“My wife is manic-depressive,” Finch had said. “She has been in and out of hospitals for as long as I can remember.”

“That must be difficult,” Melville said.

“It is difficult, most particularly for my daughter. This last time has been very difficult for all of us. This time I’m afraid she won’t be coming home.”

“I’m so sorry,” Melville said.

Finch looked at him so pitifully that Melville’s response was automatic. Though they were standing in the middle of the East India Hall, Melville reached out and hugged him. They stood for a long time, the sound of passing footsteps echoing in the halls around them as Finch cried quietly on Melville’s shoulder.

To say they started seeing each other would be wrong. It was more as if they kept seeing each other. Research turned to late dinners of takeout in Melville’s room on Essex Street, and when Finch expressed concern about leaving Zee for so long, Melville had his boat moved from its mooring down by Congress Street to one just off Turner Street. They began to meet on the boat, after Zee was in bed. Since her mother had been hospitalized, Zee often had nightmares, and the boat was close enough, sound carrying well over water, to hear her if she cried out.

“The first time we met, I thought you were straight,” Finch said to him one night.

“No you didn’t.” Melville called him on his lie.

“Bi, then. I thought you were bi.”

“I was,” Melville said. It wasn’t a lie. He’d once considered himself bisexual, but that had been a long time ago. “And may I point out that you are the one who is married.”

The weight of it hit them both.

“I’m a good deal older than you,” Finch said, “and from an entirely different generation.” Regret showed on his face. Then guilt. Neither of them brought up the subject again.

On Saturdays, Finch and Zee visited the hospital. On Saturday nights Melville would cook for them. They ate together at the kitchen table, Zee often quieter after the visits with her mother. Sometimes on Sunday, Melville would take Zee out in the harbor and they would fish for stripers, which they would clean and cook outside. Sometimes she would help him work on his boat.

Melville liked Zee. She was a good kid, if somewhat stressed and worried about her mother. Sometimes she would talk about it, saying she didn’t understand how her mother could be so unhappy. And she would talk sometimes about the other side of the disease as well, telling him some of the outrageous and amusing things her mother did. But he could see that it scared her. He could also see that for a long time Zee had been her mother’s caregiver, trying to keep her from hospitalization as the inevitable depressions set in. Zee didn’t have a lot of friends, just one or two from school. She hadn’t had much time to be a kid.

And though he felt guilty about his feelings, Melville found himself happier than he’d ever been. He felt bad about the situation, worse for Zee than for Finch. But he let his mind linger on the possibilities: that Finch’s wife might stay hospitalized forever, as Finch had predicted, that they could live as a family, that they could go on like this indefinitely. And he was guilty that the thought made him happy. But there it was.

And then, one Saturday in August, Maureen Finch was released. It was a surprise to Melville, although he found out later that Finch had known just before it happened but couldn’t figure out how to tell him. What he’d said instead was not to make dinner that night and that he thought they might be late getting back and would probably stop somewhere to eat along the way.

It was the first thing Melville had ever blamed Finch for, and it was a shock. When they pulled into the driveway and he watched as Zee helped her mother out of the car, he had a second shock. Maureen Finch looked up at him. Their eyes met and held.

Zee turned to see what her mother was looking at and spotted Melville. She started to speak to him, but something in her mother’s eyes stopped her.

Looking guilty, Finch helped Maureen into the house.

MELVILLE’S PHONE WAS RINGING OFF the hook by the time he got back to his room. He knew it was Finch. But he didn’t pick up. Instead he packed his things and, for the second time in his life, he ran, first to California and then up to the Aleutian Islands, where he stayed for the next two years.

THE STOVE BURNER SIZZLED AS the coffee boiled over the rim, pulling Melville’s consciousness back to the present. He jumped up and grabbed the pot by the handle, moving it off the burner.

“I’m glad you do that, too,” Zee said. “Michael thinks it’s only me.”

He poured a mug of cold water into the pot.

“How is Michael?” he asked. “God, I hope this doesn’t mess up the wedding plans.”

“I seem to be doing that all by myself,” she said.

He looked at her, choosing his words. “I thought Michael was the one who was making all the plans.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“I don’t know. It just always seemed to me as if the whole thing was his idea.”

“The marriage?” she asked.

“Everything, from you moving in with him to getting married. It always seemed more like his plan than yours,” he said.

“Well, it wasn’t,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

“And what difference does it make whose idea it was?”

“You tell me,” he said.

She could feel her face growing red.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like Michael,” he said. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen you being you.”

“You know what?” she said, coming back at him.

He looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

“I came here to talk about your problem, not mine,” she said.

She saw him decide not to comment.

“Unfortunate choice of words,” she said.

“At least an interesting one,” he said. But he didn’t pursue it, and she was grateful.

When the coffee had settled, Melville strained it and poured each of them a cup. He brought the mugs over to the table, taking a seat across from her. He hadn’t been to the store, so there was no milk or sugar. He’d been meaning to go for days, he said, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. “Good thing we both drink our coffee black.”

“So what happened between you two?” she asked. “Why in the world would Finch throw you out?”

“It’s complicated,” he said.

She didn’t fill the silence. It was a trick she’d learned as a therapist. If you don’t talk, the patient will. But it didn’t work on Melville, or at least not the way she had hoped. He was better at this than she was. And he’d always been comfortable with silence.

“You met Jessina,” he said, changing the subject.

“I did,” she said.

“She’s quite a character.” He tried to smile. “She’s good with him, though.”

“Were you unfaithful?” She was thinking about the apartment again.

“Why would you even ask me that?”

She could tell he was insulted. The truth was, on some level she had been expecting it. He was so much younger than Finch, and the disease was so terrible. She realized she would forgive him for it if it had happened. But it wasn’t something you could say.

“I have never been unfaithful to your father,” he said as if wounded.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It was something that happened a long time ago,” he said. “Before you were even born.”

“You didn’t even know Finch before I was born,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I don’t understand either.”

“Maybe it was the drugs,” she said.

He nodded. It was what he’d been hoping. If it wasn’t the drugs, it meant that Finch had entered a crossover stage, something that often happened in patients with advanced Parkinson’s, where they began to exhibit the signs of Alzheimer’s. He didn’t want to think about that.

“Maybe it will go away, when the drugs get out of his system, and you can come back.”