The Leftovers

A BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE GIRLFRIEND

THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS WERE PACKED for the January town meeting. Kevin had been home from Florida for two weeks by then, so he was a little surprised by the number of comments he received about his tan.

“Looking good, Mr. Mayor!”

“Little fun in the sun, huh?”

“Were you near Boca? My uncle’s got a place there.”

“I could use a vacation!”

Was I that pale? he wondered, taking his seat at the center of the long table at the front of the room, between Councilman DiFazio and Councilwoman Herrera. Or were people responding to something deeper than the ruddy glow of his skin, an inner change that they couldn’t otherwise account for?

In any case, Kevin was delighted by the healthy turnout, a vast improvement on December’s dismal showing, which had consisted of no more than a dozen of the usual suspects, most of them tightwad senior citizens opposed to all government spending — federal, state, and local — except for the Social Security and Medicare they depended on to get by. The only attendee under forty had been the reporter for the Messenger, a pretty girl fresh out of college who kept nodding off over her laptop.

He gaveled the meeting to order at seven on the dot, not bothering with the customary five-minute delay to accommodate the stragglers. He wanted to stick to the schedule for once, keep things moving, and adjourn as close to nine as possible. He’d told Nora to expect him around then, and didn’t want to keep her waiting.

“Welcome,” he said. “It’s good to see you all here, especially on such a cold winter night. As most of you know, I’m Mayor Garvey and these good-looking folks up here on either side of me are your town council.”

There was a polite smattering of applause, and then Councilman DiFazio rose to lead them all in the Pledge of Allegiance, which they recited in a rushed, vaguely embarrassed mumble. Kevin asked everyone to remain standing for a moment of silence in honor of Ted Figueroa, the recently deceased brother-in-law of Councilwoman Carney and a prominent figure in the world of Mapleton youth sports.

“Many of us knew Ted as a legendary coach and guiding force behind the Saturday Morning Basketball Program, which he co-directed for two decades, long after his own kids had grown up. He was a dedicated, generous man, and I know I speak for all of us when I say he’ll be sorely missed.”

He hung his head and counted slowly to ten, which someone had once told him was the rule of thumb for a moment of silence. Personally, he hadn’t been all that crazy about Ted Figueroa — the guy was an asshole, in fact, an ultra-competitive coach who cherry-picked the best players for his own teams and almost always won the championship — but this wasn’t the time or place for honesty about the dead.

“All right,” he said, after they’d taken their seats. “Our first order of business is approval of the minutes from the December meeting. Is there a motion to approve?”

Councilman Reynaud made the motion. Councilwoman Chen seconded.

“All in favor?” Kevin asked. The ayes were unanimous. “The motion carries.”

IN HER younger days, during the all-too-brief window of freedom between her first kiss and her engagement to Doug, Nora had come to think of herself as a top-notch girlfriend. At her current remove — half a lifetime and another world away — she found it difficult to reconstruct the origins of this belief. It was possible that she’d read an article in Glamour on “Ten Essential Girlfriend Skills” and realized that she’d mastered eight of them. Or maybe she’d taken “The Ultimate Good Girlfriend Quiz” in Elle and scored in the top category: You’re a Keeper! But it was just as likely that the habit of self-esteem was so deeply ingrained in her psyche that it simply hadn’t occurred to her to think otherwise. After all, Nora was pretty, she was smart, her jeans fit well, her hair was straight and shiny. Of course she was a better girlfriend than most. She was a better everything than most.

This conviction was such an integral part of her self-image that she’d actually spoken it out loud during a mortifying breakup argument with her favorite college boyfriend. Brian was a charismatic philosophy major whose library pallor and pudgy waistline — he cultivated a European disdain for exercise — didn’t detract in the least from his brainy appeal. He and Nora had been a serious couple for most of sophomore year — they referred to themselves as “best friends and soul mates”—until Brian decided, upon his return from Spring Break, that they should start seeing other people.

“I don’t want to see anyone else,” she told him.

“That’s fine,” he said. “But what if I do?”

“Then it’s over between us. I’m not gonna share you.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Because I’m already seeing someone.”

“What?” Nora was genuinely baffled. “Why would you do that?”

“What do you mean? Why does anyone see anyone?”

“I mean, why would you need to?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“I’m a really good girlfriend,” she told him. “You know that, don’t you?”

He studied her for a few seconds, almost as if he were seeing her for the first time. There was something disconcertingly impersonal in his gaze, a kind of scientific detachment.

“You’re okay,” he conceded, a bit grudgingly. “Definitely above average.”

After she graduated, this story became one of her favorite college anecdotes. She told it so much that it eventually became a running gag in her marriage. Whenever she did something thoughtful — picked up Doug’s shirts at the cleaners, cooked him an elaborate dinner for no apparent reason, gave him a back rub when he came home from work — he would scrutinize her for a moment or two, stroking his chin like a philosophy major.

“It’s true,” he’d say, with an air of mild astonishment. “You really are a better-than-average girlfriend.”

“Damn right,” she’d reply. “I’m in the fifty-third percentile.”

The joke seemed a little less funny these days, or maybe just funny in a different way, now that she was trying to be Kevin Garvey’s girlfriend and doing such a crappy job of it. Not because she didn’t like him — that wasn’t the problem at all — but because she couldn’t remember how to play a role that had once been second nature. What did a girlfriend say? What did she do? It felt a lot like her honeymoon in Paris, when she suddenly realized that she couldn’t speak a word of French, even though she’d studied the language for all four years of high school.

It’s so frustrating, she told Doug. I used to know this stuff.

She wanted to say the same thing to Kevin, to let him know that she was just a little rusty, that one of these days it would all come back to her.

Je m’appelle Nora. Comment vous appellez-vous?

I’m a really good girlfriend.

COUNCIL MEETINGS were a bit like church, Kevin thought, a familiar sequence of rituals — Appointments, Resignations and Retirements, Announcements (“Congratulations to Brownie Troop 173, whose second annual gingerbread cookie fund-raiser netted over three hundred dollars for Fuzzy Amigos International, a charity that sends stuffed animals to impoverished indigenous children in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru…”), Proclamations (“February twenty-fifth is hereby proclaimed to be Dine Out in Mapleton Day!”), Permit Applications, Budgetary Resolutions, Committee Reports, and Pending Ordinances — that was both tedious and oddly comforting at the same time.

They moved through the agenda at a pretty good clip — the only speed bumps were the committee reports on Buildings and Grounds (too much detail on the paving contract selection process for municipal lot #3) and Public Safety (an evasive summary of the stalled investigation into the Falzone murder, followed by extensive discussion of the need for more nighttime police presence in and around Greenway Park) — and managed to conclude official business a little ahead of schedule.

