“Are you sure, Anna?” Nora said. “It would be wonderful if you could. I know he wants to be back soon. You can take my car.” She stepped one pace to her right and draped an arm over Anna’s shoulders as if they were friends rather than employer and employee. “I can’t tell you how much I rely on her.”

Anna looked across the room at me with a cool, appraising stare that made me lower my eyes. The prospect of spending several hours in a car with her was unnerving, but she intrigued me more than I cared to show.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” she said, then slipped off the countertop and padded softly out of the room.

Nora waited until the door had closed behind her and then looked at me tensely. “How was he?” she said.

“Good, I think,” I said. “His mood seems to be improved and he’s agreed to see me on Monday. As long as he keeps taking his medication and comes to see me regularly, I think the prognosis is excellent.”

I hoped to reassure her after everything she’d suffered, but it was true. Harry didn’t seem to be chronically depressed, and there were already signs of life in him. With luck, he might be experiencing the only episode of his life, and the gamble I’d taken in discharging him would have paid off. He’d have to adjust to the loss of his job, but most people did that in time and the Shapiros weren’t exactly on the streets. Maybe I’d just launched a career as a therapist for Wall Street billionaires.

“That’s great. That’s a relief,” Nora said, exhaling and letting her shoulders relax. I was glad to have brought her good news-she deserved it for her loyalty.

“You must keep a close eye on him, however,” I said. “We don’t want anything to go wrong now.”

“I will, Doctor. Absolutely,” she said, beaming.

When I went outside, Anna was standing by the Range Rover with her back to me, gazing at the sea. I stole another look at the graceful curve of her neck before she heard me and turned around. Her eyes looked pale blue in the ocean light.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“All done. It’s kind of you to give me a ride. If you just drop me at the rail station, that’d be fine.”

“You’d be waiting a long time if I did. People commute by helicopter around here, you know.” She walked across to me and laid her left index finger on my lapel, gently prodding me backward. “Get in the car, Doc.”

I obeyed her, remembering the pleasurable sensation of the brief contact between us as she guided the Range Rover down the drive and out along the lane. She knew my profession, I noticed, even if the way she’d demonstrated it had been playful. There clearly couldn’t be many secrets between her and Nora. She gestured over to my left as we passed a low cottage set back from the lane.

“That’s the guesthouse, in case they summon you out here again. I sneak over for yoga or a nap sometimes. Like Goldilocks.”

“Ever been woken by a bear?” I said lightly, excited at having left the Shapiros’ estate and feeling as if I’d finally regained control of my life. Of course, I should have realized that it was an illusion. Sitting in Nora’s car with Anna driving wasn’t much different from sitting in Harry’s Gulfstream with Felix as my guide. It was all in the family.

She giggled. “Not even a small one. Anyway, Nora doesn’t have to look far. He has the whole estate wired. I’m never out of reach.”

“What’s that like?”

“Uh, excruciating? It’s nice to escape to the city for a night. Look over there. That’s the big news around here,” she said, gesturing out of my window. We had snaked along a maze of roads with vast lawns and reached the junction to the main thoroughfare. There was a long curved pond surrounded by neat lawn.

“What?” I asked, unable to see anything noteworthy.

“The swan mother is on her nest on Town Pond. She had five cygnets last year and it was all anyone talked about. I felt like I was losing my mind.”

As she said it, she pushed down on the accelerator and we sped out of the village as if we were being chased. Like me, she seemed to perk up just to be leaving the place behind. We were both silent for a while as we whizzed up Route 27, and I tried to catch glimpses of her face without her noticing me. Something was going on inside me that I hadn’t felt for a long time. It was foolish because I couldn’t do anything about it. The last thing that made sense was to start an affair with Harry’s housekeeper, even if I stood a chance, which I probably didn’t. But I wanted to prolong the thrill I felt when I was with her even if I couldn’t act on it.

I thought of the look she’d given me as she stood in the kitchen, one that suggested she knew all about me although we’d only just met. She could see all of the bad things inside me-my cruelty, my coldheartedness-and she didn’t care. It was only my fantasy, but that was how she made me feel. It was like the first time that I’d fallen in love as a teenager, the sensation of adoring someone for reasons I couldn’t articulate and of craving her physical presence. Laura Kendrick had been her name, and it had lasted a year. As I sat there, I thought of Laura, now married with two kids, and smiled to myself.

“What?” Anna said. I hadn’t noticed her looking at me.

“Nothing.”

The sad thing was that it didn’t remind me of Rebecca. I’d been fond of her, admired her, even loved her, but I had never craved her in that desperate, chemical way. There were things I’d always kept from her, and I’d felt guilty that she cherished me so much. He isn’t me, I wanted to say to her. That man you love. He’s a better person than I am. I’d never said those words because she was my best friend and I’d been afraid to hurt her, but she’d realized it and she’d left. She’d saved me the heartache of jettisoning her.

I’d been having a recurrent dream about Rebecca. I was on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, standing next to my mother and seeing her gray hair and her soft, kind face. We were talking-I didn’t know what about, but it made me happy. Then I glanced up the steps and saw Rebecca wearing a summer dress. “Come on,” I said to my mother, and we set off after her. We couldn’t find her inside, and we started hunting through galleries, my mother now leading the way. Then we came to a gallery where there was a party, with a crowd of people drinking champagne around a painting.

I walked up to the painting and saw that it was a nude of a woman lying on a sofa. She was beautiful, and I reached forward and felt one of her breasts, which was soft and warm to my touch. Then my mother called to me, pointing toward a window through which Rebecca had climbed. I saw that Rebecca had scrambled down a rope into Central Park and was running across the grass to a clump of trees.

“Becca!” I shouted, but she didn’t turn round.

That was how the dream ended.

We’d met at Episcopal two years after I’d arrived in New York, so my mother had never known her. I’d always believed they’d have got on well-both of them were sweet and loyal. On our first date, she told me I was different from the other shrinks, which I took as a compliment. We were sitting in a restaurant on the Upper East Side, one of those Italian spots that are institutions, although they don’t deserve it anymore. I spent most of the meal enjoying her presence, and as we left, she turned to me to be kissed.

I’d chosen psychiatry despite the questions it raises. They screen for a degree of empathy when they admit you to medical school: they don’t want scientists who can’t talk to other people. But the competitive spots are for cardiology, radiology, or ear, nose, and throat, the entry point to plastic surgery-anything that involves expensive procedures and minimal chat. Other residents suspected the psychs of being lazy or crazy. Lazy because psychiatry involves little night work apart from emergency shifts. Crazy because many were drawn to it by some affinity with their patients. Either they were odd themselves-working out an inner demon by finding one in others-or they had a family history. Guilty on both counts.