Inside

FOUR

Montreal, 1996

GRACE HAD JUST come back from work when the buzzer to her apartment rang. For a second her pulse quickened; she had the brief, impossible thought that it was Tug. Maybe he had come to explain what had happened. To thank her. She’d told him her last name, so it wouldn’t have been hard to track her down. She tucked her hair behind her ears, straightened her sweater, felt herself flush. All this in the few seconds before a crackling sound came through the speaker, and she realized it wasn’t him.

“Dr. Tomlinson,” said a female voice, “it’s Annie. I’m coming up.”

There were footsteps on the stairs and Grace watched Annie Hardwick climb the last few steps unsteadily, clutching the rail, her pale face turned upward. Wearing a puffy ski jacket that dwarfed her thin frame, she was hunched under the weight of her backpack.

“I took a cab here,” she said, panting, when she reached the top step. “I didn’t know where else to go. I need to lie down for a few hours. I can’t go home, my mom will see the bleeding and she knows it’s not my usual time.”

“Jesus,” Grace said, letting her in.

The girl was shivering. Underneath the ski jacket she wore her school uniform, a short skirt and tights and a cotton sweater over a button-down shirt. Her long hair was pulled back in a wide navy headband. Grace took her coat, led her to the couch — where she lay down, obedient, fragile — and spread a blanket over her.

“All the women in my family are very regular, my mom says,” Annie said. “Set a clock by them. And the two of us cycle together because we live together, so she’ll definitely notice that something’s up.”

“What happened?”

“I went to the doctor,” she said. “Your address is listed, so I came here. I told my mom I was eating dinner at a friend’s house and I’d be home by nine.”

Her legs contracted under the blanket, her knees moving up toward her chin, and she started to cry, without moving to wipe her tears away. “It’s too bad because I sort of wish I could just go to bed,” she said in a soft, distant undertone. “I mean, I wish I had my mom.”

Grace sat down on the couch and put the girl’s head in her lap and stroked her long hair until she quieted, then slept.

An hour later, Annie woke up and seemed more alert. She went into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later and asked if there was anything to eat. Grace made her a bowl of soup and she sat on the couch and ate it, slurping like a child. Then she handed Grace her empty bowl, smiled, and readjusted her headband. “I like your apartment,” she said. “It’s small, but it’s nice.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“A little.”

“Do you want me to call your parents to come pick you up?”

“No. I’ll take a cab in a little while, okay? Listen, I’m really sorry I just showed up here, but I didn’t know where else to go. I can pay you, like, for an extra session or something.”

Her parents had taught her to pave her way with money. When Grace said nothing, she blushed. “I’m sorry.”

She lay back down on the couch, more languorously this time, and began to ramble, talking more freely than she ever had in Grace’s office about her parents, their financial problems and arguments, their general cluelessness about anything to do with her life. She said she felt sorry for them, for how stressed out they were about everything, and that they deserved a better daughter.

“It’s like with Ollie,” she said. “Some of my friends, they don’t understand how I could be with him, because he’s not always that nice to me. He always acts really nice around teachers and parents, so they all think he’s like the perfect kid even though it’s just an act. And he flirts with other girls and maybe even hooks up with them for all I know. My friends think I’m like this victim, or whatever. But what they don’t understand is that I need to be with somebody like that, somebody who’s like me. Ollie and I have to be together because we can’t go around hurting nice, normal people. I haven’t told him about the other stuff, but I don’t have to feel as bad about that as I would with a nice guy.”

“What other stuff?”

“Oh, just stuff,” Annie said dreamily. “Sometimes I meet people.”

“It sounds to me like you might be putting yourself in danger,” Grace said. “Which is a bad idea.”

“No kidding,” Annie said. “I mean, obviously.”

She fell asleep again, and when Grace woke her at eight thirty she sat up immediately, her forehead crinkled in worry. “Am I late?” she said. “Shit.”

Using the phone in the kitchen, she called a cab. Then she said, “Thank you for your help,” her tone blatantly impersonal, her eyes fixed on a spot just over Grace’s left shoulder. For a moment, she seemed to consider shaking her hand, but then she turned abruptly and left, her steps tumbling heavily down the stairs.

Grace poured herself a glass of wine and told herself she had just made a terrible mistake. Now, even more than before, she was colluding with Annie, part of her secret. She thought about calling Annie’s parents right away, but something stopped her. The girl had cried and rambled so openly, had shown such trust in her. In trouble and pain, she came to her door, and what could Grace do but let her in?

In her first year of practice, Grace had a patient named Morris Tinkerton, an American who had come to Montreal to work for a telecommunications company. He spent the entire first session explaining his job in elaborate, technical detail, and Grace had waited for all this information to lead into whatever issue had brought him to her, before realizing it was simply an avoidance technique and irrelevant to any problem he might have. In the second session he began talking about his wife, Suzanne, a college professor who had chosen to remain behind in Minneapolis. Her field was the sociology of health care — who got what kind of medical treatment and why — and Morris spoke as knowledgeably and thoroughly of her work as he did of his own. Starting to feel like she was being held hostage at a boring dinner party, Grace took notes on a yellow legal pad. She decided that professional commitments had forced the two apart geographically and, most likely, emotionally as well.