“All right,” Kevin told the audience. “It’s your turn. The floor’s open for Public Comment.”

In theory, Kevin was eager to hear directly from his constituents. He said so all the time: “We’re here to serve you. And we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s on your mind. The most important job we can do is listen to your concerns and criticisms, and find innovative, cost-effective ways of addressing them.” He liked to think of the Public Comment period as high school civics in action — self-government on a truly intimate scale, a face-to-face dialogue between the voters and the people they’d elected, democracy as the founders had intended it.

In practice, though, Public Comment was usually a bit of a freak show, a forum for cranks and monomaniacs to air their petty grievances and existential laments, most of which fell far outside the purview of municipal government. One of the regular speakers felt the need to provide her fellow citizens with monthly updates on a complicated billing dispute she was having with her health insurance provider. Another felt passionately about the abolition of Daylight Saving Time within the borders of Mapleton, an admittedly unorthodox move that he hoped would inspire other towns and states to follow suit. A frail elderly man frequently expressed his unhappiness with the poor delivery service provided by the Daily Journal, a newspaper that had ceased publication more than twenty years ago. For a while the council had tried to screen the speakers, barring those whose comments failed to address “relevant local issues,” but this policy caused so many hurt feelings that it was quickly abandoned. Now they were back to the old system, informally known as “One Nut, One Speech.”

The first person to address the January meeting was a young father from Rainier Road who complained about the speeding cars that used his street as a cut-through during evening rush hour, and wondered why the police were so lax in enforcing the traffic laws.

“What’s it gonna take for you people to do something?” he asked. “Is some little kid gonna have to die?”

Councilwoman Carney, chair of the Public Safety Committee, assured the man that the police were planning a major traffic safety initiative for the summer driving season, a campaign that would include both a public information component and a robust enforcement component. In the meantime, she would personally ask Chief Rogers to keep an eye on Rainier Road and the surrounding streets at evening rush hour.

The next speaker was a friendly-looking middle-aged woman on crutches who wanted to know why so many sidewalks in Mapleton weren’t properly shoveled after snowstorms. She herself had slipped on a patch of ice on Watley Terrace and had torn her ACL.

“Snow removal is mandatory in Stonewood Heights,” she pointed out. “And it’s a lot safer to walk there in wintertime. Why don’t we do something like that here?”

Councilman DiFazio explained that hearings had been held on this very subject on three separate occasions that he could remember. Each time, large numbers of senior citizens had testified in opposition to any change in the law, for both health and financial reasons.

“We’re kind of in a box here,” he said. “It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.”

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to see,” Kevin interjected. “I’d like to compile some kind of registry of people who need help shoveling, and maybe share that with the high school volunteer office. That way, kids could get community service credit for doing something that actually needs to be done.”

Several council members liked this idea, and Councilwoman Chen, chair of the Education Committee, agreed to follow up with the high school.

Things got a little more heated when the next speaker — an intense young man with deep-set eyes and a patchy beard — took the floor. He identified himself as the chef/owner of a recently opened vegan restaurant called Purity Café, and said he wanted to go on record protesting the unfair grade his establishment had received from the Health Inspector.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Purity Café is spotless. We don’t handle meat, eggs, or dairy, which are the main sources of food-borne illnesses. Everything we serve is fresh and lovingly prepared in a brand-new, state-of-the-art kitchen. But we get a B and Chicken Quick gets an A? Chicken Quick? Are you kidding me? You ever hear of salmonella? And Chumley’s Steakhouse? Really? Have you ever seen the kitchen at Chumley’s Steakhouse? Are you actually gonna look me in the eye and tell me it’s cleaner than the Purity Café? That’s a joke. Something doesn’t smell right, and you can bet it’s not the food in my restaurant.”

Kevin wasn’t crazy about the chef’s condescending tone or his misguided decision to criticize his competitors — it definitely wasn’t the way to win friends and influence people in a small town — but he had to admit that a grade of A for Chicken Quick seemed a bit improbable. Laurie had made him stop going there years ago, after she found a coin-sized battery in a container of garlic sauce. When she brought it back to show the owner, he laughed and said, So that’s where it went.

Bruce Hardin, Mapleton’s longtime health inspector, asked for permission to respond directly to the chef’s “reckless allegations.” Bruce was a hefty guy in his mid-fifties who had lost his wife in the Sudden Departure. He didn’t seem especially vain, but it was hard to account for the disconcerting contrast between his dark brown hair and his silver-gray mustache without factoring in a certain amount of L’Oreal for Men. Speaking with the bland authority of a veteran bureaucrat, he pointed out that his reports were a matter of public record and that they usually contained photographs documenting each cited violation. Anyone who wished to examine his report on the Purity Café or any other food purveyor was welcome to do so. He was confident that his work could withstand the strictest scrutiny. Then he turned and stared at the bearded chef.

“I’ve served in this position for twenty-three years,” he said, with an audible tremor in his voice. “And this is the first time my integrity has ever been questioned.”

Backtracking a bit, the chef insisted that he hadn’t questioned anyone’s integrity. Bruce said that wasn’t how it sounded to him, and that it was cowardly to try to deny it. Kevin intervened before things got out of hand, suggesting that it might be more constructive for the two of them to sit down in a calmer setting and have a forthright discussion about measures the Purity Café might take to improve its grade during the next inspection period. He added that he’d heard great things about the vegan restaurant and considered it a valuable addition to the town’s eclectic roster of eateries.

“I’m not a vegetarian by any means,” he said, “but I’m looking forward to eating there soon. Maybe lunch next Wednesday?” He glanced at the council members. “Who wants to join me?”

“You buying?” Councilman Reynaud quipped, drawing an appreciative chuckle from the crowd.

Kevin checked his watch before calling on the next speaker. It was already a quarter to nine, and there were at least ten people with their hands in the air, including Daylight Savings Guy and the gentleman who never got his newspaper.

“Wow,” he told them. “Looks like we’re just getting warmed up.”

FOR SOME reason, she was always a little surprised to find Kevin on her doorstep, even when she was expecting him. There was just something a little too normal and reassuring about the whole situation, a big, friendly man pressing a brown paper bag into her hands, the neck of a wine bottle poking out.

“Sorry,” he told her. “The council meeting ran late. Everybody had to put their two cents in.”

Nora opened the wine and he told her all about it, in a lot more detail than she required. She did her best to look alert and interested, nodding at what seemed like the appropriate junctures, supplying the occasional comment or question to keep things moving along.

