"The worst part of it was the ride over," he began softly. "We knew something had happened to him. The police had called. They said there had been an accident. They sent a squad car for us. My father wasn't living at our house at the time. I think he knew someone was after him."

Sylvia sat as steady as a rock, listening.

"It was raining that night," he went on, speaking slowly as the images came back to him. "We drove up Stone Canyon. My mother was holding on to me so tightly. It was late and she was crying. She must have known he was dead. Her intuition, whatever. But I didn't. The police hadn't wanted me along, but she'd insisted. Even then she wasn't very strong. I looked out the police car's window, watching the rain fall, wondering what had happened. The radio was squelching all the time, that clipped police jargon. Somewhere in there I heard the word homicide and the address where my father had been staying. The policemen up front didn't say a word to us. I expected them to say, 'Don't worry,' or 'Everything's going to be fine.' But they didn't say anything."

Nick leaned forward and laced his hands in Sylvia's, bringing them to his chest. He saw that tears had formed in her eyes, and for a few seconds he was mad at her. Seeing another person cry prompted in him a disdain for that person's weakness. He knew his anger was bred out of a fear of confronting his own emotions and that he was wrong to have it. Still, it sat there for a minute and he had to wait until it played itself out before going on.

"You know what I felt sitting there? That everything was going to be different. I knew right then that my world was going to turn upside down and nothing would be the same."

"What happened?" Sylvia whispered.

"The police figured that someone came to the door of the house at around nine o'clock that night. My dad knew whoever it was. There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a scuffle. He opened the door, led the killer inside the house a few steps, probably talked to him for a while. He was shot in the chest. Three times from close range, just two or three feet. Someone looked my father straight in the eye and killed him. You'd never know a man has so much blood in him. I mean, that whole entryway was red. The police hadn't covered him up yet. They hadn't even closed his eyes." Nick allowed his own eyes to wander to the broad picture window and stared outside, seeing nothing but darkness. He blew out a breath of air and let go of the memory. "Boy, it was raining that night."

Sylvia placed her hand on Nick's cheek. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm all right." He half smiled, and nodded to show that he was in fact okay, that a marine never cries, that he was hardly deserving of her compassion. "So my father is dead. That's it, right. That's the sad part. Obviously, I'm wondering who did it. There's the regular investigation, but no witnesses, no murder weapon. The police didn't have a thing to go on. Six months later, case closed. Life goes on. Chalk it up to a random act of violence. The cops will tell you it happens all the time in a big city like Los Angeles." Suddenly, he pounded his hand on the table. "But goddammit, it doesn't happen all the time to me."

Nick slid his chair away from the table and asked if she minded if he stepped outside for a moment. He crossed the living area, then opened the sliding glass door and stepped into the icy night air. A perfect semicircle was carved from the snow so that one could stand on the terrace and look out at the curtain of forest. The night's cold embrace could not stifle the scent of pine and oak. He breathed deeply and watched as the vapor of his condensing breath cut a swath out of the darkness. He willed himself to think of nothing, to make his mind a blank, to breathe and watch and feel the world around him as if this were all there were.

"It's beautiful here."

Nick jumped at the sound of Sylvia's voice. He hadn't heard her approaching. "I can't believe we're still in the city," he said.

"Just out the front door and down the street."

"I feel like I'm in the middle of the mountains."

"Mmmm," she agreed. She looped her arms around him and drew herself against his back. "Nick, I'm so sorry."

He placed his hands over hers and held them tightly against him. "So am I."

"So that's why you came here?" she whispered, more answer than question.

"I guess so. Once I found the agendas I didn't really have a choice. Sometimes I tell myself that there's no way in the world I'm going to find anything." He shrugged. "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I just know I have to try."

For a while neither spoke. Gently, he rocked back and forth, enjoying the warmth of her body and the mix of her perfume with the crisp air. He turned to Sylvia and lowered his face toward hers. She touched his cheek and as their lips met, he closed his eyes.

Inside, Sylvia asked Nick what the next step was.

"I need to see my father's activity reports for 1978 and 1979."

"There are eight volumes. Four for each year."

"So be it," he said.

She replaced a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded as if summing up a daunting task. "I'll do my best. I really do want to help. But, Nick, it's been so long. Who knows what your father might have written in those reports? Please don't expect too much. You'll only be disappointed."

Nick made his way around her living room, stopping to examine a picture here, a knickknack there. "Someone once told me that every man and woman could easily choose how happy they wanted to be. The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation. Happiness, he said, equaled reality divided by expectation. If you don't hope for much, then reality will almost surely beat your expectations, therefore you'll be happy. If you expect the world, you'll always be disappointed. The problem is for folks who always want to be happy, the dreamers who put a big ten on the bottom of that equation."

"What do you expect, Nick?"

"When I was young, I wanted the ten. We all do, I guess. After my father died and things took a turn for the worse, I would have been happy with a three. Now I'm more optimistic. I want a five, hell, I'll take a risk, give me a six. If six days out of ten are good, I'll be all right."

"I mean, what do you really expect? What do you want to do with your life?"

"Well, obviously I'd like to put my father's murder behind me. After that I'm not sure. Maybe I'll stay in Switzerland for a while. Fall in love. Have a family. Mostly, I want to feel like I belong someplace." A feeling of intimate complacency fell over Nick as he spoke to Sylvia, almost as if he were yielding to a mild opiate. He barely knew her, yet already he was sharing his innermost feelings, dreams he had held for a future with Anna. Dreams for another world, he reminded himself. And another lifetime. "What about you?"

"I change from day to day, from minute to minute. When I was growing up, I wasn't very happy. I always wanted my mother to come back. I would've taken a four. When I first began at the bank, a nine. Anything was possible. Today, with you sitting in my dining room, I still want a nine. I'd rather be a little disappointed than not have wished at all."

"What do you really want?"

"That's easy. To be the first woman on the executive board of USB."

Nick ended his tour of her living room and fell into the overstuffed couch. "A dreamer, eh?"

Sylvia sat down next to him. "Why else would I help you with these binders? They're darned heavy to carry around."

"Poor Sylvia, what will we do with her?" Nick rubbed her back. "Bad back?"

She nodded her head. "Uh-huh."

He lifted her legs onto his lap and massaged her calves. "And your legs. They must be killing you?" Running his hands along her smooth legs sent a current of desire through his body. He had forgotten the touch of a woman's body, forgotten seduction's joyous impatience.