Morris was thirty-five but looked ten years older, his face settling into the slack paunch of middle age, and his outfits, strangely childlike polo shirts and khaki pants, made him seem, paradoxically, even older. He spoke with a lilting, almost Scandinavian accent and settled himself on her couch with his palms resting on his knees and his posture rigid, as if he’d been belted into a ride. When he first mentioned the dog, he referred to her simply as Molly, and Grace thought that in her boredom she’d failed to make note of this third important person in their family.

“So when Molly and I were out walking the other day,” Morris said, “I was thinking about Suzanne and certain concepts in her dissertation.” And: “I’ve been working such long hours lately that I’ve hardly had any time to spend with Molly, and I resent that.” These statements sent Grace scrambling back through her notes. Was there a child she hadn’t registered? A sister or some relative who lived with them? Or was Morris having an affair? She had a sleepless night after that session, contemplating what a poor and inattentive therapist she was.

But then she realized Morris was doing it on purpose, that behind his rigid bearing and studied calmness was a mind restlessly circling around pain that couldn’t be referred to directly and had to be approached sidelong. Pain that was occasioned — she understood in the third session, when he mentioned a leash and a park — by a dog named Molly.

“Tell me more about her, then,” Grace said. “What’s she like?”

At first Morris looked like he’d been punched in the stomach. He chewed the inside of his cheek, his breath labored. Then he looked across the room, staring at the poster over her head as if it were a distant horizon, and his eyes grew soft, almost wet. “When we got her, she was just a pup, just this little ball of fur. Like a pincushion or something. Really, you’ve never seen anything like it. Now she weighs as much as Suzanne does, practically. Almost a hundred pounds. Of course, a lot of that’s fur. If she were shaved she’d probably lose at least ten.” He laughed about this, low and fond, as if he’d given it a lot of thought.

“So you’re the dog’s primary caretaker,” Grace said.

“Primary caretaker?” Morris repeated. He seemed offended by the language, and his normally static hands fluttered up in the air before resettling on his lap like large, pale moths. “I guess. I feel more like she takes care of me. When I come home at night, we’ll go out to the park and she’ll run and fetch, and then we go back and sit on the couch — and when she lies next to me, I feel like she’s what I’m coming home to.”

“And what about Suzanne?” Grace said.

“She doesn’t get Molly,” he declared with sudden ferocity. “She doesn’t understand her. She’ll sit there and say, in this baby voice, ‘What do you want, sweetie? Come here, sweetie!’ When any person with a brain in their head could tell that she wants to go out and pee, or get up on the couch. I mean, it couldn’t be more obvious if Molly was using a diagram or a neon sign.” He shook his head. “It drives me crazy.”

They spent the rest of the session discussing his expectations, and why it mattered, in terms of their marriage, that Suzanne “get” the dog. Morris grew so exercised that the hair around his temples was matted and wet, and more than ever he looked like a little boy. Grace suspected that Molly was a stand-in for his own feelings of abandonment and betrayal, since Suzanne hadn’t come along to Montreal. By the end of the hour she believed they’d made some real progress, and Morris, too, seemed tired but happy.

She was so convinced of this that she could barely speak when he showed up for their next appointment with the dog on a leash.

“Since we were talking about her, I thought you should meet the famous Molly in person,” he said, and Grace felt a pricking in her temples. The dog sat at Morris’s feet with her back pressed against his shins, then rested her chin on his lap. She was enormous, and her shaggy black hair obscured her eyes. Morris reached down and rubbed her chest, making an affectionate, growling sound. It so startled Grace that she sat up straight and coughed.

“Everything’s changed since Molly came into my life,” he said. “She makes me feel like a better person, and we understand each other. I feel calm.”

“There’s a lot of evidence that pets help soothe anxiety and depression,” Grace said. “But do you think your marriage—”

“Tell me,” Morris interrupted, resting his large hand on Molly’s shaggy head, a gesture like a benediction, “do you think it’s weird to feel more love for your dog than you do for your wife?”

Grace examined him carefully. “I think we often wish all our relationships were as full of unconditional acceptance as those we have with animals.”

Morris shook his head. “I don’t just mean acceptance. I mean I love her. I think she’s beautiful and noble. I think her existence on earth is a great thing, and I’d do anything to make her happy. I never felt like that about Suzanne, not even on our honeymoon.”

Grace had the feeling she should tread lightly. “I’m sure you must’ve felt more”—she was going to say romantic, but thought better of it—“optimistic about Suzanne in the early days, didn’t you?”

“Optimistic? That’s not what I mean,” Morris said impatiently. “I love everything about this dog — her eyes, her body, the way she’s leaning against me right now. She’s my home. This dog is my home.”

Grace put down her pen. It was imperative, she knew, not to judge. But passing judgment is how we navigate the world, go left instead of right, do right instead of wrong. “Don’t you think, Morris,” she said softly, “that dogs are easier to love because they don’t talk back?”

