“Then we’ll leave next week.”

Clines shifted uncomfortably in the seat. He drew in his rough cheeks, eyeing her gravely. “I don’t generally work with my clients, Mrs. Singer. It’s not done.”

“Then this will be different.”

“He may have left Italy by now. He could have gone anywhere. To Eastern Europe, to Asia. I may have to move around very quickly.”

“You’ll move around as quickly as you need. If for some reason I can’t keep up with you, I’ll follow when I can. I don’t want to be more than a half-day behind. It’s not possible any other way. I’m sorry.”

Clines scratched at his face. It was a sight she had seen countless times in the shop from buyers and consigners: the tight set of the mouth, the stare cast askance, and finally the yielding to her position, which was what made her business consistently, if never tremendously, profitable. Her talent, her gift, was an instantly patent resolve, so that both longtime acquaintances and strangers like Clines encountered an equally intransigent edifice, this deep-rooted stone. David had simply gone around, rather than attempt to dislodge her; for example, he was uncomfortable with her closing the shop herself, particularly in wintertime, when it was dark by five, and in the end he had simply hired a man to watch her from across the street to make sure she wasn’t mugged. Had Nicholas done the same? Had he gone around her as well, but to an epic degree? He never appeared to be cowed by her, or demoralized. He always seemed happy enough. Aside from his scholarly ability, his teachers always told her in conferences that he was one of the more popular boys. But perhaps in the face of her, the sheer steep wall, he had receded like any child would, measure by imperceptible measure, until one day he must have seen the distance to be startling, and acceptable.

“Whenever we do catch up with him,” Clines finally said, “you shouldn’t expect he’ll be pleased to see you.”

“I won’t.”

“Or that he’ll even agree to meet you. In fact, your being there might undo everything. There’s a reason you’ve hired a third party like me. It’s not only to find him. Sometimes you need an intermediary to settle someone down. Otherwise, he might just run faster.”

“He’s not running away from me, Mr. Clines.”

Clines nodded severely. “As long as you understand what we’re doing here.”

“I do.”

“Okay,” he said, though clearly he was not satisfied. “Now, about your son.”

She brought out the pictures of him Clines had asked her for, as well as the postcards, so he could have examples of Nicholas’s handwriting. She actually didn’t have very many of either. Over the years she had kept the small handful of postcards but had long ago discarded his old schoolwork, including most of the art projects he had made, the paintings and sketchbooks, for which she felt sharply regretful now. But what was shocking was the pathetically small collection of photographs she had of Nicholas. Most of them were the official yearly school portraits, the others being the few snapshots she’d taken through the years. She was never one to take pictures, and owned only the least expensive pocket camera. As Clines looked through the meager stack, she felt compelled to explain herself, to tell him about all the other things she had been doing instead, but she kept silent. Not taking pictures of Nicholas was neither a conscious nor an unconscious choice; it signified nothing, revealing only the fact that she rarely had much time back then for anything but the most basic parenting. She was a young single mother with a fledging shop during a period in New York when the economy was dismal. She worked all the time, and rarely had the energy or inclination to cook or help him with his homework. She was always behind in doing the laundry and cleaning the apartment, which by his middle school years he did for them. For his efforts he got a very large allowance (for a preteen), which he was thrilled with, but they both knew he had to do it, as the basic chores would not otherwise get done. Toward his studies she took the attitude that since he was attending a good private school, on scholarship, his teachers would give him enough challenge and attention, and that as a single parent whose small business was their only means and lifeline she ought to trust their judgment and goodwill. Nicholas was naturally bright and was self-motivated enough, it seemed to June, that she could let him direct his own education. Little by little, though, he had chosen his own way in just about everything, things a boy probably shouldn’t have to be responsible for, like buying his own clothes and ordering takeout. He had even neatly painted his bedroom one weekend while she was away for an auction in Philadelphia, though he chose a too-dark purple that seemed to suck all the light out of their small apartment, leaving everything gothically dimmed and crepuscular.

June didn’t worry that she might be somehow depriving him. Like other mothers and sons, they had plenty of good times, for example when she brought him along on a furniture-buying trip when he was eleven and they stopped in Colonial Williamsburg. They churned butter together and made a long swath of rainbow-striped fabric on an old-fashioned loom, and one of the photographs in Clines’s hands was of the two of them locked up in the stocks, both of them beaming with goofy grins, and that evening instead of driving home she decided to spend money she shouldn’t have to stay at a decent motel with an indoor pool, so Nicholas could enjoy a swim before they ate their takeout dinner of burgers and fries. The next spring his class took a trip to Washington, D.C., and he had made her cry when he brought home a large vegetable-and-dip platter with seven interlocking porcelain trays illustrated with famous monuments. He’d bought it with the spending money she had given him, rather than buying his own souvenirs or snacks.

“But we don’t throw parties,” she said, her heart rent in her chest.

“Now we can!” he said.

She used the platter for his next few birthday parties, filling the trays with hard candies and chocolates and bubble gum. Every holiday saw it on their kitchen table. One by one the trays got broken, eventually only the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument remaining intact, and he finally told her he wouldn’t be upset if she threw the platter away, as it looked silly with most of its trays missing.

Though she couldn’t recall now, at some point she did.

“It seems your son liked the Roman times,” Clines said, flipping through some pictures from various Halloweens.

“Yes, he always did,” she said. “But he was drawn to Italy in general.”

Clines showed her what he was looking at: there were shots of Nicholas, second grade, costumed in a centurion’s outfit, complete with a plastic bronze breastplate and broom-top helmet. Another shot, a year older, had him as a gladiator, with a dirty, ripped shirt and a sword. Though there weren’t pictures, she remembered him dressing up in middle school as a senator, in toga and sandals, a laurel on his head, and then one year in a beret and the loose, swarthy garb of a nineteenth-century bohemian. She’d asked him who he was and he told her, quite proudly, that he was Camille Corot. In her shop there was a shelf of old art books and one was full of color plates of the artist’s Italian landscape paintings, which Nicholas often leafed through after school. He simply said he liked the soft colors of the houses and trees, so different from the city, but she wondered if it was because she had once falsely and stupidly suggested, after one of his random, out-of-the-blue queries, that she met and briefly lived with his father in Italy.

“Where exactly?” Nicholas asked. He was perhaps ten at the time.

“In the northern part.”

“Show me,” he said, quickly retrieving a large world atlas she also had on the shelf, and which he was always poring over. He certainly knew all of the national capitals, and most of the major cities.