A good girlfriend is a good listener, she reminded herself.

But she was just pretending, and she knew it. In her former life, Doug used to sit across this very table and try her patience in a similar way, with long-winded soliloquies about whatever deal he happened to be working on at the moment, filling her in on the arcane legal and financial details of the transaction, thinking out loud about the various stumbling blocks that might arise, and what he might do to overcome them. But no matter how bored she was, she always understood that Doug’s work mattered to her on a personal level, that it would have consequences for their family, and that she needed to pay attention. As much as she appreciated Kevin’s company, she couldn’t quite convince herself that she needed to care about the intricacies of the building code or a deadline extension for pet licenses.

“Is that just for dogs?” she wondered.

“Cats, too.”

“So you’re waiving the late fee?”

“Technically, we’re extending the registration period.”

“What’s the difference?”

“We’d rather encourage compliance,” he explained.

THEY SAT together in front of the flat-screen TV, Kevin’s arm around Nora’s shoulder, his fingers toying with her fine dark hair. She didn’t object to being touched like that, but she gave no sign of enjoying it, either. Her attention was riveted to the screen, which she studied with an air of brooding intensity, as if SpongeBob were a Swedish art film from the 1960s.

He was happy enough to watch it with her, not because he enjoyed the show — he found it shrill and peculiar — but because it gave him an excuse to finally stop talking. He’d been babbling for too long about the council meeting — going on and on about overruns in the snow removal budget, the wisdom of replacing downtown parking meters with a ticket machine, etcetera, etcetera — just to spare them the awkwardness of sitting in prolonged silence like an old married couple with nothing left to say.

What made it so maddening was that they barely knew each other, even after all the time they’d spent together on vacation. There was still so much left to discover, so many questions he wanted to ask, if only she would let him. But she’d made it clear in Florida that the personal stuff was off-limits. She wouldn’t talk about her husband or her kids, or even about her life before that. And he’d seen how she’d tensed up the few times he’d tried telling her about his own family, the way she’d winced and looked away, as if a cop were shining a flashlight in her eyes.

At least in Florida they’d been in an unfamiliar environment, spending most of their time outdoors, where it was easy to break the silence with a simple exchange about the temperature of the ocean, or the beauty of the sunset, or the fact that a pelican had just flown by. Back here in Mapleton, there was none of that. They were always inside, always at her house. Nora wouldn’t go to the movies, to a restaurant, or even to the Carpe Diem for a nightcap. All they ever did was make labored small talk and watch SpongeBob.

She wouldn’t even tell him about that. He understood that it was a rite of remembrance, and was touched that she let him be part of it, but he would’ve liked to know a little more about what the show meant to her, and what she wrote in her notebook when it was over. But apparently SpongeBob was none of his business, either.

NORA DIDN’T want to be like this, distant and shut down. She wanted to be the way she’d been in Florida, openhearted and alive, free with her body and spirit. Those five days had passed like a dream, both of them drunk on sunshine and adrenaline, perpetually amazed to find themselves together in the unfamiliar heat, liberated from the prison of their daily routines. They walked and they biked and they flirted and they swam in the ocean, and when they ran out of things to talk about, they had another drink, or sat in the Jacuzzi, or read a few pages of the thrillers they’d bought at the airport bookstore. In the late afternoons, they split up for a few hours, retiring to their separate rooms for a shower and a nap before reconvening for dinner.

She’d invited him back to her room the very first night. After a bottle of wine at dinner and a giddy makeout session on the beach, it seemed like the polite thing to do. She wasn’t nervous taking her clothes off, didn’t ask him to turn out the light. She just stood there naked, soaking up his approval. Her skin felt like it was glowing.

What do you think? she asked.

Nice collarbones, he said. Pretty good posture, too.

Is that all?

Come to bed and I’ll tell you about the back of your knees.

She climbed in, snuggling against him. His torso was a pale slab, reassuringly solid. The first time she’d hugged him, it had felt like she was embracing a tree.

What about the back of my knees?

Honestly?

Yeah.

His hand wandered down the back of her thigh.

They’re a little clammy.

She laughed and he kissed her and she kissed him back and that was it for the conversation. The only hitch came a few minutes later, when he tried to enter her and discovered she was too dry. She apologized, said she was out of practice, but he shushed her, licking his way down the center of her body, moistening her with his tongue. He took his time, letting her know it was all right to relax, coaxing her along an unfamiliar path until she stopped worrying about where it was leading and realized with a soft cry that she was already there, that something had loosened inside of her and something warm had come leaking out. When she caught her breath, she crawled down the bed and returned the favor, not thinking once about Doug or Kylie as she took him in her mouth, not thinking about anything at all until it was over, until he finally stopped whimpering and she was sure she’d swallowed every drop.

KEVIN FELT a brief flutter of suspense when the show was over and Nora closed her notebook.

“Excuse me.” She covered her mouth, politely stifling a yawn. “I’m a little tired.”

“Me, too,” he admitted. “It’s been a long day.”

“It’s so cold out.” She gave a sympathetic shudder. “I’m sorry you have to go.”

“I don’t have to,” he reminded her. “I’d love to stay here. I’ve been missing you.”

Nora gave this some thought.

“Pretty soon,” she told him. “I just need a little more time.”

“We don’t have to do anything. We could just keep each other company. Just talk until we fall asleep.”

“I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m really not up for it.”

Of course you are, he wanted to tell her. Don’t you remember what it was like? How could you not be up for that? But he knew it was hopeless. The moment you started pleading your case, you’d already lost it.

She walked him to the door and kissed him good night, a chaste but lingering send-off that felt like an apology and a rain check at the same time.

“Can I call you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Call me tomorrow.”

*

NORA LOCKED the door and carried the wineglasses to the sink. Then she went upstairs and got ready for bed.

I’m a terrible girlfriend, she thought as she brushed her teeth. I don’t know why I even bother.

It was embarrassing, knowing that it was all her fault, that she’d volunteered for the position and misled Kevin into giving her the job. She was the one who’d invited him to Florida, after all, the one who’d managed to impersonate a functional, relatively cheerful human being for five days. By the end of the vacation, she’d almost started to believe that she actually was a functional, reasonably cheerful human being — the kind of person who might hold hands with another person under the table, or feed that other person little forkfuls of dessert — so she could hardly blame him for sharing in that misconception, or feeling confused and betrayed when she took it all back.

