With a warm smile, Alexis walked directly up to Jack and gave him a sustained hug. "Thanks for coming," she whispered in his ear. While still embracing Alexis, Jack saw the other two girls appear at the top of the stairs. It was easy to tell them apart, since Tracy at age fifteen was more than a foot taller than Meghan at eleven. As if not sure what to do, they came down the stairs slowly, hesitating at each step. As they neared it was easy for Jack to see their personalities differed as much as their height. Tracy 's sky-blue eyes burned with a brazen intensity, whereas Meghan's hazel eyes flitted about, not willing to make eye contact. Jack swallowed. Meghan's eye movement suggested she was shy and introverted just like Jack's Lydia.

"Come down here and say hello to your uncle," Alexis ordered goodnaturedly.

As the girls reached the floor level, Jack was surprised at Tracy 's height. He was regarding her at nearly eye level. She was a good three to four inches taller than her mother. The other thing he saw was that she had two obvious piercings. One was on her nostril, topped with a small diamond. The other was a silver ring tucked into her exposed navel. Her attire included a cropped sleeveless cotton top that stretched across precociously impressive breasts.

On her lower half, she wore low-rise billowy harem pants. The outfit and accessories gave her a saucy sensuality as brazen as her stare.

"This is your uncle, girls," Alexis said as a way of introduction.

"How come you've never visited us?" Tracy demanded right off. She had both hands defiantly thrust into pants pockets.

"Did your daughters really die in a plane crash?" Christina asked almost simultaneously.

"Girls!" Alexis blurted, drawing the word out as if it were five or six syllables long. Then, she apologized to Jack. "I'm sorry. You know children. You never know what they are going to say."

"It's all right. Unfortunately, they are both reasonable questions." Then, looking into Tracy 's eyes, he said, "Maybe over the next day or so we could talk. I'll try to explain why I've been a stranger." Then, looking down to Christina, he added, "In answer to your question, I did lose two lovely daughters in a plane tragedy."

"Now Christina," Alexis said, butting in. "Since you're the only one who's finished her homework, why don't you take Uncle Jack down to the basement guest room. Tracy and Meghan, you two head back upstairs and finish your work. And Jack, I assume you've not eaten."

Jack nodded. He'd wolfed down a sandwich at LaGuardia Airport, but that had long since disappeared into the lower reaches of his digestive tract. Although he hadn't expected to be, he was hungry.

"How about some pasta. I've kept the marinara sauce hot, and I can throw together a salad."

"That would be fine."

The basement guest room was as expected. It had two high windows that looked into brick-lined window wells. The air had a damp, cool feeling like a root cellar. On the plus side, it was taste-fully decorated in varying shades of green. The furniture included a king-size bed, a desk, a club chair with a reading lamp, and a flat-screen TV. There was also a bathroom en suite.

While Jack pulled his clothes out of his carry-on bag and hung what he could in the closet, Christina threw herself into the easy chair. With her arms flat on the chair's arms and her feet sticking straight out into space, she regarded Jack critically. "You're skinnier than my dad."

"Is that good or bad?" Jack questioned. He put his basketball sneakers on the floor of the closet and carried his shaving kit into the bathroom. He liked the fact that there was a generous shower stall rather than a generic bathtub.

"How old were your daughters when they crashed in the plane?"

Although Jack should have expected Christina to return to the sensitive issue after his inadequate response, such a direct, personal question snapped him back to that disturbing sequence when he'd said good-bye to his wife and daughters at the Chicago airport. It had been fifteen years ago almost to the day that he'd driven his family to the airport to take a commuter flight back to Champaign while a band of rogue thunderstorms and tornadoes were approaching through the vast midwestern plains. He'd been in Chicago, retraining in forensic pathology after a health-care giant had gobbled up his ophthalmology practice back in the heyday of managed care's expansion. Jack had been trying to get Marilyn to agree to move to Chicago, but she had rightfully refused for the children's sake.

The passage of time had not numbed Jack's memory of the last good-bye. As if it had been yesterday, he could see in his mind's eye, watching through the glass partition, Marilyn, Tamara, and Lydia descend the ramp behind the departure gate. As they reached the maw of the Jetway only Marilyn turned to wave. Tamara and Lydia, with their youthful enthusiasm, had just disappeared.

As Jack was to learn later than night, only fifteen or twenty minutes after takeoff the small prop plane had plowed full-speed into the fertile black earth of the prairie. It had been struck by lightning and caught in a profound wind shear. All aboard had been killed in the blink of an eye.

"Are you okay, Uncle Jack?" Christina asked. For several beats, Jack had been motionless as if caught in a freeze-frame.

"I'm fine," Jack said with palpable relief. He'd just relived the moment in his life that he strenuously avoided thinking about, and yet the episode concluded without the usual visceral sequelae. He didn't feel as if his stomach had flip-flopped, his heart had skipped a beat, or as if a heavy, smothering blanket had descended over him. It was a sad story, but he felt enough distance that it could have involved someone else. Perhaps Alexis was right. As she'd said on the phone: Perhaps he'd processed his grief and moved on.

"How old were they?"

"The same as you and Meghan."

"That's awful."

"It was," Jack agreed.

Back up in the kitchen/great room, Alexis had Jack sit at the family table while she finished boiling the pasta. The girls had all retreated upstairs to get ready for bed. It was a school night. Jack's eyes ranged around the room. It was an expansive yet cozy room befitting the house's external appearance. The walls were a light, sunburst yellow. A deep, comfortable sofa upholstered in a bright green floral fabric and covered with cushions faced a fireplace surmounted by the largest flat-screen television Craig had ever seen. The curtains were the same print as the sofa and framed a bow window looking out on a terrace. Beyond the terrace was a swimming pool. Beyond that was lawn with what looked like a gazebo in the gloom.

"It's a beautiful house," Jack commented. In his mind it was more than beautiful. Compared to how he had been living over the last ten years, it was the epitome of luxury.

"Craig has been a wonderful provider, as I said on the phone," Alexis said as she poured the pasta into a colander.

"Where is he?" Jack questioned. No one had mentioned his name. Jack assumed he was out, perhaps on an emergency medical call or possibly conferring with his attorney.

"He's asleep in the upstairs guest room," Alexis said. "As I implied, we're not sleeping together and haven't been since he left to live in town."

"I thought maybe he was out on a medical call."

"No, he's free of that for the week. He's hired someone to cover his practice during the trial. His attorney recommended it. I think it's a good thing. As dedicated a doctor as he is, I wouldn't want him for my doctor right now. He's too preoccupied."

"I'm impressed he's asleep. If it were me, I'd be up, pacing the house."

"He's had a little help," Alexis admitted. She brought the pasta and salad over to the table and put it in front of Jack. "It was a hard day with the opening of the trial, and he's understandably depressed. I'm afraid he's been self-prescribing sleeping pills to deal with insomnia. There's also been some alcohol: scotch, to be exact, but not enough to worry about, I don't think. At least not yet."