“I woke Brenda once I realized you were gone,” he said. “She said she’d stay in our room until I brought you back.”

Like a runaway, she thought. But she couldn’t run away, she couldn’t hide. How long would it take her to understand that?

Ted held her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. His face was shining with tears. He was strong and masculine and competent, her husband, but the tears fel steadily and his voice was supplicating. “You have to get better, Vick. I can’t live without you. Do you hear me? I love you in a way that is so powerful it lifts me up, it propels me forward. You propel me forward. You have to get better, Vick. ”

Vicki tried to recal the last time she’d seen Ted like this, stripped down to bare emotion. The day he proposed, maybe, or the day Blaine was born. Vicki wanted to tel him, Yes, okay, I’ll fight for you, for the kids. It would be like in the movies, it would be the scene where everything turns around, with the two of them standing on the bluff next to the lighthouse under the great dark sky; it would be the epiphany. Things would change; she would get better. But Vicki didn’t believe in the words, she knew them to be false, and she wouldn’t say them. So she said nothing. She tilted her face up to the sky ful of stars. The problem with having everything, she thought, was that she had everything to lose.

“I can’t make it back,” she confessed to Ted. “It’s too far. I feel like hel .”

“I know,” Ted said. “That’s why I came to get you.”

They hadn’t made love in nearly a month, and yet Ted had never touched her more intimately than at that moment. He picked her up, he carried her home.

Brenda’s phone rang. She was on page thirty of the screenplay and screaming along; the words were coming faster than she could write them. She was too busy to even check her phone’s display. It wasn’t exactly a mystery: the cal was from either Brian Delaney, Esquire, or her mother. The phone stopped ringing. Brenda heard the soft dinging of an elevator somewhere in another part of the hospital, and then the gung-ho voice of the ESPN SportsCenter anchorman.

Vicki was meeting with Dr. Alcott behind closed doors. Vicki’s white blood cel count had dropped dramatical y, and she was running a fever of nearly 104. Dr. Alcott wanted to defer chemo until her counts rose and the fever abated. If ever there was a day when Brenda should have been praying, it was today—but for whatever reason, Brenda found that the only place she could now get any writing done was the oncology waiting room. It was al such a head game! Brenda had a block of time to work in peace at the beach each morning. But when she was at the beach, she got stuck, she was a dry wel , she thought only of Walsh. She had tried the Even Keel Cafe one more time, but that had been worse—she fixated on the other couples eating breakfast, holding hands, whispering to each other, sharing sections of the newspaper. The Milky Way coffee seemed too sweet. Brenda found she could write her screenplay only when she was supposed to be doing something else. Like praying. Like worrying.

Her phone rang again. Brenda was smack in the middle of the scene where Calvin Dare attends the funeral service for Thomas Beech—hiding in the back so as not to be recognized as the man who owned the murderous horse—and this is when he first sets eyes on Beech’s beautiful, bereaved fiancée, Emily. Brenda could see the scene with cinematic clarity—the tilt of Dare’s black hat, the meeting of gazes across a dozen crowded church pews, Dare’s decision then and there to summon the courage to speak to Emily. He approaches her on the church steps after the service to offer his condolences.

Did you know my Thomas? Emily asks, perplexed. Were you a friend?

And Calvin Dare, taking a chance, answers, Yes, a friend from boyhood. I had not seen him in some time. I have been away.

Away? Emily asks.

Abroad.

Emily’s eyebrows arch. She’s young, she was only engaged to Beech for a short while, and (as Brenda argued in her thesis) she is something of an opportunist. She’s saddened by the death of her intended but also intrigued by this stranger, this friend of Thomas’s from boyhood who has just returned from abroad.

Really? Emily says, in a way that could mean almost anything.

The phone stopped, then rang again. “Für Elise,” the ring tone, was truly awful—it sounded like an organ-grinder monkey inside a tin can. Brenda reached blindly into her purse and pul ed the phone out.

Her mother.

Brenda sighed. Put down her pen. El en Lyndon had gone into conniptions upon hearing about Vicki’s fever; she would want to know what the doctor said. Brenda had to go to the bathroom anyway. She took the cal .

“Hi, Mom.”

“How is she?”

“Stil in with the doctor.”

“Stil ?”

“Stil .”

“Wel , what did he say about the fever?”

Brenda moved down the hal to the ladies’ room. “I have no idea. She’s stil in with him.”

“They didn’t tel you anything?”

“They never tel me anything. They tel Vicki and Vicki tel s me. So, we have to wait.” Brenda pushed into the ladies’ room, where her voice bounced back at her from off the tile wal s.

“How long did they say . . . ?”

“They didn’t say, Mom.” Brenda chastised herself. She should never have answered the phone. This kind of conversation frustrated them both.

“Listen, I’l cal you when . . .”

“You promise?”

“I promise. In fact, I’l have Vicki cal so you can hear it straight from the horse’s . . .”

“Okay, darling. Thank you. I’m here waiting. I cancel ed my physical therapy appointment.”

“Why?” Brenda said. “You want your knee to get better, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be able to concentrate,” she said. “Kenneth always asks for a ‘dedicated effort’ with the exercises, and I wouldn’t be able to give it to him. He always knows when I’m distracted.”

I should be distracted, Brenda thought. But the opposite is true. Because I’m wired the wrong way.

“Okay, Mom,” Brenda said. “Good-bye.”

“Cal me when . . .”

“You bet,” Brenda said, then she hung up. There was a flushing noise and a bathroom stal opened. A girl stepped out. Brenda smiled sheepishly and said, “Mothers!”