In front of her this large, childlike man began to cry, with the creaking, stunted tears of someone who rarely sheds them. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wish it were just me and Molly. That Suzanne would leave us alone. You don’t have to tell me it’s stupid, I know it’s ridiculous.” He let out a low, ravaged moan, and the dog leapt up on the couch and licked his face and squirmed into his lap, and he smiled through his tears. “I love her,” he said.

To love a dog not as a pet, but as you would a person, is impossible. It’s like asking a child to be an adult, or expecting your partner to always give love and never receive, or always receive and never give. A fantasy, a refusal to negotiate the complicated, muddy emotional needs that define any relationship. All this Grace tried to explain to Morris while he cradled a hundred-pound dog in his lap. He listened and nodded and dried his cheeks. Then he said, “Thank you very much,” and left her office. She never heard from him again.

It was Morris she thought of when she saw John Tugwell again. Because she knew there was no good reason she should be so intensely interested in him; that he was a troubled person, one more likely to suck her into his trouble than to be drawn out of it. But when she saw him, the rush of gladness made her catch her breath. And none of the commonsense warnings she gave herself could counter that gladness and drag her back to earth.

Until that moment, she had told herself she was just looking for a birthday present for her friend Azra. That stopping into this stationery store in Westmount had nothing to do with the incident on the mountain. Then she saw him. He stood at the back of the store behind a counter, flipping through a book of wedding invitations with a couple. When she walked in, he glanced at her, but neither of them smiled or even nodded. Turning away, her heart thrumming, Grace browsed through some clothbound journals. In the background she could hear his voice patiently listing paper brands and prices.

Another clerk, a woman with bleached-blond hair, said, “Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” and Grace shook her head. She must have uncapped a hundred pens and flipped through every birthday card before she finally picked one out and bought a journal as her gift. He was still waiting on the bridal couple, the woman unable to make up her mind.

“I think I should ask my mom what she thinks,” she was saying.

“She’ll like whatever you like,” her fiancé said.

“But she usually helps me figure out what I like,” she said.

The blond woman, who was ringing up Grace’s purchase, met her eyes and smirked. “I give them a year,” she muttered.

Grace nodded mechanically, taking the bag. As she was turning to go, the couple thanked Tug for his time and left.

“I’m not totally dependent or anything,” the woman said. “I just trust her judgment. It’s good to get a second opinion.”

“I’m your second opinion,” her fiancé said.

Tug was smiling wryly, absently, as Grace walked toward him, trying to arrange her face in some semblance of casualness. She put her plastic bag on the counter and said, “I’m interested in some invitations.”

“Are you getting married?”

“No.”

“So what kind of event, then?”

“I’m just kind of interested,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the other clerk. “In general.”

“Hypothetical invitations, right,” he said, and flipped open an album.

Leaning over it, their heads close together, she could feel the heat coming off him. “I was just wondering,” she said, “how you were.”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t see any crutches.”

“I’m a quick healer,” he said. He saw her looking at his throat, whose redness might have been mistaken for a rash, and flushed.

“And otherwise?” she said.

“I’m great,” he said. “Never better.”

“You don’t have to be flip with me,” she said evenly. “I’m not judging you or asking you for anything. I’m just concerned.”

“Why?” he said, sounding more curious than angry. “It’s not every day that I meet someone so … invested in my well-being.”

Grace looked up, holding his gaze. “It’s not every day that I meet someone the way I met you.”

“I’m sorry about dragging you into my life,” he said. “It’s not what I meant to have happen.”

“I don’t mind it,” she said.

She slipped a sample of expensive bonded paper out of the album he held. With one of the store’s fancy pens she wrote down her name, address, and phone number. “This is who I am,” she said. “You can call me, if you want to.”

“What if I don’t want to?” he said. “Will you leave me alone?”

Grace was taken aback. “I don’t know,” she said.

Another smile broke over him then, composed of equal parts surprise, cynicism, and amusement, and he looked like a different person, younger, sweeter. She realized he was handsome. He had a beautiful smile, with even white teeth and a dimple on the left side. “You’re something else,” he said. “I’m just not sure what.”

She smiled back, and then the blond clerk cleared her throat, indicating the presence of other customers, so she gathered her purchases and left.

Of course he didn’t call. She didn’t expect him to. They were strangers. So she tried her best to forget about him, the day on the mountain, the unexpected sweetness of his smile. But in still moments, when she was driving home, or folding laundry, or in the shower, images would flicker in her mind. Not memories, but images of what she hadn’t seen: Tug skiing by himself into the woods. Tying the rope around his neck. His body falling, heavy but soundless, into the snow. Waiting for her to come skiing down from the Chalet. Waiting to be found.

An idea came to her with the weather. She woke up on a Saturday morning to find the world softened with snow. Outside people were shoveling out their cars, the trucks rumbling through the streets, plowing and salting. Her neighbor, Mr. Diallou, cleared a path around his Honda only to see a truck banking snow around it, obstructing him again. He raised his fist and cursed the driver. Grace smiled, knowing what to do.

