“Ty…” Karen raised herself up. “There’s something I need to ask you about. I saw something when I came to your office that day. You had a picture on the credenza. Two young girls. When I saw you at the game that day, I met your daughter and you told me she was your only one. Then tonight I saw another of her, outside.” She leaned close to him. “I don’t mean to open something up-”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re not opening anything up.”

Facing the ceiling, he told her. About Norah. At last. “She’d be nine now.”

Karen felt a stab of sadness rush over her.

He told her how they’d just come back from the store and forgotten something and had been in such a rush to get back there. There was his shift, he was running late. Beth was mad at him. They were living out in Queens then. He had bought the wrong dessert. “Pudding Snacks…”

How he had somehow left the car in a rush, his shift in half an hour, rushing back in to grab the receipt.

“Pudding Snacks,” Hauck said again, shrugging at Karen, an empty smile.

“They’d been playing on the curb. Tugboat Annie, Jessie told us later. You know the song-‘Merrily, merrily, merrily… ’” He inhaled a breath. “The car backed out. I hadn’t put it in park. All we ever heard was Jessie. And Beth. I remember the look she gave me. ‘Oh, Ty, oh, my God!’ It all happened so suddenly.” He looked up at her and wet his lips. “She was four.”

Karen sat up, and brushed her hand across his slick face. “You’re still carrying it, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes. I saw it there the first time we met.”

“You were the one who was forced to deal with something then.”

“Yes, but I still saw it. I think that’s why I thanked you. For what you said. You made me feel like you understood. I don’t think you ever let it go.”

“How do you let that go, Karen?”

“I know.” Karen nodded. “I know… What about your wife? Beth, right?”

Hauck leaned up on his side, hunched his shoulders sort of helplessly. “I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me. The irony was, she was the reason I was running back to the store.” He turned and faced her. “You know how you always asked me why I’m doing this, Karen?”

She nodded again. “Yeah.”

“And one reason is that I think I was drawn to you from the first time we met. I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

Karen took his hand.

“But the other,” he said, and shook his head, “that Raymond kid, lying there on the asphalt. I knew there was something about it from the get-go. Something about him just brought me back, to Norah. I couldn’t put it away…his image. I still can’t.”

“Their hair,” Karen said, cupping Hauck’s curled hand close to her breast. “They both had the same red hair. You’ve been trying to make up for that accident all this time. By solving this hit-and-run. By playing the hero for me.”

“No, that part was just my plan to get in your pants,” he teased, deadpan.

“Ty.” She looked into his sorrowful eyes. “You are a good man. That part I could see the first time we met. Anyone who knows you can see that. We all do things every day-walk off the curb into traffic, drive when we’ve had a bit too much to drink, forget to blow out a candle when we go to sleep. And things just go on, like they always do. Until one time they don’t. You can’t keep judging yourself. This happened a long time ago. It was an accident. You loved your daughter. You still do. You don’t have to make up for anything anymore.”

Hauck smiled. He pressed his hand to her cheek and stroked Karen’s face. “This from a woman who walked in here tonight having found out that her once-deceased husband was her new AOL pen pal.”

“Tonight, yes.” Karen laughed. “Tomorrow…who the hell knows?”

She dropped back onto the bed. Suddenly she remembered why she had come. The frustration that bristled in her blood. Hello, baby… It all overwhelmed her a little. She grasped his hand.

“So what the hell are we gonna do now, Ty?”

“We’re gonna let it drop,” he said, running his finger along the slope of her back and letting it linger on her buttock. “Anyway, it’s not exactly conducive, Karen.”

“Conducive? Conducive to what?” she asked, aware of the renewed stirring in her belly.

He turned toward her and shrugged. “To doing it again.”

“Doing it again?” He pulled Karen on top of him, their bodies springing alive. She brushed her nose against his, her hair cascading all over his face like a waterfall, and then she laughed. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve heard those words?”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

In the morning Hauck put on coffee. He was out on the deck when Karen stepped outside after nine, wearing an oversize Fairfield University T-shirt she’d grabbed from the drawer, wiping sleep from her eyes.

“Morning.” He looked up, his hand brushing against her thigh.

She leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hi.”

It was a bright, warm, early-summer morning. Karen looked across the row of modest homes to the sound. Boaters were readying their crafts in the marina. An early launch to Cove Island was going out. A few gray gulls flapped in the sky.

She went over to the railing. “It’s nice out here.” She nodded toward the painting, still on its easel. “Feel like I’ve seen this before.”

Hauck pointed to a stack of canvases against the wall. “All the same view.”

Karen raised her face to the sun and ran a hand through her tangled hair against the breeze. Then she sat down next to him, cupping her hands around the mug.

He said, “Listen, about last night…”

She put out her hand and stopped him. “Me first. I didn’t mean to throw myself at you. I just couldn’t face being alone. I-”

“I was about to say last night was a dream,” he said, winking into her sleepy eyes.

“I was about to say something like that, too.” Karen smiled back sheepishly. “I hadn’t been with anyone else in almost twenty years.”

“It was crazy. All that pent-up energy…”

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes.

He shifted himself around to her. “You know that yoga move, where you arch your spine back like that and-”

Karen slapped at his wrist, rebuking. “Oh, you’re a stitch!”

Ty caught her hand. He looked at her, directly now. “I meant it, Karen. What I told you about why I started in on this. Because of you. But you knew that. I’ve never been much of a poker player.”

Karen leaned her head on his shoulder again. “Ty, listen, I don’t know if this is such a smart idea for us right now.”

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

“There’s just too much going on that I have to sort out. What we do about Charlie, my kids? My goddamn husband’s out there, Ty!”

“Have you made up your mind?”

“About what? Help me out. It’s like a fucking Costco of things to choose from.”

“About Charles,” Hauck said. “About what you want me to do.”

Karen drew in a breath. There was something firm in her gaze, replacing the coiled anxiety of last night. She nodded. “I’ve made up my mind. He owes me answers, Ty, and I want them. When he first started lying to me. When whatever it was he was chasing became more important to him than me or the kids. And I’m not gonna turn the page on almost half my life without hearing them. From him. By letting him off the hook. I’m want to find the man, Ty.”

AFTER SHE GOT home and took a shower and brushed out her hair, Karen sat back down at the computer. All the anxiety she’d been feeling last night had hardened into a new resolve.

She clicked onto AOL and found Charlie’s reply to her. She read it over one more time.

Hello, baby…

She started to type.

I’m not your “baby,” Charles. Not anymore. I’m someone you’ve terribly hurt-beyond what you could ever imagine. Someone very confused. But you already know that, Charles, don’t you?