But she wasn’t that person, not here in Mapleton anyway, not even close, and there was no use hiding from the truth. She had no love to give Kevin or anyone else, no joy or energy or insight. She was still broken, still missing some crucial parts. This knowledge had almost crushed her when she got back home, the unsupportable weight of her own existence, a lead-lined cape draped across her frail shoulders. Welcome home, Nora. It seemed so much heavier than she remembered, so much more oppressive, which was apparently the price you paid for sneaking out from under it for a few days. Did you have a nice trip?

THE OUTPOST

ON A WINDLESS MORNING IN late January, with light snow sifting down, Laurie and Meg walked from Ginkgo Street to their new quarters on Parker Road, a quiet residential enclave on the eastern edge of Greenway Park.

Outpost 17 was small, but nicer than Laurie had expected, a dark blue Cape Cod, dormered, with white trim around the windows. Instead of a concrete path, a walkway of clay-colored paving stones led to the main entrance. The only thing she didn’t like was the front door itself, which looked a little too ornate for the rest of the house, gleaming brown wood with an elongated oval of smoked decorative glass cut into it, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on a McMansion in Stonewood Heights, not a modest Mapleton dwelling like this one.

“It’s cute,” Meg whispered.

“Could be a lot worse,” Laurie agreed.

They liked it even better once they saw the inside. The downstairs was cozy without feeling cramped, enlivened by lots of nice little touches — a gas fireplace in the living room, area rugs with bold geometric designs, comfortable mix-and-match furniture. The high point was the renovated kitchen, a bright open space with stainless steel appliances, a restaurant-quality stove, and a window over the sink that looked out on a soothing vista of wooded parkland, the bare tree limbs frosted with a thin layer of white powder. Laurie could easily imagine her old self standing at the soapstone counter on a weekend afternoon, chopping vegetables while NPR murmured in the background.

The tour was guided by their new housemates, a pair of middle-aged men who’d answered the door with homemade name tags affixed to their shirts. “Julian” was tall and a bit stooped, with round, wire-framed glasses and a pointy nose that seemed to sniff inquisitively at the air. His face was clean-shaven, an anomaly in the G.R. “Gus” was a stocky, red-haired guy with a ruddy complexion; his beard was neatly trimmed, generously flecked with gray.

Welcome, he wrote on a communication pad. We’ve been waiting for you.

Laurie felt uneasy, but did her best to ignore it. She’d known the outposts could be coed, but hadn’t anticipated anything quite so intimate, two men and two women sharing a small house on the edge of the woods. But if that was the assignment, then so be it. She understood what an honor it was to be selected for the Neighborhood Settlement Program — it was at the heart of the G.R.’s long-term expansion plans — and wanted to prove herself worthy of the trust that had been placed in her by the leadership, who were undoubtedly doing the best they could with the resources at their disposal.

Besides, she and Meg would have the whole second floor to themselves — two small bedrooms and a shared bathroom — so privacy shouldn’t be a problem. Meg chose the pink room overlooking the street; Laurie took the yellow one with the park view, which had probably belonged to a teenager. The bed — it looked like it came from IKEA — was built low to the floor, a thin, futon-style mattress resting inside a frame of blond wood. The walls were bare, but you could see the empty spaces where some posters had recently hung, three rectangles slightly brighter than the space that surrounded them.

She’d only brought one suitcase — all her worldly belongings — and got unpacked in a matter of minutes. It felt anticlimactic somehow — more like checking into a hotel than settling into a new home — almost enough to make her nostalgic for the hectic moving days of her previous life: the weeks of preparation, the boxes and the tape and the markers, the big truck pulling up, the anxiety of watching your whole life disappear into its maw. And then the reverse peristalsis on the other end, all those boxes coming back out, the thud when they landed on the floor, the shriek when you ripped them open. The weird letdown of a new house, that nagging sense of dislocation that feels like it’ll never go away. But at least you knew in your gut that something momentous had happened, that one chapter in your life had ended and another had begun.

A year, she used to say. It takes a year to really feel at home. And sometimes longer than that.

After she’d placed her clothes in the chest of drawers — also blond, also IKEA — she stayed on her knees for a long time, not praying, just thinking, trying to get her mind around the fact that she lived here now, that this place was home. It helped to know that Meg was nearby, just a few steps away. Not quite as close as in Blue House, where they’d shared a room, but close enough, closer than she could reasonably have hoped for.

AS A general rule, friendships were discouraged within the G.R. The organization was structured to prevent people from spending too much time together or relying too much on specific individuals for their social sustenance. In the Ginkgo Street Compound, members lived in large groups that were frequently reshuffled; jobs were rotated on a regular basis. Watchers were paired up by lottery and rarely worked with the same partner twice in a single month. The point was to strengthen the connection between the individual and the group as a whole, not between one individual and another.

This policy made sense to Laurie, at least in theory. People were extremely vulnerable when they joined the G.R. After expending so much energy tearing themselves away from their old lives, they were dazed and exhausted and deeply vulnerable. Without proper guidance, it was all too easy for them to lapse into familiar patterns, to unwittingly re-create the relationships and behavior patterns they’d left behind. But if they were allowed to do that, they’d miss out on the very thing they’d come for: a chance to start over, to strip away the false comforts of friendship and love, to await the final days without distractions or illusions.

The main exception to this policy was the highly charged relationship between Trainer and Trainee, which the organization tended to view as a necessary evil, a statistically effective but emotionally perilous strategy for easing new members into the fold. The problem wasn’t so much the formation of an intense, exclusive bond between the two individuals involved — that was the whole point — as it was the trauma of dissolving this bond, of separating two people who had essentially become a unit.

It was the Trainer’s job to prepare the Trainee for this eventuality. From the very beginning, Laurie had stuck to the protocol, reminding Meg on a daily basis that their partnership was temporary, that it would come to an end on January 15th — Graduation Day — at which point Meg would become a full-fledged member of the Mapleton Chapter of the Guilty Remnant. From then on, the two of them would be colleagues, not friends. They would treat each other with common courtesy — nothing more, nothing less — and strictly adhere to their vows of silence in each other’s company.

She’d tried her best, but it hadn’t done either of them much good. As the end of Meg’s probation approached, they grew increasingly agitated and depressed. There were several nights that ended with one or both of them in tears, lamenting the unfairness of the situation, wondering why they couldn’t just go on living as they had, sticking to an arrangement that was working fine for both of them. In a way, it was worse for Laurie, because she knew exactly what she was returning to — a crowded room in Gray House, or maybe Green, a sleeping bag on a cold floor, long nights without a friend nearby to help pass the time, nothing to keep her company but the frightened voice in her own head.

