“What’s this about marbles?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just talking out loud.”

He looked skeptical, but didn’t press. He’d brought a tray loaded with an eclectic array of leftovers from Thomas’s refrigerator: cold stuffed grape leaves, steamed Chinese dumplings, fresh asparagus and a stack of soft pita bread. Pulling dinner together had allowed him a chance to sort out what Rebecca had told him about the Frenchman’s role that night in Saigon. She hadn’t deliberately held back on him all these years; she simply hadn’t realized his injury had prevented him from seeing what had happened.

“Who did you think killed that Vietnamese thug?” she’d asked.

“You.”

That had brought her up short. “Me?”

“With the revolver that state department guy gave you.”

“I thought you didn’t know about that.”

“A.38 Smith & Wesson stuck in a college student’s knapsack is hard to miss, sweets.”

“And I guess you also thought I chased Gerard off?”

He had.

She’d grinned. “With another couple of bullets, I probably would have.”

Rebecca went inside and rinsed off her hands, returning with forks and plates. She stabbed a dumpling and sat down. “Jared, I’m sorry we didn’t talk after Saigon. I suppose it would have been the right thing to do-to clear the air and all-but you’d been shot and I was grief-stricken…and hurt and angry. Frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to do the ‘right thing.’ If someone had pitched you overboard, I’d probably have blown you a kiss good-riddance.”

“I understand,” he said.

She looked at him, wondering if he did. In simple, raw terms, he had betrayed her. Thinking Rebecca determined to stay in Boston while he spent his year in Southeast Asia, he had chosen a fling with Tam rather than months of celibacy. Yes, he’d been thrilled to see her in March. Tam knew the score, and it didn’t include Jared telling his Boston lover to take a hike so he could carry on with her. What had she thought those nights Rebecca and Jared had spent together on his apartment couch while she endured the last stages of her difficult pregnancy alone in his bedroom?

Only when push had come to shove-when Tam was dead and there was no one else to claim and raise their newborn daughter-had Jared come clean and accepted responsibility for his actions.

If Tam hadn’t died, would he ever have acknowledged Mai as his daughter?

But Tam had died, and he did take responsibility for their daughter. And he obviously adored Mai. Even if Rebecca could still get mad thinking about herself at twenty and him at twenty-five, they’d both grown up. People made mistakes. Sometimes terrible mistakes.

“I should have told you what happened with Mai and me and the Frenchman sooner,” she said, “but I honestly thought you saw everything.”

“R.J., I had a hole the size of Rhode Island in my shoulder-”

“And you’d seen your lover murdered. Yes, I understand that now.”

Jared winced at her words. She didn’t understand a thing. But where could he begin about him and Tam and Quentin? And did he have that right, after all these years?

But Rebecca, her hair blowing in the gusting wind, reached for a stuffed grape leaf, dropping it onto her plate, and finally looked at him. “Jared, I still haven’t told you everything.”

He picked at the thin layers of a section of pita bread, studying her. Waiting.

With a sigh, she whisked up her handbag, pulled out a red velvet sack, and dumped out the contents on the table.

The ten stones sparkled in the suddenly strong early evening sun.

Jared’s eyes darkened, going from the stunning gems to Rebecca. He dropped the pita onto his plate. “R.J., what’s this?”

She licked her lips. “I found them in Mai’s diaper during the evacuation from Saigon.”

Thomas Blackburn walked into the garden. With a pained expression, he went up to the table and ran his fingertips over the nine sapphires and ruby.

“Grandfather, I can explain.”

“You don’t have to. These,” he said, “are the Jupiter Stones.”

Thomas had shooed Rebecca and Jared out of the garden and poured himself a glass of the blueberry wine he’d picked up from the Bartlett Maine Estate Winery during an outing down east last summer, when he’d been feeling particularly alone and miserable. Four months later Rebecca had turned up on his doorstep, to start her own studio in Boston, she’d said. But it was more than that. She’d needed, finally, to sort out her feelings about the city, him, herself, and what it meant to be a Blackburn, rich, in her thirties and unattached.

The wine was dry and of fine quality, not at all the rotgut he normally associated with fruit wines. Perhaps he would return to Maine this summer and buy another bottle. He settled into his chair, pulling his sweater around his thin frame. The wind had picked up and there was, again, the smell of rain in the air. Thomas wouldn’t have cared if a blizzard were in progress. His living room had filled up with students enjoying a Friday evening of popcorn, Junk Mind and television, and Jared and Rebecca had gone out for a walk to digest what he’d told them-and possibly what he hadn’t.

Thomas wanted to be alone.

Seeing Jean-Paul again, Annette, the Jupiter Stones-it all had unsettled and confused him. Now he wondered if he’d told Rebecca and Jared too much: about Gisela’s suicide over the loss of the Jupiter Stones, about Annette Reed’s fingering of the popular Grand Prix driver as the thief Le Chat, about his reappearance in Saigon four years later.

“He’d been there for some time,” Thomas had explained. “When he’d left France, he signed up with the Foreign Legion-no questions asked-which was headquartered in Sidi Bel Abbès until Algerian independence in 1962. That’s when he quit and came to Indochina as a mercenary. He knew I’d be there. I’m not sure he realized Annette would be.”

“He and Father became friends?” Rebecca had asked.

Thomas had to say yes. And to admit he hadn’t warned his son about his new friend’s background. He had assumed-hoped-the young Frenchman had owned up to his mistakes and put the past behind him.

But how wrong he was.

After listening quietly throughout, Jared asked, “Gerard knew it was Annette who turned him in?”

Reluctantly, Thomas had nodded.

“Then,” Rebecca had said, “he has a bone to pick with her for that and one with you for the ambush. How long was he a POW?”

“Five years. He escaped in 1968.”

“And somehow between then and 1975 he figured out that Tam had gotten hold of the Jupiter Stones and came after them. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t explain a number of things.” Sitting forward, Rebecca had counted out each item on her fingers. “First, why didn’t Gerard turn Jared’s apartment upside down after Tam and his Vietnamese cohort were dead? The communists were shelling Tan Son Nhut, but he had time. Did he not know the Jupiter Stones were right under his nose? Second, why wait until now to come after the Jupiter Stones? Third, who does he think has them? Fourth, something about the pictures in The Score must have got his attention and made him think he had a chance to get the stones-what?”

Thomas had told her they were all good questions, and then had refused to speculate on any answers. That annoyed Rebecca. Before she could get too steamed up, Thomas had hinted he was near eighty and might die on them any moment if they didn’t leave him alone and let him rest. Rebecca was unimpressed. Jared, however, recognized a brick wall when he saw one and spirited her away.

Now, sipping his wine in the cool evening air, Thomas reminded himself that as much as he wanted to unburden his soul and talk about the past, he couldn’t take that risk. He could not bear to lose anyone else he loved.

He’d made that decision thirty years ago.

Best, he thought, to stick to it.