“You forget it even if you do keep up with it. At least that’s the way it’s been for me since about thirty or so.”

“Forty’s no better.”

“You don’t look it.”

“I still got four months.”

“I’ve got one year, six months, and twenty-three days.”

Markham laughed-and, unexpectedly, Cathy joined him.

“Ah well,” the FBI agent sighed. “I guess I’ll buy a convertible. Or maybe a motorcycle. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you turn forty?”

“I’m not going to find out-going to stop counting at thirty-nine.”

“Sounds like a plan. But I’d buy twenty-nine from you in a heartbeat.”

Cathy was unsure if Markham had meant his last comment as a compliment-that is, if he was saying he would peg her for twenty-nine-years-old, or that he would figuratively “purchase” the age of twenty-nine from her for himself. And suddenly Cathy was transported back to college, to those rare but awkward one-time dates with men who mistook her shyness for aloofness, her intellect for arrogance. And despite the anxiety such memories brought with them, Cathy could feel herself beginning to blush as the FBI agent drove on in silence.

She hoped he didn’t notice.

“So how does a high school English teacher end up marrying an oceanographer?” Cathy asked at the next traffic light-her need to keep the conversation going, to push through her discomfort outweighing her usual bashfulness.

“I wish I had a romantic story for you, Dr. Hildebrant-”

“Please, call me Cathy.”

“All right. I wish I had a more romantic story for you, Cathy. But my wife and I met at a cookout in Connecticut -one of those mutual-friend-of-a-friend deals. She was still in graduate school at the time, but was working at the Mystic Aquarium in their Institute for Exploration. I had just landed a part-time teaching job in a little town nearby. You know the story. ‘Hey, I’ve got a friend I want you to meet,’ one thing leads to another, the hand of fate and all that. You get the idea.”

“Sounds familiar, yes.”

“Same for you?”

“Oh yes. My boss, Janet Polk. The woman you met this morning-the hand that pushed me.”

“Aha.”

“Twelve years ago. She was the friend of my husband’s friend who introduced us-my soon to be ex-husband, I should say.”

“I’m sorry about that. Dr. Polk didn’t come right out and say what happened, but I put two and two together when we traced your address to East George Street. You’ve always kept your maiden name? Never took your husband’s for professional reasons?”

“Never took it, no-partly for professional reasons, partly because my mother always kept her maiden name. Korean tradition. Most Korean women keep their family name. She never asked me, but I knew it would make her happy. So, like she had done for her father, I kept my father’s name. Nonetheless, an admirable analysis of the evidence, Agent Markham.”

The FBI agent smiled with a touché.

“Please, call me Sam.”

“All right then, Agent Sam. And please don’t be sorry. Best thing to happen to me in ten years of marriage will be my divorce decree next month. Janet’s the one for whom you should feel sorry. Really. She feels worse about it than I do-almost like she’s the one who’s responsible for the whole thing. Even asked me if I wanted my ex’s legs broken. And you know what? I think she meant it, too-think she meant to do it herself.”

Markham laughed.

“Don’t let her size fool you. She’s a real ass kicker, that Janet Polk. Didn’t get to where she is today on just her smarts, I’ll tell you that much.”

“A bit protective of you, is she?”

“Oh yes. Been that way from the beginning-ever since I was her assistant at Harvard. And when my mother died…well…let’s just say Janet was the only one who was really there for me.” Cathy felt her chest, her stomach tighten at the thought of Steve Rogers’s ultimatum; the teary-eyed, whimpering “end of his rope” speech that he delivered not even two months after her mother’s death, when the length and depth of Cathy’s grief had simply become too much for him.

“I’m begging you, Cat. You’ve got to snap out of it. I’m at the end of my rope with you. This isn’t good for us. You’ve got to try to move on, get past it. For us, Cat. For us.”

It wasn’t so much what her spineless excuse for a husband had said that still bothered Cathy, but that she, a Harvard educated PhD-perhaps the foremost scholar on Michelangelo in the world-had actually bought into his selfishness. Yes, what really set Cathy’s blood boiling there in the Trailblazer was the thought that, at the very moment when her husband should have been there for her, she abandoned her mourning to take care of him-not because he needed her, but because she was afraid of losing him.

That was the beginning of the end. Should have handed the selfish motherfucker his balls back right then and there.

“May I ask how it happened?”

“He cheated. With one of his graduate students.”

“I’m sorry. But I meant your mother.”

“Oh,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “Forgive me-my mind is going in a thousand different directions. Breast cancer. Fought it for years, but in the end it took her quickly. I suppose you could say she was lucky in that respect. You know, the statistics say that Korean women have one of the lowest incidences of breast cancer in the United States. I guess nobody got around to telling my mother that.”

“I’m sorry, Cathy.”

“Thank you.” Cathy smiled, for she knew Markham was sincere. “Anyway, Janet was the one who really helped me get through it all, from the time my mother was first diagnosed until the end-and afterward, of course. Helped me stay on track to get the book published, to get tenure and all that. Even before everything happened, I always thought of her as sort of a second mother.”

“And what about your father?”

“Retired military. Army. Lives somewhere down in North Carolina now with his second wife-the woman with whom he was cheating on my mother. They divorced when I was in the third grade-he and my mother, I mean-right after she and I moved to Rhode Island.”

“So you grew up around here?”

“Since the third grade, yes. My mother had a cousin who lived in Cranston -helped the two of us get settled-and she ended up getting her degree in computers. Carved out a nice little life for the two of us. Before that, I moved around like the typical Army brat. We were all stationed in Italy, near Pisa, when my father met his second wife. She was Army, too. It was after all that went down that my mother and I settled back in the States.”

“ Italy. Let me guess. Is that where you first became interested in Michelangelo?”

“Yes. My mother was only eighteen when she married my father-met him while he was stationed in Korea. Ever since she was a child she had wanted to become an artist, but back then things weren’t so easy for Korean girls. And being one of five sisters, well, her parents were more than happy to marry her off to an American GI. Anyway, ever since I can remember-since the day I was born, I think-no matter where we were stationed, she used to take me along with her to all the local museums. And during the two years we were stationed in Italy, well, you can imagine the time we had together. I don’t remember much from our first trip to Florence, but my mother used to say that the first time I saw Michelangelo’s David I actually started crying-that I thought the statue was a real man, a giant who had been frozen in ice, and that I cried for him out of pity.”

Markham laughed.

“It was funnier to hear her tell it. She was a lovely woman, my mother-very bright, very witty. Never remarried, either. Everything for her daughter. She was only fifty-two when she passed.”

“I really am sorry, Cathy.”

“I know.”

“And your father?” Markham asked after a moment. “You talk to him much?”