Prince patted him on the shoulder again. “I’m happy to do it. It’s nothing.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Technically he’d already paid Hay for services rendered, and a week at Prince’s home in Palm Springs for Hay’s family, along with the use of Prince’s plane to take them there, wasn’t exactly cheap. But compared to what he’d gained from the assistance Hay and the other docs gave him, it was a drop in a very, very big bucket.

47

W hen I rounded the corner, the band O.A.R. on my iPod, I saw him.

He was on my stoop, leaning against the doorjamb. He looked at his phone, typing something with the thumb of one hand. The sight of him stopped me and at first I felt only elation. But that feeling was short-lived. I stood just looking at him, trying to sort out combative thoughts. One said, I love him. I’ll always love him, while the other said, You can love someone and still not have it be right for you, for right now.

I didn’t know which was stronger. I called out to him.

He didn’t hear me, and for some reason, this seemed like a portent. I walked toward him. Still, he didn’t look up. Finally, when I was nearly next to him, he saw me, and his face split into a grin, teeth gleaming.

“Sam,” I said simply. We hugged tight. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”

“You would have if you’d checked your messages in the last hour.”

“I’ve been walking by the lake.”

“Good.” His olive-green eyes took in my face. “You needed that, huh?”

“I did.” I stuck my keys in the front door. “What are you doing on the street?”

He followed me up the stairs, smacking me playfully on the ass like he usually did. “I didn’t have your keys with me.”

I stopped and turned. “Since when did you stop carrying my keys?”

He shrugged, the shoulders of his suit lifting up. “I took them off my key ring once when I was going to rugby practice and had too much stuff in my pockets. You know how it is.”

I didn’t. And this sounded significant-this not carrying his set of my keys. Because, as far as I’d known, Sam had carried my keys every day since I gave them to him five months after we started dating.

Sam and I had met at the summer picnic of Forester Pickett. I would never forget that day in the June sun, on a lush lawn in Lake Forest, when I first saw Sam. His blond hair shone in the sunlight, and a shy grin pulled at the corners of his wide mouth. Right then, I had the random but distinct thought-I could kiss that mouth. Forever.

Sam and I started that moment in the sun, and five months later, we were solidly into the era of Us with a capital U-a time when we scarcely remembered what came before each other, when we no longer envisioned a time that we would exist without the other.

Back then, one of the other condo owners in my building was a woman who often traveled for her job. Her newspapers would collect and litter the stoop, making Sam crazy.

“It’s such a waste of paper,” he’d say, picking them up.

So I’d taken one of those old papers one day and wrapped a set of my keys in them. It was waiting by his orange coffee mug when he got up in the morning. He opened it. He beamed. Sam said it was the greatest gift he’d ever received. He had never complained about those papers again. But now here he was, without those keys, unsure when he’d even stopped carrying them.

Sam looked up at me, standing in the stairway, unmoving. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s probably nothing.” I turned and kept climbing. As I’d told Mayburn earlier, I had bigger things to worry about.

“I came to take you to dinner,” Sam said. “North Pond Café.”

I stopped again, this time for a good reason, and spun around. “Really?” I asked, my spirits returning.

North Pond Café was a high-end eatery tucked at the other end of Lincoln Park. To reach it, you had to walk through at least part of the park, and as a result, it was closed during the winter months. Sam and I loved it.

Sam nodded.

“Is it open?”

“Just reopened last week. So get ready.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. “What’s the occasion?”

“Us.” He smacked me on the ass again. “Go.”

An hour later, the cab dropped us off on Lakeview Avenue at Deming. The sky was a splashy mix of dark blue from the east and a mustard gold from the west behind us. We walked on a sidewalk leading away from the street and under a fieldstone footbridge. On the other side of the bridge, lit by discreetly-placed lights, was a long pond that stretched into the distance and was capped at the end by a snippet of the Chicago skyline. Unlike Lake Michigan, with its unprotected shore and its tendency to turn tumultuous, the pond was buffeted by trees-all popping with buds-and was always flat, always smooth. It was what made the café, which sat at one end, so soothing.

The café was in a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish building. Inside, the dark wood was set off by golden lights, the sparkle of stained glass, white tablecloths and gleaming glassware.

We were seated at a table that overlooked the pond. I slipped into my chair and gazed across the table at Sam. “How did you land the best table?”

“Not important.”

“Well, then what is?”

“Me and you, Iz.” His hand slipped across the cloth and offered itself to me.

I took it, and we looked at each other, grinning, and despite the disastrous week I’d had, I felt the wheels of Sam and me moving and clicking and snapping themselves into place.

Sam ordered a bottle of French white. As the waiter poured it, Sam looked at me. “I want to hear what’s going on. Everything,” he said. “But nothing serious until we’ve got one glass under our belt. Okay with you?”

I sighed with happiness. “Great.” As much as I knew myself capable of handling my life, sometimes it felt damned good to have someone else call even the smallest of shots.

For the next half hour, we talked about the things we used to talk about-Sam’s job, our families, the rugby team, the wedding of a friend that was coming up that summer.

And when the waiter came back to pour more wine, Sam said, “All right. Tell me.”

He didn’t have to say about what. I told him about Jane’s memorial, finding I was a person of interest, interviewing Prince and the fact that I would be interviewed by the police the next day. I left out my run-in with Steve (or Tobias or whoever had been driving that van), since I’d promised Mayburn complete secrecy this time around. Ultimately, my omission about Mayburn didn’t matter. Sam and I sipped our wine and ate distractedly, and while we did, we reconnected and we talked and we interrupted each other the way we used to and we finished stories for each other, just like we used to.

We were biting into a whiskey bread pudding and sipping a glass of dessert wine when a group of professionals in suits passed our table, trailing behind the hostess.

One of them, a woman, stopped suddenly and pointed at me. “My gosh, are you Isabel? Isabel McDonald or something like that?”

“Izzy McNeil. Hi.” I held out my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”

“Oh, we haven’t met. I’ve seen you on Trial TV. I’ve been watching it this week, and I love it.”

“Thank you!” I had yet to speak to someone who had actually seen the programming and who wasn’t a friend or relation.

Her face turned stricken. “I can’t believe what happened to Jane Augustine.”

“I know.” I didn’t mention that I had seen, up close and too personally, exactly what had happened to Jane.

“I’m sure it must be hard for all of you, but the network is great. You guys are fantastic.” She looked over her shoulder at a younger guy. “Don’t I always say that Trial TV is fantastic?” She gestured at him. “He’s my associate.”

The guy laughed. “She does. She has you on in her office all day.”

The woman threw up her hands. “What can I say? I’m one of those lawyers who love the law, and so I love Trial TV.” She pointed at me again. “But you. You’re my favorite.”