She thought for a moment, while I remained quiet. She was drinking iced tea and lifted the glass to her lips.

“Ashley knew.”

Again she shook her head. “No. She was scared, true. But just as much as she was frightened, she was annoyed, which truly hid the desperate nature of her situation. And, in reality, what did she know about Michael O’Connell? Not much. Not nearly as much as he knew about her. Curiously, although at a distance, Scott was closer to understanding the real nature of what they were up against, because he was operating far more out of instinct, especially at the beginning.”

“And Sally? And her partner, Hope?”

“They were still outside fear. Not for much longer, though.”

“And O’Connell?”

She hesitated. “They couldn’t see. Not yet, at least.”

“See what?”

“That he was beginning to truly enjoy himself.”

9

When Scott was unable to reach Ashley either on her landline or on her cell phone, he felt a sweaty sort of anxiety, but he immediately told himself it amounted to nothing. It was midday, she was undoubtedly out, and he knew his daughter had on more than one occasion left the cell phone charging back at her place.

So, after he’d left brief “Just wondering how things are going” messages, he sat back and worried whether he should be worried. After a few moments feeling his pulse rate rise, he rose and paced back and forth across the small office. Then he sat down and maneuvered through some busywork, responding to student e-mails and printing out a couple of essays. He was trying to waste time at a moment when he wasn’t sure that he had time to waste.

Before long he was rocking ever so slightly back and forth in his desk chair while his mind fastened on moments in Ashley’s growing up. Bad moments. Once, when she had been little more than a year old, she’d come down with severe bronchitis, and her temperature had spiked and she’d been unable to stop coughing. He’d held her throughout the night, trying to comfort her, trying with soothing words to calm the hacking cough and listening to her breathing grow increasingly shallow and difficult. At eight in the morning, he’d dialed the pediatrician’s office and been told to come straight in. The doctor had leaned over Ashley, listening to her chest, then swung about and coldly demanded to know why Scott and Sally had not taken her to the emergency room earlier. “What?” the doctor had questioned. “Did you think that by holding her all night she would get better?”

Scott had not answered, but, yes, he’d thought that by holding her she would get better.

Of course, antibiotics were a wiser choice.

When Ashley started to split her time between her two parents’ homes, Scott would be up pacing in his bedroom, waiting for her to come home, unable to prevent himself from conjuring up all the worst cases: car accidents, assaults, drugs, alcohol, sex-all the nasty undercurrents to growing up. He knew that Sally was asleep in her bed those late nights that Ashley the teenager was out rebelling at Lord knows what. Sally always had trouble handling the exhaustion of worry. It was, Scott thought, as if by sleeping through the tension, it never actually happened.

He hated that. He’d always felt alone, even before they were divorced.

He grasped a pencil and twiddled it between his fingers, finally cracking it in half.

He took a deep breath. “What? Did you think that by holding her all night she’d get better?”

Scott told himself that worry was useless. He needed to do something, even if it was completely wrong.

Ashley arrived at her job perhaps ten minutes earlier than normal, her pace driven by anger, her usual leisurely walk replaced this day by a quick-time, jaw-set preoccupation with Michael O’Connell. For a couple of seconds, she looked up at the huge fortresslike Doric columns marking the museum entrance, then she turned and swept her eyes across the street. She was pleased with herself. Where she worked was filled with the colors of her world, not his. She was comfortable among the pieces of art; she understood each, she could feel the energy behind every brushstroke. The canvases, like the museum, were immense, taking up great patches of wall space with their insistence. They intimidated many of the visitors because the paintings dwarfed everyone who stepped in front of them.

She felt a touch of satisfaction within her. It was the perfect place to extract herself from Michael O’Connell’s crazy claims of love. Everything here was her world. Nothing was his. The museum would make him seem small and inconsequential. She expected their meeting to be quick and relatively painless for both of them.

She played it out in her head. Firm, but uncompromising. Polite, but strong.

No high-pitched complaints. No more whiny please s and leave me alone s.

Just direct, to the point. End of story. Finished.

No debate about love. No discussion about possibility. Nothing about the one-night stand. Nothing about the computer messages. Nothing about the dead flowers. Nothing that would lead itself into a wider exchange. Nothing that he might take as criticism. A clean, unencumbered break. Just, Thanks. Sorry. It’s over. Good-bye forever.

She even allowed herself to imagine that once she’d gotten through this meeting, perhaps Will Goodwin would call. It surprised her that he hadn’t. Ashley wasn’t really familiar with boys who didn’t call back, and so she was a little unsure how to feel. She spent some time thinking about this, as opposed to Michael O’Connell, as she made her way through the museum offices, nodding to the people she knew, and allowing herself to fill up with the benign normalcy of the day.

At lunchtime, she made her way to the cafeteria, took a seat at a small table, and ordered a glass of overpriced fizzy water, but nothing to eat. She had positioned herself so that she could see Michael O’Connell when he came up the museum steps and through the wide glass doors to the entrance. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was 1 p.m. straight up, and leaned back, knowing he would be prompt.

She felt a small quiver in her hands, and a little sweat in her armpits. She reminded herself, No kiss on the cheek. No handshake. No physical contact whatsoever. Just point at the seat opposite her and keep it simple. Do not get sidetracked.

She took a $5 bill-which would more than cover the price of her single glass of water-and put it in her pocket, where she could extract it rapidly. If she had to stand up and exit, she wanted to be able to move freely. She congratulated herself for thinking of this precaution.

Anything else? she asked herself. No loose ends. She felt excited but blank inside after performing a mental rundown of her plan.

She looked through the plate-glass windows, expecting to see him. A few couples hove into view, then a family, two young parents dragging a bored six-year-old. There was an odd-looking elderly pair of men, who were slowly walking up the expanse of steps, pausing, as if on cue, to rest before continuing. Her eyes swept the sidewalk, and far down the street. There was no sign of Michael O’Connell.

At ten past the hour, she started to squirm in her seat.

At quarter past, the waiter came over and politely but firmly asked her if she wanted to order.

At one thirty, she knew he wasn’t coming. Still, she waited.

At two, she put the $5 on the table and left the restaurant.

She took one last glance around, but Michael O’Connell was nowhere she could see. Feeling a black emptiness within her, she headed back to work. When she reached her desk, she put her hand on the telephone, thinking she should call him and demand to know where he was.