She called the stationery store and asked for him. When the manager said he wasn’t working, she cleared her car, loaded it up, and drove to his apartment. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock. He came to the door wearing a thick gray sweater and jeans, apparently still half asleep, his eyes heavy-lidded, his clothes rumpled.

“Let’s go skiing,” she said.

Tug looked at her with no trace of the cynical distance she’d seen in him before. Maybe she had caught him at an unguarded moment. “Do you want some coffee?” he said.

She followed him inside and took off her boots in the hall, wondering if he hadn’t heard what she said. She unzipped her ski jacket as he poured her a cup of coffee from a full pot. On the table was his own cup, the newspaper, a plate with crumbs. He was rubbing his hair absentmindedly, the loose curls spreading around his head, the lines around his eyes deeper than usual.

“Milk? Sugar?”

She shook her head. He gestured at the chair across from his, and she sat down. With what she understood to be a welcoming gesture, he pushed a section of the newspaper in her direction. It was the Business section, and she read through it carefully while sipping the coffee, as if she might be tested on it later. Laurentian Bank’s revenues had increased. Four people had died in an accident in a diamond mine in Botswana. Tug yawned, flipping the pages and shaking his head over some article or another.

Fifteen minutes passed. There was no sign of the dog, and she wondered if his ex-wife had come by to pick it up. If he’d told her what he had done on the mountain, or had tried to do.

He rubbed his hair again, tousling it even further. Then he said, “I’m never much good before coffee. When I used to travel a lot, I always took a coffee kit with me. People would make fun of me, and it used to drive Marcie crazy. She’d sit across from me and tell me all her dreams, and then the entire plan for the day, and think everything was settled. Half an hour later I’d go, ‘Were you saying something?’ ”

It was his first unprompted confidence, and she didn’t speak, not wanting to startle or interrupt him. She only nodded.

“No wonder she left me,” he said, without apparent rancor.

She smiled at him, encouraging him to go on, and his eyes focused on her face, then on her clothes.

“Were you saying something?”

“I thought we could go skiing.”

As if this were the first he’d heard of it, he looked out the living-room window at the snow. “I never pay attention to the weather,” he said softly, seemingly to himself. “What’s wrong with me?”

Grace kept quiet. It seemed like a rhetorical question, and anyway she didn’t yet know the answer.

“I’d love to go,” he said after a pause, “but I don’t have skis.” He looked at her, shrugged, and the memory of the day they met registered between them.

“I brought you some,” Grace said. When he frowned, she explained, “They belonged to my ex-husband. He was around your height. Close enough to make do, anyway. You still have the boots, right? His might fit you, but I’m not sure.”

Tug puffed his cheeks comically, then let the air slowly drift out. She could tell he was relieved that she hadn’t actually bought him a new pair of skis.

“The social lives of divorced people,” he said. “All the old equipment still around.”

Grace leaned across the table and touched his wrist, so suddenly that the movement was upon her even before she’d decided to do it. She could feel his warm skin and the butterfly beat of his pulse. His eyes met hers, steady and green, and she knew that the electric charge between them wasn’t just on her side. He was flushing too.

“Let’s just go,” she said, “before you change your mind.”

Instead of heading to the mountain she took the Trans-Canada to a nature preserve on the West Island. In the early years of their marriage she and Mitch had often skied there. She had looked at the families around them, romping with their kids and dogs, and thought she was seeing her own future. But she hadn’t seen this: herself and Tug, almost strangers, unloading skis and poles after a car ride during which neither of them had had much to say. Yet she didn’t feel unhappy. She was pleased he’d agreed to go, and she was happy to be skiing, too.

They set off into the woods, Tug ahead of her moving swiftly, rhythmically. Mitch’s skis seemed to suit him well enough. Fresh snow had fallen on old tracks, and they could feel both the satisfying crunch of new powder and the underlying structure of the trail. Her breath rose ahead of her. On either side pine needles confettied the snow. She could hear Tug panting a little as they pushed up a hill. The sun was shining. Looking at his back, Grace thought, before she could stop herself, You’d have to be crazy to want to leave this world.

Half an hour later they came to a clearing and stopped to catch their breath. A few winter birds were picking at the bare, desiccated trees. When she offered him some water and he turned around, his cheeks were red, his eyes bright. He looked happy.

“When I lived in Geneva,” he said, “I skied all the time. Even trained to do a biathlon. But I left before I could actually compete.”

“What were you doing in Geneva?” Grace asked.

He handed the bottle back and bent down to adjust his boot. “Exchange student,” he said without looking up.

She assumed from his evasive tone that he was lying, but thought better of calling him out. “Must have been spectacular,” she said lightly. “But this isn’t bad.”

“No,” he said, and she hoped his look meant he was grateful she hadn’t pressed him. “It’s not.”

They started up again, Grace in front this time. They met a middle-aged couple on the trail with two large dogs. Tug stopped and chatted with them briefly about the weather, the snow conditions, how much exercise pets need, much friendlier than he had ever been with her. With his face reddened by the wind he looked younger and healthier, a casual smile transforming his face.

