But maybe, he thinks, maybe it isn’t too late. Maybe he can pretend one more time, and this last bout of pretending will change things for him, will make him into the person he might have been. He is fifty-one; he is old. But maybe he still has time. Maybe he can still be repaired.

He is still thinking this on Monday when he goes to see Dr. Loehmann, to whom he apologizes for his awful behavior the week before—and the weeks before that, as well.

And this time, for the first time, he really tries to talk to Dr. Loehmann. He tries to answer his questions, and to do so honestly. He tries to begin to tell a story he has only ever told once before. But it is very difficult, not only because the story is barely possible for him to speak, but because he cannot do so without thinking of Willem, and how when he had last told this story, he was with someone who had seen him the way no one had since Ana, with someone who had managed to see past who he was, and yet see him completely as well. And then he is upset, breathless, and he turns his wheelchair sharply—he is still six or seven pounds away from using his prostheses for walking again—and excuses himself and leaves Dr. Loehmann’s office, spinning down the hall to the bathroom, where he locks himself in, breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart. And here in the bathroom, which is cold and silent, he plays his old game of “If” with himself: If I hadn’t followed Brother Luke. If I hadn’t let myself be taken by Dr. Traylor. If I hadn’t let Caleb inside. If I had listened more to Ana.

On he plays, his recriminations beating a rhythm in his head. But then he also thinks: If I had never met Willem. If I had never met Harold. If I had never met Julia, or Andy, or Malcolm, or JB, or Richard, or Lucien, or so many other people: Rhodes and Citizen and Phaedra and Elijah. The Henry Youngs. Sanjay. All the most terrifying Ifs involve people. All the good ones do as well.

Finally he is able to calm himself, and he wheels himself out of the bathroom. He could leave, he knows. The elevator is there; he could send Mr. Ahmed back for his coat.

But he doesn’t. Instead he goes the other direction, and returns to the office, where Dr. Loehmann is still sitting in his chair, waiting for him.

“Jude,” says Dr. Loehmann. “You’ve come back.”

He takes a breath. “Yes,” he says. “I’ve decided to stay.”

[ VII ] Lispenard Street

ON THE SECOND anniversary of your death, we went to Rome. This was something of a coincidence, and also not: he knew and we knew he’d have to be out of the city, far away from New York State. And maybe the Irvines felt the same way, because that was when they had scheduled the ceremony—at the very end of August, when all of Europe had migrated elsewhere, and yet we were flying toward it, that continent bereft of all its chattering flocks, all its native fauna.

It was at the American Academy, where Sophie and Malcolm had both once had residencies, and where the Irvines had endowed a scholarship for a young architect. They had helped select the first recipient, a very tall and sweetly nervous young woman from London who built mostly temporary structures, complex-looking buildings of earth and sod and paper that were meant to disintegrate slowly over time, and there was the announcement of the fellowship, which came with additional prize money, and a reception, at which Flora spoke. Along with us, and Sophie and Malcolm’s Bellcast partners, there were Richard and JB, both of whom had also had residencies in Rome, and after the ceremony we went to a little restaurant nearby they had both liked when they had lived there, and where Richard showed us which part of the building’s walls were Etruscan and which were Roman. But although it was a nice meal, comfortable and convivial, it was also a quiet one, and at one point I remember looking up and realizing that none of us were eating and all of us were staring—at the ceiling, at our plates, at one another—and thinking something separate and yet, I knew, something the same as well.

The next afternoon Julia napped and we took a walk. We were staying across the river, near the Spanish Steps, but we had the car take us back over the bridge to Trastevere and walked through streets that were so close and dark that they might have been hallways, until finally we came to a square, tiny and precise and adorned with nothing but sunlight, where we sat on a stone bench. An elderly man, with a white beard and wearing a linen suit, sat down on the other end, and he nodded at us and we nodded at him.

For a long time we were silent together, sitting in the heat, and then he suddenly said that he remembered this square, that he had been here with you once, and that there was a famous gelato place just two streets away.

“Should I go?” he asked me, and smiled.

“I think you know the answer,” I said, and he got up. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Stracciatella,” I told him, and he nodded. “I know,” he said.

We watched him leave, the man and I, and then the man smiled at me and I smiled back. He wasn’t so elderly after all, I saw: probably just a few years older than I. And yet I was never able (and am still not) to think of myself as old. I talked as if I knew I was; I bemoaned my age. But it was only for comedy, or to make other people feel young.

“Lui è tuo figlio?” the man asked, and I nodded. I was always surprised and pleased when we were recognized for who we were to each other, for we looked nothing alike, he and I: and yet I thought—I hoped—there must have been something about the way we were together that was more compelling evidence of our relation than mere physical resemblance.

“Ah,” the man said, looking at him again before he turned the corner and disappeared from sight. “Molto bello.”

“Sì,” I said, and was suddenly sad.

He looked sly, then, and asked, or rather stated, “Tua moglie deve essere molto bella, no?” and then grinned to show me he meant it in fun, that it was a compliment, that if I was a plain man, I was also a lucky one, to have such a beautiful wife who had given me such a handsome son, and so I couldn’t be offended. I grinned back at him. “She is,” I said, and he smiled, unsurprised.

The man had already left by the time he returned—nodding at me as he went, leaning on his cane—with a cone for me and a container of lemon granita for Julia. I wished he had bought something for himself, too, but he hadn’t. “We should go,” he said, and we did, and that night he went to bed early, and the following day—the day you died—we didn’t see him at all: he left us a message with the front desk saying he had gone for a walk, and that he would see us tomorrow, and that he was sorry, and all day long we walked too, and although I thought there was a chance we might see him—Rome is not such a large city, after all—we didn’t, and that night as we undressed for bed, I was aware that I had been looking for him on every street, in every crowd.

The next morning there he was at breakfast, reading the paper, pale but smiling at us, and we didn’t ask him what he’d done the day before and he didn’t volunteer it. That day we just walked around the city, the three of us an unwieldy little pack—too wide for the sidewalks, we strolled in single file, each of us taking the position of the leader in turn—but just to familiar places, well-trafficked places, places that would have no secret memories, that held no intimacies. Near Via Condotti Julia looked into the tiny window of a tiny jewelry store, and we went inside, the three of us filling the space, and each held the earrings she had admired in the window. They were exquisite: solid gold, dense and heavy and shaped like birds, with small round rubies for eyes and little gold branches in their beaks, and he bought them for her, and she was embarrassed and delighted—Julia had never worn much jewelry—but he looked happy to be able to, and I was happy that he was happy, and that she was happy, too. That night we met JB and Richard for a final dinner, and the next morning we left to go north, to Florence, and he to go home.