A WEEK EARLIER, on the morning of Meg’s Graduation Day, they’d reported to the Main House with heavy hearts. Before setting off, they’d hugged each other for a long time and reminded themselves to be brave.

“I won’t forget you,” Meg promised, her voice soft, a bit hoarse.

“You’ll be fine,” Laurie whispered, not even convincing herself. “We both will.”

Patti Levin, the first and only Director of the Mapleton Chapter, was waiting in her office, sitting like a high school principal behind an enormous beige desk. She was a petite woman with frizzy gray hair and a stern but surprisingly youthful face. She gestured with her cigarette, inviting them to sit down.

“It’s the big day,” she said.

Laurie and Meg remained silent. They were only allowed to speak in response to a direct question. The Director studied them, her face alert but expressionless.

“I see you’ve been crying.”

There was no sense denying it. They’d barely slept and had spent a good part of the night in tears. Meg looked like a wreck — hair tangled, eyes raw and puffy — and Laurie had no reason to believe she looked any better.

“It’s hard!” Meg blurted out like a heartbroken teenager. “It’s just really hard!”

Laurie winced at the breach of decorum, but the Director let it pass. Pinching her cigarette between thumb and forefinger, she brought it to her mouth and sucked hard on the filter, as if it weren’t drawing right, squinting with grim determination.

“I know,” she said on the exhale. “It’s the path we’ve chosen.”

“Is it always this bad?” Meg sounded like she was about to start crying again.

“Sometimes.” The Director shrugged. “It’s different for different people.”

Now that Meg had broken the ice, Laurie decided it was okay to speak up.

“It’s my fault,” she explained. “I didn’t do my job. I got too attached to my Trainee and let things get out of hand. I really screwed up.”

“That’s not true!” Meg protested. “Laurie’s a great mentor.”

“It’s our fault, too,” the Director admitted. “We could see what was happening. We probably should have separated you two a month ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Laurie forced herself to meet the Director’s eyes. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

Patti Levin shook her head. “I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”

Laurie didn’t argue. She knew she didn’t deserve a second chance. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted one, not if she was going to feel like this when it was over.

“Please don’t hold it against Meg,” she said. “She’s worked really hard these past couple of months and made a lot of progress, in spite of my mistakes. I really admire her strength and determination. I know she’s going to be a great asset to the Chapter.”

“Laurie taught me so much,” Meg chimed in. “She’s just a really good role model, you know?”

Mercifully, the Director let that pass. In the silence that followed, Laurie found herself staring at the poster on the wall behind the desk. It showed a classroom full of adults and children, all of them dressed in white, all of them with their hands in the air, like eager A students. Every raised hand held a cigarette.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MARTYR? the caption asked.

“I guess you’ve noticed that it’s a little crowded around here,” the Director told them. “We keep getting new recruits. In some of the houses we’ve got people sleeping in the hallways and the garages. It’s just not a sustainable situation.”

For a miserable moment or two, Laurie wondered if she was being kicked out of the G.R. to make room for someone more worthy than herself. But then the Director glanced at a sheet of paper on her desk.

“You’re being transferred to Outpost 17,” she said. “You move in next Tuesday.”

Laurie and Meg exchanged wary glances.

“Both of us?” Meg asked.

The Director nodded. “That’s your preference, right?”

They assured her that it was.

“Good.” For the first time since they’d arrived, Patti Levin smiled. “Outpost 17 is a very special place.”

THE ONE thing life had taught Jill was that things change all the time — abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn’t do you that much good, apparently. You could still get blindsided by your own best friend, right in the middle of a macaroni and cheese dinner.

“Mr. Garvey,” Aimee said. “I think it’s time I started paying some rent.”

“Rent?” Her father chuckled, as if he enjoyed having his leg pulled as much as the next guy. He’d been in a pretty good mood for the past few weeks, ever since he’d come back from Florida. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I mean it.” Aimee looked completely serious. “You’ve been really generous to me. But I’m starting to feel like a freeloader, you know?”

“You’re not a freeloader. You’re a guest.”

“I’ve been living here a looong time.” She paused, daring him to disagree. “I’m sure you guys are really sick of me.”

“Don’t be silly. We enjoy your company.”

Aimee frowned, as if his kindness just made things harder.

“I’m not just sleeping here, I’m eating your food, using your washer and dryer, watching your cable TV. I’m sure there’s other stuff, too.”

Internet, Jill thought. Heat and AC, tampons, makeup, shampoo and conditioner and toothpaste, my underwear …

“It’s really okay.” He glanced at Jill, wondering if she had a different opinion. “Right?”

“Absolutely,” Jill said. “It’s been fun.”

And she meant it, too, despite her occasional complaints about Aimee’s lengthy, open-ended crash at their house. Sure, there’d been some rocky times in the fall, but things had gotten better in the past month or two. Christmas had been really nice, and they’d thrown a great New Year’s party while her father was on vacation. In the weeks since then, Jill had made a point of asserting her independence from Aimee, no longer going out every night, making a good-faith effort to keep up with her schoolwork and spend a little more time with her dad. It seemed like they’d finally come up with a balance everyone could live with.

“I’ve never paid rent before,” Aimee said, “so I have no idea what the going rate would be, especially in a beautiful house like this. But I guess the landlord decides that, right?”

Her father winced at the word landlord.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re a high school student. How’re you going to pay rent?”

“That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you.” Aimee seemed suddenly unsure of herself. “I think I’m done with school.”

“What?”

Jill was startled to see that Aimee was blushing, because Aimee never blushed.

“I’m dropping out,” she said.

“Why would you do that?” he asked. “You’re gonna graduate in a few months.”

“You didn’t see my report card,” Aimee told him. “I failed everything last semester, even gym. If I want to graduate I’m going to have to go back next year, and I’d rather shoot myself than be a fifth-year senior.” She turned to Jill, requesting backup. “Go ahead, tell him what a fuckup I am.”

“It’s true,” Jill said. “She can’t even remember how to open her locker.”

“Look who’s talking,” he said.

“I’m gonna do better this term,” Jill promised, thinking how much easier it would be to buckle down with Aimee out of the picture. They wouldn’t be walking to school every morning, getting stoned behind the supermarket, or sneaking out for two-hour lunches. I can be myself again, she thought. Grow my hair back, start hanging out with my old friends …

“Besides,” Aimee added. “I got a job. You remember Derek from the yogurt store? He’s managing the new Applebee’s over at Stonewood Plaza. He hired me as a server. Full-time, starting next week. The uniforms are ugly, but the tips should be pretty good.”

“Derek?” Jill didn’t try to hide her disgust. “I thought you hated him.”