By now it was noon, and the preserve was bustling with newcomers, children, and dogs. Snow was falling again, a soft, lush drift. The day was warming, the trail slick with melt, and without discussing it they quickened their pace. Grace unzipped her jacket and put her hat in her pocket, and it occurred to her that she had never seen Tug wearing one. She was already thinking like that, as if she’d been around him so many times.

The last part of the trail was uphill, back to the lodge, and they herringboned this stretch madly in a kind of crazy, splay-legged sprint. She could hear the staccato rhythm of his breath behind her, and whenever she lagged he gained, so she picked up speed, not wanting to seem anything but strong. By the crest of the hill her thighs were burning. They skied to the finish as if in a race, each taking longer and longer strides until the trail was broken up by footprints, choppy ice mixing with gravel, their skis crunching, and it was time — too soon, she thought — to stop.

Tug smiled at her. “Well,” he said, “you gave me a run for my money.”

“I used to race.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I can picture that. You in a ski uniform with a number pinned on front. Intent on winning unless somebody was injured or in trouble. Then you’d veer off course.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “I was a laser beam of competitive focus,” she said, and he laughed.

They loaded up the skis and she drove back east, the highway’s gray-brown slush ruffled with tire marks. The car smelled of sweat and wet wool. With the heat on, she felt sleepy, almost dangerously so. How Tug felt she had no idea. He was leaning, either lethargic or relaxed, against the passenger-side door.

She double-parked in front of his apartment and waited.

“That was nice,” Tug said. He sounded surprised. “It was good we went.”

“I’m glad. I was hoping it would be.”

“I liked seeing all those people out there, just having a good time. I sometimes forget people actually do that.”

“Have a good time?”

He frowned impatiently. “No, that people ski in groups, or where other people are around, and it’s still fun. For me it’s always been a solitary activity. Something you do to be alone.”

She nodded; this was how it usually was for her on the mountain, away from the hours and days of conversation and chatter, with endless problems haltingly and passionately delivered.

“In Switzerland I always went to the quietest place. But maybe if I’d gone somewhere crowded I would’ve had a better time.”

“When you were an exchange student.”

She thought she’d kept her tone even, but Tug took it as a challenge. He was shaking his head. “All right, fine, I wasn’t a student.”

“I didn’t mean to say you were lying.”

“Well, I was. I’m a liar.”

“Okay,” she said.

There was a pause in which he must have expected her to ask him for the truth, but she didn’t. She thought of the animals she’d rescued in childhood, the stray kittens and lost dogs. You didn’t cajole or chase them, she’d learned; you crouched down and waited for them to come to you.

Tug opened the door and cold air rushed into the car. With one foot on the pavement outside, he smiled glancingly at her and said, “It was another life.”

She nodded. “I’ve had one of those myself,” she said.

That night she went to bed tired, with the bone-deep, gravity-flattened exhaustion of muscles that had done their part. She thought she would dream about him; but if she did, it was lost in the inky darkness of her sleep, and gone by morning.

It was the following night that she had trouble sleeping. As she lay in bed, her mind paced ahead of her into the week to come, feeling for its coming trouble spots and few expected pleasures. She’d have to figure out, for example, what to do about Annie and her parents. So she was awake, or at least not fully asleep, when the phone rang at three in the morning.

“What are you doing?” Tug’s voice was garbled and slushy. He’d been drinking.

“I was trying to sleep, but not succeeding.” She sat up, cradling the phone to her ear. From outside came distant sounds of traffic, and she could make out, through the curtains, the lightness of a winter night in the city when snow is on the ground.

There was a long pause before he said, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t wake you up.” It was clear from the pause that he hadn’t, actually, given it much thought.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m having a dark night of the soul. You seemed like the person to call.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Grace said, trying to picture him alone in his dark apartment, in his bed, his hands agitating his curly hair. “Not that you’re having a dark night of the soul, I mean. I’m not glad about that part.”

“Oh, I am,” Tug said. “I’m positively thrilled.”

She chose not to encourage this sarcasm. Instead she concentrated on the near-silence between them on the line, the cadence of his breath. “What would you say is keeping you up?” she asked after a while.

“At this point I’d have to say it’s the drinking,” Tug said.

“And before that?”

“I feel bad about lying to you,” he said, not an answer to her question but a separate tack. “And you knew it, too. That’s probably why people don’t like to spend time with you, Grace. Because you can tell when they’re lying and you call them on it.”

This stung her. “Who says people don’t like to spend time with me?”

“You don’t seem to have much of a social life. And you’re pouring a lot of energy into being friends with me, God knows why. And you’re divorced.”

“So are you.”

“My point,” he said, “exactly.”

Tug was wrong, Grace thought: she had friends. But she had to admit there was some truth to what he said. With men, she was curious enough to pay attention to them, but they either recoiled as if she were too intense or else unraveled, told her everything, then wound up saying, “You’re a great listener, Grace,” and dating somebody else. Lately she’d sort of given up on meeting anyone. As her friends got older, busy with their marriages and children, she was starting to feel isolated, marooned on her own private island, and sometimes weeks passed without her making any plans at all.

But she was still curious about Tug. “So what did you lie about?” she said.

