headed out to the frontier. ‘I've gone to Texas. Don't bother to look because you won't find me.'"

"Is that so?" Tess said, lifting her chin. And they had her.

Tess called Kitty the next day from Abingdon, Virginia, just before crossing the line into Tennessee. She called the private line, knowing Kitty would be in the store and the machine would pick up. She didn't want to explain why she was going, she just wanted to go.

"It's Tess," she said. "If Tyner calls, tell him I'm headed for Texas. I'll call him tonight, when I've crossed the Mississippi." She figured that was just far enough to be safe from Tyner's wrath, that the Mississippi was wide enough to keep the volume of his voice from reaching out and lassoing her home.

She had a generous per diem and a sizable advance. She had her Toyota and her overnight bag. She had a week's worth of clothing purchased in less than thirty minutes at an outlet mall with a Gap and an Old Navy. She had the sweats she always carried in her trunk, along with a jump rope and a basketball. She had her dog, her datebook, and her copy of Don Quixote, because she had gotten in the habit of carrying it around, thinking she still might finish it one day, if only by osmosis. She had seven pairs of heavy-duty white cotton underwear, which had cost only a dollar at some off-brand store, possibly because "Wednesday" was spelled "Wenesday."

It was enough. Or at least plenty. Chris Ransome was right: You just had to change your definitions.