The girl ignored Brenda, which was fine. But when Brenda stepped out of the stal herself a few minutes later, the girl was stil there, eyeing Brenda in the mirror.

“Hey,” the girl said. “I know you. Josh works for you.”

Brenda looked at the girl more closely. Of course. A push-up bra peeked out from the scoop neck of the girl’s white T-shirt, and then there was the streaky blusher. It was the little vixen from Admitting. Brenda eyed the name tag. Didi. Ah, yes.

“That’s right,” Brenda said. “I’m Brenda. I forgot that you knew Josh.”

“Damn right I know him.”

Brenda washed her hands and reached for a paper towel. Didi rummaged through her bag and pul ed out a cigarette, which she proceeded to light up.

“We real y like Josh,” Brenda said. “He does a great job with the kids.”

“You pay him a fuckload of money,” Didi said. This sounded like an accusation.

“I don’t know about that,” Brenda said. “I’m not in charge of paying him.”

“Have you slept with him?”

Brenda turned to Didi just as Didi blew a stream of smoke from her mouth. Brenda hoped her face conveyed her disgust, combined with the fact that she was too dignified to answer such an absurd question. But Brenda couldn’t help remembering the kiss on the front lawn. Certainly Josh hadn’t told anyone about that?

“You’re not supposed to be smoking in here,” Brenda said. “It’s a hospital. Some people have lung cancer.”

Didi curled her lip into a snarl, and Brenda was overcome with the feeling that she had somehow reverted back to high school—she was trapped in the girls’ bathroom with a rebel ious smoker who was threatening her.

“You’re fucking Josh,” Didi said. “Admit it. Or maybe it’s your sister who’s fucking him.”

“That’s it,” Brenda said. She whipped her wadded-up paper towel into the trash can. “I’m out of here. Good-bye.”

“He never would have turned me down if he wasn’t giving it to one of you,” Didi cal ed out as Brenda flew out the door. “I know it’s one of you!”

Okay, Brenda thought. Weird. And weirder stil , Brenda was trembling. Wel , maybe it wasn’t so weird that she was rattled—after al , the worst moment of her life had shared certain elements with that little scene in the bathroom. A girl, young enough to be Brenda’s student, accusing her of improper relations.

Rumor has it you committed the only sin that can’t be forgiven other than out-and-out plagiarism.

Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student. Romantic or sexual comments, gestures, or innuendo are forbidden between a faculty member and a student and will result in disciplinary action. There are no exceptions made for tenured professors.

We understand, Dr. Lyndon, that you’ve been having improper relations with one of your students.

The “improper relations” were Brenda’s fault. It would have been nice to blame Walsh for pursuing her, but ultimately Brenda was the professor and Walsh the student and Brenda had let it happen. There had been the drinks at the Cupping Room and the kissing—when Brenda woke up the fol owing morning she felt deeply ashamed and terrifical y energized. She thought perhaps John Walsh would cal her cel phone but he didn’t, and by Tuesday morning, she thought maybe she had imagined the whole thing. But in class Walsh sat in his usual seat, surrounded by lovely girl-women, al of whom now seemed to Brenda to be flaunting their bright intel igence like feather boas for his sake. Every time Amrita the brownnoser contributed to class discussion, she looked to Walsh right away, to see if he agreed with her point or not. And Kel y Moore, the soap opera actress, was even worse, with al of her theatrics aimed in his direction. The three Rebeccas had basical y formed a John Walsh Fan Club. He’s so hot, Brenda overheard one of the Rebeccas saying. Everybody wants him. Walsh, for his part, was disarmingly blasé. He had no idea that he was sitting in a classroom of adoring fans.

At the end of class, Brenda handed out the topic of the midterm paper: Compare and contrast Calvin Dare’s identity crisis with an identity crisis of a character from contemporary literature, either on or off the reading list. Fifteen pages. The girls groaned and filed out. Walsh stayed put.

Brenda looked up. “No,” she said. “Go. You have to go.”

He stared at her in a way that made her sick with desire. He didn’t say a word; as Brenda remembered it, he didn’t say one thing. He just stood there, looking at her. Brenda was stupid with her longing for him—and, too, she was egotistical. The other girls—girls far younger and prettier than she—al wanted him, but she was the one who was going to get him. She scribbled her address down on a piece of paper and pressed it into his hand, then she ushered him toward the door.

“Go,” she said. “I have to lock up.” She tilted her head. “Because of the painting.”

He didn’t show up that night or the next night, and Brenda felt like an idiot. She thought maybe he was a double agent hired by the other professors in the English Department who, jealous about her top teaching marks and subsequent superstar status, were trying to frame her. She thought maybe this was an elaborate practical joke dreamed up by the girl-women in the class. On Thursday, she vowed not to look Walsh’s way, though of course she did, several times. Sandrine, the singer from Guadeloupe, had managed to sneak a can of Fresca, which she was resting on her thigh, past Mrs. Pencaldron’s drinks radar. Brenda asked her to please throw it away. Sandrine had risen, reluctantly, and murmured something in French that half of the girl-women laughed at. Brenda became furious, though she was cognizant of the fact that she was not furious with Sandrine, or even with Walsh, but rather, with herself. She was fretting about the piece of paper with her address on it. It was just a piece of paper, just her address—

it didn’t mean anything—and yet, it did. Brenda had given Walsh her permission, she had given him her heart. This may have sounded ridiculous, but that was how she felt. She had pressed her heart into his palm and what had he done with it? Nothing. Walsh didn’t linger after class; he filed out the door behind miffed Sandrine and the rest of the girl-women, and Brenda was crushed.