He lowered his voice to a whisper so unfocused that she had trouble making out the words. “I was never an exchange student in Switzerland. Also, I haven’t exactly worked at the store forever. I was headquartered in Geneva for a time, then Central America, then Africa, then back here. I’ve been restless for most of my life, and maybe that’s my problem — that I came home.”

“Are you a spy?” Grace said.

“I was. But not anymore.”

She let the silence stretch between them again, a joint project, loose and home-fashioned, like a string between two tin cans.

“That was a lie. The spy thing, not the geography.” He was barely audible now, his mouth far from the phone, and she could picture him clearly, head on the pillow, the phone next to him like a companion, a pet.

“Ah,” she said.

There was a scuffle on the other end of the line as he started to say something, but then he hung up — whether accidentally or on purpose, she didn’t know. He didn’t call again.

The next day she was back at work. Never had she been more grateful for how the hour-long sessions broke the day down, and she poured her attention and focus into each one. Only in a few off moments did the memory of his slurred, confiding tone return to her, the intimacy of his middle-of-the-night voice. She resisted the temptation to give in to it. She wanted to be fair to the people who sought her help, without distraction, and she promised herself that she could think about him all she wanted some other time.

As if in reward for this promise, he called her that evening at seven thirty, and his voice was articulate and dry, haltingly sober. “I want to apologize,” he said, “for last night.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Maybe you don’t think so,” he said. “Though it’s a mystery why.”

“I was glad you called.”

“There’s something weird about a person like you,” he said, “who’s so intent on helping a fuck-up.”

“I don’t actually think you’re a fuck-up,” Grace said mildly. She was standing in her kitchen, holding a half-eaten sandwich. “And anyway, maybe there’s something weird about a person like you, who thinks he doesn’t deserve anybody’s help.”

“Maybe,” he said, not sounding very convinced. “I shouldn’t be drunk-dialing at my age. I’m sorry.”

“Are you all right?”

“My hangover’s more psychological than physical, if that’s what you mean.”

“It wasn’t, but okay.”

“Did you ask me if I was a spy?” he said. “I vaguely remember that.”

“You were talking about a life spent in far-flung locations. It seemed like a logical question at three in the morning. I’m not sure I was thinking clearly.” In the ensuing silence she could imagine him wearily rubbing his eyes.

“I was employed for a time by an international NGO working to provide basic supplies for refugees in famine areas,” he said. “I handled logistics. I organized the importation of rice. Coordinated food drops and set up camps.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And now I coordinate paper supplies. As you can see, it was a logical step.”

“What happened to you?”

“I had enough. It happens to a lot of people. Anyway, I felt I owed you an explanation. Sorry about calling in the middle of the night. It won’t happen again.”

“Hold on,” she said, but he was gone.

In spite of his confession, she felt that they’d taken a step backward. He’d offered her bits of his past, yes, but mostly to keep her at a distance. There is a difference between the facts of a person and the truth of him, and Tug knew it. Grace wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t notice how little he asked about her, and she wanted to be acknowledged as someone with whom he might develop a connection. It would be a way of feeling her own weight in the world. She wondered if in all their time together she’d made any impression on him at all.

Then a couple days later she stepped out of the office and there he was in the parking lot, leaning against her car on a freezing afternoon. His cheeks were red, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a navy-blue pea coat. She wondered how long he’d been waiting. “You look cold,” she said, and smiled.

He didn’t smile back, his expression so serious that he almost seemed angry. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”

“I’m glad to see you,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Good.” For the first time, he seemed unsure of what to do next.

Grace said, “Seriously, you really do look cold.”

“Do you think—” he said, then stopped. “Look, can we go somewhere?”

Grace nodded, unlocked the car, and, not knowing what else to do, drove them to her apartment. Once inside, Tug took off his coat, accepted a drink, and sat on the couch. He didn’t look around the place or make any small talk. She sat down next to him, acutely conscious of his closeness. He was wearing a collared shirt and a V-neck sweater, and she could see that his throat had completely healed.

“So, how are you?” she said.

“I’m better.” Looking at her, he took a sip of his wine.

“Your whole situation — it’s a little confusing to me, Tug.”

At the sound of his name, he smiled. “Do you wish you’d never stopped when you saw me there on the mountain?”

“No.”

He nodded slowly. “You really don’t care, do you? About what I did. What I almost did.”

“Of course I care,” she said. “It just doesn’t discourage me.”

His lips were dark pink, almost red, and she wondered if they were chapped or raw from cold. But they weren’t. They were soft, and he was kissing her. Barely able to make any sense of it, she put her hand on his arm and felt the knit of his sweater, telling herself, This is real. I’m touching him. His other arm went around her waist, and her leg was on top of his. She stopped kissing him, almost sick to her stomach with an excess of wanting.

“Are you all right?” he said, his mouth against her ear.

“I need to stop.”

“Okay.” He sat back and watched her.

She took a breath, trying to calm down. Her nerves were singing, plucked like too-tight strings. It had been a long time since she’d been with anyone.

“Should I leave?” he said. “You can tell me to.”

“No.”

