She stepped back into the house and held the door open for me.

“Come in. I’ve made lunch. Well, I bought some cold cuts and salads, and there’s fresh bread. That’ll have to do.”

“It’s more than enough.” I moved into the house, and she closed the door behind me, squeezing past me to lead me to the kitchen, her hands resting for a moment at my waist, her stomach brushing my groin. I let out a deep sigh.

“What?” she said, wide eyed and radiating innocence.

“Nothing.”

“Go on, say it.”

“I think you could still flirt for your country.”

“As long as it’s in a good cause. Anyway, I’m not flirting with you, not much. You had your chance a long time ago.”

“Really?” I tried to remember any chance I’d had with Amanda Grace, but nothing came to me. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her fill a jug from a purified water faucet.

“Yeah, really,” she said, not turning. “You only had to ask me out. It wasn’t complicated.”

I sat down. “Everything seemed complicated back then.”

“Not to Mike.”

“Well, he wasn’t a complicated guy.”

“No, he wasn’t.” She turned off the faucet and placed the jug on the table. “He still isn’t. As time goes on, I’ve come to realize that’s no bad thing.”

“What does he do?”

“He works on cars. He runs an auto shop in Orangetown. Still bowls, but he’ll die before he ever owns an alley of his own.”

“And you?”

“I used to teach elementary school, but I gave it up when my second daughter was born. Now I do some part-time work for a company that publishes schoolbooks. I guess I’m a saleswo Bishuo;man, but I like it.”

“You have kids?” I hadn’t known.

“Two girls. Kate and Annie. They’re at school today. They’re still adjusting to having my dad here, though.”

“How is he?”

She grimaced. “Not good. It’s just a matter of time. The drugs make him sleepy, but he’s usually good for an hour or two in the afternoon. Soon, he’ll have to go to a hospice, but he’s not ready for that, not yet. For now, he’ll stay here with us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He’s not. He had a great life, and he’s ending it with his family. He’s looking forward to seeing you, though. He liked your father a lot. Liked you too. I think he’d have been happy if we’d ended up together, once.”

Her face clouded. I think she had made a series of unspoken connections, creating an alternative existence in which she might have been my wife.

But my wife was dead.

“We read about all that happened,” she said. “It was awful, all of it.”

She was silent for a time. She had felt obliged to raise the subject, and now she did not know what to do to dispel the effect it had had.

“I have a daughter too,” I told her.

“Really? That’s great,” she said, with a little too much enthusiasm. “How old is she?”

“Two. Her mother and I, we’re not together anymore.” I paused. “I still see my daughter, though.”

“What’s her name?”

“Samantha. Sam.”

“She’s in Maine?”

“No, Vermont. When she’s old enough, she can vote socialist and start signing petitions to secede from the union.”

She raised a glass of water. “Well, to Sam, then.”

“To Sam.”

We ate and talked about old school friends, and her life in Pearl River. It turned out that she had made it to Europe after all, with Mike. The trip had been a gift for their tenth wedding anniversary. They went to France, and Italy, and England.

“And was it what you’d expected?” I asked.

“Some of it. I’d like to go back and see more, but it was enough, for now.”

I heard movement above us.

“Dad’s awake,” she said. “I just need to go upstairs and help him get organized.”

She left the kitchen and went upstairs. After a moment or two, I could hear voices, and a man coughing. The coughs sounded harsh and dry and painful.

Ten minutes later, Amanda led an old, stooped man into the room, keeping a reassuring arm around his waist. He was so thin that her arm almost encircled him, but even bent over B aridthe was nearly as tall as I was.

Eddie Grace’s hair was gone. Even his facial hair had disappeared. His skin looked clammy and transparent, tinged with yellow at the cheeks and a reddish-purple below the eyes. There was very little blood in his lips, and when he smiled, I could see that he had lost many of his teeth.

“Mr. Grace,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Eddie,” he said. “Call me Eddie.” His voice was a rasp, like a plane moving over rough metal.

He shook my hand. His grip was still strong.

His daughter stayed with him until he had seated himself.

“You want some tea, Dad?”

“Nah, I’m good, thank you.”

“There’s water in the jug. You want me to pour some for you?”

He raised his eyes to heaven.

“She thinks that, because I walk slow and sleep a lot, I can’t pour my own water,” he said.

“I know you can pour your own water. I was just trying to be nice. Jeez, but you’re an ungrateful old man.” She said it with affection, and when she hugged him he patted her hand and grinned.

“And you’re a good girl,” he said. “Better than I deserve.”

“Well, as long as you understand that.” She kissed his bald pate. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

She looked at me from behind him, and asked me silently not to tire him out. I nodded slightly, and she left us once he was comfortably seated, but not before touching him gently on the shoulder as she pulled the door half closed behind her.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” I asked.

“So-so,” he said. “Still here, though. I feel the cold. I miss Florida. Stayed as long as I could, but I wasn’t able to look after myself, once I started getting sick. Andrea, my wife, she died a few years back. I couldn’t afford a private nurse. ’Manda brought me up here, said she’d look after me if the hospital agreed. And I still got friends, you know, from the old days. It’s not so bad. It’s just the damn cold that gets me.”

He poured himself some water, the jug shaking only slightly in his hand, then took a sip.

“Why’d you come back here, Charlie? What are you doing, talking to a dying man?”

“It’s about my father.”

“Huh,” he said. Some of the water dribbled from his mouth and ran down his chin. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his gown.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “It’s only when someone new comes along that I forget how little dignity I have left. You know what I’ve learned from life? Don’t get old. Avoid it for as long as you can. Getting sick don’t help none either.”

He seemed to drift for a moment, and his eyes grew heavy.

“Eddie,” I said gently. “I wanted to talk to you about Will.”

He grunted and turned his attention back to me. “Yeah, Will. One of the good ones.”

“You were his friend. I hoped that you might be able to tell me something about what happened, about why it happened.”

“After all this time?”

“After all this time.”

He tapped his fingers on the table.

“He did things the quiet way, your old man. He could talk people down, you know? That was his thing. Never got real angry. Never had a temper. Even the move for a time from the Ninth to Uptown, that was his decision. Probably didn’t do much for his record, requesting a transfer that early in his career, but he did it for a quiet life. Of all the men who might have done what he did he wasn’t the one I’d have picked, not in a million years.”

“Do you remember why he requested the transfer?”

“Ah, he wasn’t getting on with some of the brass in the Ninth, he and Jimmy both. They were some team, those two. Where one led, the other followed. Between them, I think they managed to spit in the eye of everyone who mattered. That was the flip side of your father. He had a devil in him, but he kept it chained up most of the time. Anyway, there was a sergeant in the Ninth name of Bennett. You ever hear of him?”