Their old boss was a sleazeball, a married guy in his mid-thirties — his key chain was an LCD cube that flashed pictures of his baby son — who liked to buy alcohol for his underage female employees and ask lots of probing questions about their sex lives. Ever use a vibrator? he’d asked Jill one night, totally out of the blue. I bet you’d like it. He’d even offered to buy her one, just because she seemed like such a nice person.

“I don’t hate him.” Aimee took a sip of water, then heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief. “God, I can’t wait to get out of that school. I get depressed every time I walk down the hall. All those assholes on parade.”

“Guess what?” her father said. “They’ll all come to Applebee’s, and you’ll have to be nice to them.”

“So? At least I’ll be getting paid for it. And you know what the best part is?” Aimee paused, smirking proudly. “I get to sleep in every day, as late as I want. No more waking up hungover at the crack of dawn. So I’d really appreciate it if you guys kept your voices down in the morning.”

“Ha ha,” Jill said, trying to fend off a sudden troubling vision of the house after she left for school, Aimee wandering through the kitchen in nothing but a T-shirt and panties, her father watching from the table as she guzzled OJ straight from the carton, every day a disaster waiting to happen. It made her really glad that he had a new girlfriend, a woman close to his own age, even if she was a little spooky.

“Listen.” He seemed seriously concerned, as if Aimee were his own daughter. “I really think you should reconsider. You’re too smart to quit school.”

Aimee exhaled slowly, like she was beginning to lose her patience.

“Mr. Garvey,” she said, “if you’re really uncomfortable with this, I guess I can find somewhere else to live.”

“This isn’t about where you live. I just don’t want you to sell yourself short.”

“I get that. And I really appreciate it. But you’re not gonna change my mind.”

“All right.” He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with three fingertips, the way he did when he had a headache. “How about this? In a month or two, after you’ve been working for a while, we can sit down and figure out the rent situation. In the meantime, you’re our guest, and everybody’s happy, okay?”

“Sounds good.” Aimee smiled, as if this were the exact outcome she’d been hoping for. “I like it when everybody’s happy.”

LAURIE COULDN’T sleep. It was her third night at the Outpost, and the transition wasn’t going as smoothly as she’d hoped. Part of it was the strangeness, after twenty-three years of marriage and nine months of communal living, of once again having a room of her own. She just wasn’t accustomed to solitude anymore, the way that lying alone on a comfortable mattress could feel like tumbling endlessly through outer space.

She missed Meg, too, missed their sleepy bedtime talks, the schoolgirl camaraderie of the Unburdening. Some nights they had stayed awake for hours, two soft voices bouncing back and forth, recounting their life stories in random installments. In the beginning, Laurie had made a good-faith effort to keep them focused on Meg’s training, to discourage idle gossip and nostalgic chatter, but the conversation always seemed to have a mind of its own. And the truth was, she enjoyed its meandering trajectory just as much as Meg did. She excused her weakness by reminding herself that it was a temporary condition, that Graduation Day would come soon enough, and she would, by necessity, have to resume her regimen of silence and self-discipline.

And here she was, trying to do just that, but with Meg in the very next room, so close that not being able to talk to her seemed absurd and almost cruel. It was hard to be alone under any circumstances, but even harder when you knew you didn’t have to be, when all you had to do was throw off the blankets and tiptoe down the hall. Because she had no doubt — none at all — that Meg was wide awake at that very moment, thinking the exact same thoughts she was, resisting the exact same temptation.

It had been simple to behave at the Compound, with so many people around, so many watchful eyes. At the Outpost there was no one to stop them from doing what they wanted, no one to even notice except Gus and Julian, and those guys were in no position to criticize. They were sharing the master suite on the ground floor — it had a king-size bed and a whirlpool tub in the adjoining bathroom — and Laurie sometimes thought she could hear their voices late at night, frail bubbles of speech drifting through the quiet house, popping just before they reached her ears.

What are they talking about? she wondered. Are they talking about us?

She wouldn’t have blamed them if they were. If she and Meg had been together, they would certainly have been talking about Gus and Julian. Not to complain — there wasn’t all that much to complain about — but just to swap impressions, the way you do when new people enter your life and you’re not quite sure what to make of them.

They seemed like sweet guys, she thought, though maybe a bit self-involved and entitled. They could also be a little bossy, but Laurie suspected that this attitude was more a fluke of circumstance than a flaw in their characters. They’d been the sole occupants of Outpost 17 for almost a month before Laurie and Meg had arrived, and they’d naturally come to think of the place as their own and to assume that the newcomers would have to abide by the rules they’d established. As a matter of principle, Laurie didn’t think this was fair — the G.R. was based on equality, not seniority — but she figured she’d wait a little while before making a fuss about the decision-making process.

Besides, it wasn’t like the house rules were particularly onerous. The only one that caused Laurie any personal inconvenience was the indoor smoking ban — she liked starting the day with a cigarette in bed — but she had no intention of trying to change it. The policy had been put in place to protect Gus, who suffered from a severe case of asthma. His breathing was often labored, and just the day before, he’d suffered a full-on attack right in the middle of dinner, leaping up from the table with a panicky expression, gulping and wheezing like he’d just been rescued from the bottom of a swimming pool. Julian ran to their room to retrieve an inhaler and rubbed Gus’s back for several minutes afterward until his respiration returned to something like normal. It had been terrifying to watch, and if Laurie had to smoke on the back patio to give him a little relief, that was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make.

As a matter of fact, she was grateful for the opportunity to practice any kind of self-denial, because the Outpost offered so few of them. Life here was so much easier than at the Compound. Food was plentiful, if not fancy — mostly pasta and beans and canned vegetables — and the thermostat was kept at a civilized sixty-two degrees. You could go to bed when you felt like it, and sleep in as long as you liked. As for work, you set your own hours and filled out your own reports.

It was almost disturbingly cushy, which was one of the reasons she was trying so hard to maintain her distance from Meg, to not fall back into the easy routine of friendship. It was bad enough being warm and well-fed and free to do as you pleased. If, on top of all that, you were happy, too, if you had a good friend to keep you company at night, then what was the point of even being in the G.R.? Why not just go back to the big house on Lovell Terrace, rejoin her husband and daughter, wear nice clothes again, renew her membership at the Mapleton Fitness Club, catch up on the TV she’d missed, redecorate the living room, cook interesting meals with seasonal produce, pretend that life was good and the world wasn’t broken?

After all, it wasn’t too late.

“YOU’VE BEEN with us for quite a while,” Patti Levin had said at the end of their meeting last week. “I think it’s about time we made it official, don’t you?”

