“They look good. Strong.”

Hope looked past her. “Sally didn’t come with you?”

Ashley shook her head.

“We’re too young. Not enough experience,” Hope replied, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment behind her words. “But if we don’t get intimidated, we might just do okay.”

Ashley nodded. She wondered if the same could be said for her situation.

Scott sat a little uncomfortably in the center of the living room couch flanked by empty spaces on either side. Each of the three women was in a chair by herself, across from him. It had an odd formality to it, and he imagined that it was a little like sitting in a grand jury hearing room.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I guess the first thing is, what do we really know about this fellow who seems to be bothering Ashley? I mean, what sort of guy is he? Where does he come from? The basics.”

He looked over at Ashley, who looked as if she were sitting on a sharp edge.

“I’ve already told you what I know,” she said. “Which isn’t really that much.”

She was coldly waiting for one of the other three to add something along the lines of Well, you knew enough to let him into your place for a one-night stand, but no one said this.

“I guess what I’m getting at, really,” Scott said quickly, filling up a small silence, “is that we don’t know if this guy O’Connell will just respond to a simple talking-to. He might. He might not. But a modest show of determination…”

“I tried to do that,” Ashley said.

“Yes, I know. You did the right thing, really. But now I’m suggesting a little more forcefulness. Like me,” Scott said. “Don’t you think the first step here is not to assume the problem is greater than it is? Maybe all that’s required is a bit of a showing. Dad muscle.”

Sally nodded. “Maybe we can make it two-pronged. Scott, you go say to this guy, ‘Leave her alone,’ and at the same time we sweeten the approach by offering some cash. Something substantial, like five grand or so. That has to be a significant amount of money to someone working in gas stations and trying to get a degree in computer sciences on the side.”

“A bribe to leave Ashley alone?” Scott asked. “Does that sort of thing work?”

“In many of the family disputes, divorces, child-custody cases, that sort of thing, my experience has been that a monetary settlement goes a long way.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Scott didn’t believe her. He also had his doubts that talking to O’Connell would make any difference. But he knew the simplest path had to be tried first. “But suppose-”

Sally held up her hand, cutting off his question. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The guy has behaved creepily. But as best as I can see, he hasn’t really broken any laws yet. I mean, down the line we could talk about private eyes, calling the police, getting a restraining order-”

“Those sure work,” Scott said sarcastically. Sally ignored him.

“-or examining other legal means. We could even have Ashley move out of Boston. It would be a setback, sure, but it’s always a possibility. But I think we should try the easiest first.”

“Okay,” Scott said, glad that Sally was thinking more or less along the same lines he was. “What’s the drill?”

“Ashley calls the guy. Sets up another meeting. Take cash and your father. Do it in public. A little no-nonsense, forceful conversation. Hopefully, end of story.”

Scott started to shake his head, but stopped. It made some sense to him. At least, enough sense to pursue it. He decided that he would follow Sally’s plan, with a wrinkle or variation of his own.

Hope had remained silent throughout the conversation. Sally turned to her. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s an appropriate approach,” Hope said, although she did not believe any of it.

Scott was abruptly angry that Hope had been given any opportunity to speak. He wanted to say that she had no standing in the room, shouldn’t even be here. Be reasonable, he told himself. Even if it’s irritating. “Well, that’s the plan, then. At least for starters, and until we know it won’t work.”

Sally nodded. “So, Scott, did you really want tea, or was that one of your jokes earlier?”

“I just have trouble believing…,” I started, then I stopped and decided to try a different tack. “I mean, they had to have some idea…”

“What they were up against?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “They didn’t know about the assault on the erstwhile boyfriend. They didn’t know about the, ah, accident Ashley’s friend had after their dinner. They didn’t know anything about Michael O’Connell’s reputation, nor the impressions he’d made on coworkers, teachers, you name it. The critical information that might have led them in a different direction. All they knew was-what was the word Ashley kept using? He was a creep. What an innocent word.”

“Still, talking to him? Or offering money? Why would they think for a minute that this approach might work?”

“Why wouldn’t it work? Isn’t that what people do?”

“Yes, but-”

“You second-guess instantly. People always believe that they would have answers when the truth is, they wouldn’t. What alternatives did they have, right then?”

“Well, they might have been more aggressive.”

“They didn’t know!” Her voice suddenly picked up in pitch and passion. She leaned toward me and I could see her eyes narrow and flash in frustration and anger. “Why is it so hard for people to understand how powerful the forces of denial are within each and every one of us? We don’t want to believe the worst!”

She stopped, taking a deep breath. I started to speak, then she held up her hand.

“Don’t you make an excuse,” she said. “Don’t you imagine that you wouldn’t want to believe the safest thing, when in reality the most dangerous thing was lurking right there in front of you.”

She took another deep breath. “Except for Hope. She saw it. Or, at least, she had some inkling…the vaguest of notions. But for one reason or another, and all of them goddamn wrong and foolish, she couldn’t say anything. Not then.”

14

Scott shifted about uncomfortably at the bar, nursing his bottle of beer, trying to keep one eye on the doorway to the restaurant and the other on Ashley sitting alone in a quiet booth. She kept looking up, playing with the silverware on the table, drumming her fingers nervously against the wood, while she waited.

He had coached her on what to say when she had called Michael O’Connell and on what she was to do when he arrived. Scott had an envelope with $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills stuck in his jacket pocket. The envelope was stuffed to overflow, and it would make for an impressive wad of cash when tossed down on a tabletop; he was counting on it having an impact greater than the actual sum. As he thought about the money, he could feel sweat sticking unpleasantly beneath his arms. But he guessed that he was far better off than his daughter. She was all knotted up inside. Still, he believed her theatrical abilities would carry her through the meeting. Scott cleared his throat and took another long sip of beer. He flexed his muscles beneath his sports coat and reminded himself for the tenth time that day that a person willing to bully a woman was likely to cower when confronted with someone his own size and strength who was older and more resourceful. He’d spent much of his adult life dealing with students not much different from Michael O’Connell, and he’d intimidated more than a few of them. He signaled to the bartender to bring him another beer.

Ashley, for her part, felt nothing but cold ice and hot tension within.

When she had managed to reach O’Connell on his cell phone, she had been cautious, following a modest script that she and Scott had worked out on the drive back to Boston. Nonconfrontational, but not suggestive, either. The point, she had kept reminding herself, was to get him face-to-face, so that if it was necessary, her father could intervene.