“No, you can’t tell me, or no, I shouldn’t leave?”

“You know which,” Grace said. She went to the kitchen, drank some water, then came back to this person she hardly knew, this dark and difficult person, and kissed him. Some things were too intense to do slowly.

Afterward, they got dressed. It had happened very fast, the two of them panting and desperate and not especially well coordinated, and when it was over they still felt like strangers. Tug lounged on the couch, looking a little drowsy. Grace still felt off-kilter, feverish, her cheeks burning from his unshaven face. She poured them each more wine and wondered what she had gotten herself into. If she were her own patient, she’d tell herself to put an end to this situation as quickly as possible. Instead, she pulled her legs up beneath her and watched him. She didn’t want him to go.

“So,” she said, “how’ve you been?”

This made him laugh and he set down his glass, giving her the first real sense of accomplishment she’d felt in quite some time.

“Grace,” he said, “do we have to talk?”

She couldn’t imagine what else, in fact, to do.

Sensing her confusion, Tug patted the couch next to him. She felt summoned and, obscurely, condescended to. But she moved over and laid her head on his shoulder, waiting for him to say something. Then she heard a faint whistling sound. He was snoring.

With his head resting on the back of the couch, he had fallen asleep and left her just sitting there. She tried to curl gently into him, and his arm pulled her closer. She was uncomfortable but didn’t want to move — he always looked so tired, so beaten down — though after ten minutes, her right leg was tingling and she desperately wanted to scratch her nose. Tug’s snoring was light and sibilant, like a faraway train. Slowly, hoping not to wake him up, she straightened out her leg. In response Tug shifted, suddenly jerking his head forward, and, with the hand wrapped around her shoulder, slapped her in the face. “Jesus!” she said. “What the hell?”

“What happened? Did I hit you?” He was still half asleep and confused. “Are you okay? My God, I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek gently. “It’s all red.”

“That’s not from your hand. It’s from your face.”

“My face?”

“Your beard. I mean, your stubble.”

“Oh, Grace,” he said, and kissed her sore, mottled cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you slept.”

“I didn’t know how tired I was.” He kissed her again, this time on the lips, and soon they were together again, more slowly, in the bedroom, without any awkwardness or rush, more like she’d wanted. And when they finished, she was the one who fell asleep.

Over the next two weeks, he’d show up at her apartment or invite her to his, usually late at night. They rarely went out to dinner; they just drank wine and talked before heading to bed. Mornings, over coffee, were silent. She might have considered herself tangential to his life, except that in the middle of the night she’d wake to find him twined around her, his leg over her hip, his arm over her shoulder, the heat of his chest pressed against her back; or, as they lay side by side, he’d clutch her hand in his sleep; or he’d pull her to him, her head against his chest, and as she nestled there, he’d sigh.

Grace moved through these days in a fog, shrouded in secret emotion. With her patients she was kind and warm, trying to make up for her wandering attention, and if anything they seemed grateful when she dived back into the conversation sympathetically, probing the intricacies of their situations with inexhaustible thought and care. The only one who seemed to notice a change was Annie. Since the night she’d shown up at the apartment, she’d treated Grace with a familiarity that implied both trust and condescension. It was the ease of someone used to having hired help, the scornful confidence of a girl in her housekeeper. More open and less respectful, she knew now that she could get away with things, and it bothered Grace.

When she tried to get her to talk about how she was feeling about the decision she’d made, Annie asked her, “Are you pregnant?”

“Me? No,” Grace said, too surprised to say anything else. “Why do you ask that?”

“You look different,” Annie said, sprawled across a chair — she even sat differently now — with her legs flung over the side. “It’s like you gained weight, but in a good way.”

“And the first thing you associate with that is pregnancy,” Grace said, “rather than just plain good health. Why do you think that is?”

“God,” Annie said. “Take a compliment.”

“I wasn’t sure it was a compliment, at first.”

“Or maybe you’re in love.” She said this snidely, like a twelve-year-old boy.

“That’s beneath you, Annie,” Grace said.

This seemed to get her attention. She swiveled in her chair, sat up straight, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Right. Therapy means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“You might have to, actually, maybe even a lot. But mostly you have to figure out why you did whatever you’re sorry about.”

“I know,” Annie said. “It makes me tired.”

Grace’s evenings with Tug continued steadily, and soon they were going out for dinner or to see a movie. They bought him new skis and went skiing, and on lazy Sunday afternoons they would lie together in bed and read the newspaper. She forgot they had ever had a strange beginning or that there were uneasy questions hovering over them that might occasion an ending to their relationship. They were caught up in the middle, and it felt like it was going to go on forever.

One morning there was a sharp knock on the office door, and a couple walked in before Grace could respond. She couldn’t place them, though she knew they had met, and as she stared at them blankly without rising from her seat, she saw them go from mad to madder.

“We need to talk to you,” the man said.

“Please, sit down,” Grace said, her mind coursing through unlikely scenarios before she realized they were Annie’s parents.

They sat together on the couch but as far away from each other as possible. Annie’s mother wore a dark-blue suit and her hair in a blond bun, her stiletto-heeled boots tapping with rage. Her husband’s suit was the same color. They were a matched pair, expensive and well maintained.