The envelope she pressed into Laurie’s hand contained a single sheet of paper, a Joint Petition for Divorce. Laurie had filled in the blanks, checked the necessary boxes, and signed her name in the space reserved for Petitioner A. All that remained for her to do was to take the form to Kevin and get him to sign as Petitioner B. She had no reason to believe he’d object. How could he? Their marriage was over — it had suffered what the state called an “irretrievable breakdown”—and they both knew it. The petition was a legal formality, a bureaucratic statement of the obvious.

So what was the problem? Why was the envelope still resting on the dresser, weighing so heavily on her conscience that it might as well have been glowing in the dark?

Laurie wasn’t naïve. She understood that the G.R. needed money to survive. You couldn’t run an organization that large and ambitious without incurring serious expenses — all those people needing food and housing and medical care. There were new properties to be acquired, old ones to be maintained. Cigarettes. Vehicles. Computers, legal advice, public outreach. Soap, toilet paper, whatever. It added up.

Naturally, members were expected to contribute whatever they could afford. If all you had was a monthly Social Security check, that was what you gave. If the sum total of your worldly goods consisted of a rusty Oldsmobile with a bad muffler, the G.R. could use that, as well. And if you were lucky enough to be married to a successful businessman, why shouldn’t you dissolve that union and donate your share of the proceeds to the cause?

Well, why not?

She wasn’t really sure how much money was involved — the lawyers would have to figure that out. The house alone was worth around a million — they’d paid one point six for it, but that was five years ago, before the market tanked — and the various retirement and investment accounts had to be worth at least that much. Whatever the final tally, fifty percent of it would be a serious outlay, substantial enough that Kevin might have to think about selling the house to meet his obligations.

Laurie wanted to do her part for the G.R., she really did. But the thought of walking over there, ringing the doorbell, and asking Kevin for half of everything she’d turned her back on filled her with shame. She had joined the G.R. because she had no choice, because it was the only path that made any sense to her. In the process, she’d lost her family and her friends and her place in the community, all the comfort and security money could buy. That was her decision, and she didn’t regret it. But Kevin and Jill had paid a high price, too, and they hadn’t gotten anything in return. It seemed greedy — unseemly — to suddenly show up at their door with her hand out, asking for even more.

SHE MUST have drifted off because she woke with a start, conscious of some sort of movement nearby.

“Laurie?” Meg whispered. Her nightgown emitted a ghostly radiance in the doorway. “Are you awake?”

“Is something wrong?”

“Can’t you hear it?”

Laurie listened. She thought she caught a muffled sound, a soft rhythmic tapping.

“What is that?”

“It’s louder in my room,” Meg explained.

Laurie got out of bed, hugging her bare arms against the chill, and followed Meg down the short hallway into the other bedroom. It was brighter on that side of the house, the glow of a streetlight filtering in from Parker Road. Meg crouched in front of an old-fashioned radiator, a bulky silver thing with claw feet like a vintage bathtub, and beckoned Laurie to join her.

“I’m right on top of them,” she said.

Laurie inclined her head, placing her ear close enough to the metal that she could feel the faint residual heat coming off it.

“It’s been going on for a long time.”

The sound was clearer now, like listening to a radio. The tapping was no longer faint or mysterious. It was a straightforward percussion, headboard against wall, with an undertone of protesting bedsprings. She could hear voices, too, one gruff and monotonous — it just kept saying the word fuck over and over — and the other higher-pitched, with a more varied vocabulary—oh and God and Jesus and please. Laurie wasn’t sure which one belonged to Julian and which to Gus, but she was glad to hear that neither one seemed to be suffering from shortness of breath.

“How am I supposed to sleep?” Meg demanded.

Laurie didn’t trust herself to speak. She knew she was supposed to be scandalized, or at least upset, by what she was hearing — the G.R. didn’t permit sex between members, gay or straight — but at that moment, she wasn’t feeling anything except muddled surprise and a little more interest than she would have liked to admit.

“What are we gonna do?” Meg went on. “Do we have to report them?”

It took an effort of will for Laurie to move away from the radiator. She turned to Meg, their faces just inches away in the darkness.

“It’s none of our business,” she said.

“But—”

Laurie took Meg by the wrist and helped her to her feet.

“Grab your pillow,” she said. “You can sleep in my room tonight.”

BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT

TOM PUT ON THE SKI jacket he’d borrowed from Terrence Falk, taking care not to get his beard tangled in the zipper, which he pulled all the way up to his chin. He’d gotten snagged a couple of times, and it had hurt like hell getting it free.

“Where you going?” Christine asked from the couch.

“Harvard Square.” He withdrew a cashmere watch cap from his coat pocket and smoothed it over his head. “Wanna come?”

She glanced down at her pajamas — polka-dot pants and a tight gray top that hugged the fertile swell of her belly — as if that were an answer in itself.

“You can get changed,” he told her. “I’m in no hurry.”

She pursed her lips, tempted by the offer. They’d been in Cambridge for a month, and she’d only been out of the house a handful of times — once to see a doctor, and twice to go shopping with Marcella Falk. She never complained about it, but Tom figured she must be going a little stir-crazy.

“I don’t know.” She glanced nervously toward the kitchen, where Marcella was baking cookies. “I probably shouldn’t.”

The Falks had never explicitly said that she wasn’t allowed to leave the house on her own — they weren’t bossy like that — but they discouraged her on a daily basis. It just wasn’t worth the risk — she could slip on the ice, or catch a cold, or draw the attention of the police — especially now that she was in the third trimester of a pregnancy whose importance to the world could not be overstated. And this wasn’t just their personal opinion — they were in direct contact with Mr. Gilchrest, through his attorney, and he wanted her to know how deeply concerned he was for her safety, and for the health and well-being of his unborn child.

He wants you to take it easy, they told her. He wants you to eat good food and get lots of rest.

“It’s a ten-minute walk,” Tom said. “You can bundle up.”

Before Christine could reply, Marcella Falk hustled in from the kitchen, wearing a striped apron and balancing a plate of cookies on her upturned hand.

“Oatmeal raisin!” she sang out as she approached the couch. “Someone’s favorite!”

“Yummy.” Christine reached for a cookie and took a bite. “Mmm. Nice and warm.”

Marcella set the plate down on the coffee table. As she straightened up, she glanced at Tom with an expression of bogus surprise, as if she hadn’t known he was there, hadn’t been eavesdropping the whole time.

“Oh—” She had short dark hair, watchful eyes, and the stringy physique of a fiftysomething yoga addict. “Are you going out?”

“Just for a walk. Christine might come along.”