“What can I do for you?” Grace said. She still couldn’t remember their first names.

“What can you do? What have you done?” Annie’s mother said. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes instantly reddened, and Grace’s heart turned over.

“I assume this is about Annie,” she prompted.

“This is about the end of your career,” the man said.

She could tell he was accustomed to making threats, and she remembered something Annie had told her: “They always get what they want, so they don’t understand why I can’t too.”

“We know what you did for Annie,” he said. “Taking her to the hospital. Encouraging her to get an abortion.”

“What?” Grace said. “That did not happen.”

“We heard all about it from Annie,” his wife said. “You said that telling us would just complicate things. You’re a monster. This was our daughter.”

“Your daughter is very troubled,” Grace said. “Perhaps more troubled than any of us realize.”

“You shouldn’t be allowed to muck around in people’s lives,” the man said.

“I just want to be clear about this,” Grace said. “Is your objection to the procedure itself, or that Annie kept it a secret from you?”

“So you know all about it,” the father said. “I can’t believe this. I’m going to have your license revoked. I’m going to ruin you.”

“You could do that,” Grace said calmly, “or instead we could actually talk about your daughter.”

He glared at her and stood up, livid, but his wife, Grace could tell, wanted to stay. She stroked his arm and smiled up at him pleadingly. He sat down and said, “Tell me what you know.”

Grace looked at him for a long moment, choosing her words carefully. “When Annie first came to me,” she said, “I believed she was on a path of self-destruction that came out of her putting too much pressure on herself. And I still think that’s true.” She paused.

Annie’s mother tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and despite her tailored clothing she looked very much like Annie: pretty, blond, vulnerable. The father was sitting stoically upright, allowing her to hold his hand, waiting grimly.

“I think Annie’s in so far over her head,” Grace said, “that she doesn’t even know it. She thinks she can manipulate all the adults around her in order to get what she wants, which is to continue inflicting pain on herself and prove to everyone — and herself — just how worthless she is. Needless to say, it’s a very dangerous place to be.”

Annie’s father’s face was flushed, but he didn’t say a word. Grace let the silence invade the room, waiting for the explosion she sensed was coming. Finally, Annie’s mother let out a sob.

“I came home and Annie was in bed,” she said. “She said she had the flu. I didn’t suspect a thing. She didn’t even miss any school, did you know that? She took her algebra test and then went to the hospital for a four o’clock appointment. She’s that responsible. That organized. She arranged it all so we wouldn’t know anything.”

Grace said nothing and waited.

“We would never have known,” the mother said, crying openly now.

“So how did you find out?” Grace said.

“It was after yesterday’s appointment with you,” the father said.

“We didn’t have an appointment yesterday.”

“Of course you did. Like always, the twice-a-week schedule you recommended six months ago.”

Grace sighed. “And what did she say?”

“She was very upset last night and couldn’t stop crying. She said she didn’t want to come see you anymore. When we asked why, the whole story came out. About what you’d helped her do, and how she had doubts about it.”

“She was a little girl again,” the mother said, “with a boo-boo on her knee. Crying in my arms.”

Grace thought, Boo-boo? “I don’t know what she’s been doing on Thursday afternoons,” she said, “but she hasn’t been coming to see me. Your statements from my office would reflect one weekly session.”

“We never even have time to look at them, as Annie well knows,” the father said. “Where the hell has she been?”

The mother was almost hysterical now. She couldn’t speak for sobbing, just shook her head apologetically. Her husband handed her a tissue from Grace’s box but made no move to comfort her.

“We called the hospital,” he said, “and they won’t give us any information. We can’t get a straight answer from anybody. You have to tell us what you know.”

Grace again said nothing for a moment, calculating how little trust these people had in her. “What Annie and I discuss is confidential,” she finally said.

His eyes were glowing with rage as he leaned forward, his expensive white shirt puffing out from his chest. “Who’s the father?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it that Oliver kid? I’m going to kill him.”

“I honestly don’t know,” Grace told him. “But I do know that Annie needs all of our help to get through this.”

“Like helping her get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“I don’t know why we should believe you.” He stood up again. “You and Annie — you’re both liars. No wonder you get along so well. That’s why she talks to you instead of us. You just build on each other’s lies.”

“Please, wait. Sit down and let’s talk this through.”

But to sit down would be to concede defeat. “This is your fault,” he said, biting off each word. “You were supposed to help her. That was your job, and you’re accountable.” He spoke slowly and precisely. He had located a target for his anger and was, however subconsciously, pleased. “We will hold you accountable. You’ll lose your position. Along with the right to inflict damage on other families.”

Grace stood up and faced him. “I understand how awful this is,” she said. “I really do.”

“I don’t care what you understand.”

“I care about Annie,” Grace said. “I’d like to keep helping her.”

“When I’m done with you,” the father said, “you’ll be the one who needs help. Starting with a good lawyer.”

He opened the door and strode from her office. And without hesitating his wife followed him, her face full of gratitude that he’d found a place to lay the blame.