Marcella did her best to look interested rather than alarmed.

“Do you need something?” she asked Christine a little too sweetly. “I’m sure Tom will be happy to get it for you.”

Christine shook her head. “I don’t need anything.”

“I thought she might like a little fresh air,” Tom suggested.

Marcella looked puzzled, as if “fresh air” were an unfamiliar concept.

“I’m sure we could open a window,” she said.

“That’s okay.” Christine made a show of yawning. “I’m kinda tired. I’ll probably just take a nap.”

“Perfect!” Marcella’s face relaxed. “I’ll wake you around two-thirty. The personal trainer’s coming at three for your workout.”

“I could use some exercise,” Christine admitted. “I’m turning into a blimp.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marcella told her. “You look beautiful.”

She was right about that, Tom thought. Now that she was indoors and eating properly, Christine was gaining weight and getting lovelier by the day. Her face was glowing, her body ripening gracefully. Her breasts still weren’t that big, but they were rounder and fuller than before, and he sometimes got a little hypnotized by the sight of them. He also had to make a conscious effort not to reach out and rub her belly whenever she was nearby, not that she would’ve objected. She didn’t mind if Tom touched her. Sometimes she even grabbed his hand and placed his palm right on top of the baby, so he could feel the movement inside of her, the little creature doing slow-motion somersaults, swimming blindly in its bubble. But it was a whole different thing to just fondle her without permission, to treat her body like it was public property. The Falks did that all the time, closing their eyes and cooing dreamily at the baby, as if they were the proud grandparents, and Tom thought it was rude.

He started toward the door, resisting the temptation to grab a cookie on the way out.

“You sure you don’t want boots?” Marcella asked him. “I’m sure Terrence has an extra pair.”

“That’s okay. I’m fine like this.”

“Have fun,” Christine called after him. “Tell the hippies I said hi.”

IT WAS a damp gray afternoon, not especially cold for February. Tom headed east on Brattle, trying not to obsess about Terrence Falk’s boots. If they were anything like his coat, or his super-lightweight, mysteriously toasty gloves, they’d probably been designed to withstand the rigors of an Antarctic expedition. An ordinary winter day would have been nothing for boots like that. You wouldn’t even have to look where you were going.

But no, he taunted himself, hopscotching an archipelago of slushy puddles on Appleton Street. I have to do it the hard way.

At least he had his flip-flops. That was what the New England Barefoot People were allowed to wear when there was snow on the ground. Not boots, not shoes, not sneakers, not even Tevas — just plain rubber flip-flops, which were better than nothing, but not by much. He’d recently seen a couple of nerds wearing plastic bags over them — they were held in place by rubber bands around the ankles — but this modification was widely scorned around Harvard Square.

In California, it was frequently claimed that bare feet toughened up over time and became “as good as shoes,” but no one believed this in Boston, at least not in the middle of winter. Your soles got leathery after a few months, that much was true, but your toes never got accustomed to the cold. And it didn’t matter what else you wore — if your feet were frozen, the rest of you was miserable, too.

But there was no point in complaining, because all Tom’s suffering in this regard was self-inflicted and totally unnecessary. He’d completed his mission, delivered Christine safe and sound to her comfortable new home, to the generous couple who’d promised to take care of her for however long it took for Mr. Gilchrest to resolve his legal difficulties. There was nothing to stop Tom from scrubbing off his bullseye, putting some shoes on his feet, and getting on with his life. But for some reason, he couldn’t do it.

Christine hadn’t hesitated. The night they’d arrived at the Falks’, she’d disappeared into the bathroom right after dinner and taken a long, hot shower. When she emerged, her forehead was clean, her face pink and deeply relieved, as if the memory of the road were a bad dream she’d been happy to wash away. Ever since then, she’d been lounging around the house — a spectacularly renovated Victorian on Fayerweather Street — in organic cotton maternity clothes. In an attempt to repair the damage inflicted by months of exposure to the elements, the Falks had arranged for a house call from a Korean pedicurist, though they’d made Christine wear a face mask to protect herself and the baby from potentially harmful fumes. There had also been visits from a massage therapist, a dental hygienist, a nutritionist, and the nurse/midwife who would be assisting with what everyone hoped would be a home delivery.

All these professionals were devoted Holy Wayners, and they all treated Christine like royalty, like it was a rare privilege to buff her toenails or scrape the tartar from her teeth. Terrence and Marcella were the most obsequious of all; they’d actually knelt at Christine’s feet when she entered their house, bowing until their foreheads touched the ground. Christine was delighted by all the attention, happy to resume her life as Wife Number Four, the Special One, Mr. Gilchrest’s Chosen Vessel.

It was different for Tom. Being around all these true believers made it clearer than ever that he was no longer one of them, that there was no former self left for him to reclaim. The Holy Wayne part of his life was over, and the next phase hadn’t begun, nor did he have the slightest clue what it would be. Maybe that was why he was so reluctant to shed his disguise: Being a fake Barefoot Person was the only real identity he had left.

But it was more than that. He’d been happy on the road, happier than he’d realized at the time. The journey had been long and occasionally harrowing — they’d gotten mugged at knifepoint in Chicago and nearly froze to death in a blizzard in western Pennsylvania — but now that it was over, he missed the excitement and the closeness he’d shared with Christine. They’d been a good team, best friends and secret agents, improvising their way across the continent, dealing creatively with whatever obstacles came their way.

The disguises they’d chosen had worked better than they could have imagined. Everywhere they went, they met local Barefoot People and were treated like family, given food and rides and, often, a place to sleep. Christine had gotten sick in Harrisburg, and they’d ended up spending three weeks in a run-down group house near the state capitol, eating rice and beans from a communal pot, sleeping together on the kitchen floor. They hadn’t become lovers, but there’d been a couple of close calls, mornings when they’d awakened in each other’s arms and needed a few seconds to remember why that was a bad thing.

On the road, they rarely talked about Mr. Gilchrest. As the weeks went by, he became an abstraction, an increasingly hazy figure from the past. There were days when Tom forgot all about him, when he couldn’t help thinking of Christine as his own girlfriend, and the baby as his child. He let himself imagine that the three of them were a family, that they would soon settle down and build a life together.

It’s up to me, he told himself. I have to take care of them.

At the Falks’, though, this fantasy died of embarrassment. Mr. Gilchrest was everywhere, impossible to ignore, let alone forget. There were pictures of him in every room, including a gigantic photograph affixed to the ceiling of the master suite, right over Christine’s bed, so his face would be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning. Everywhere he went, Tom could feel the great man smiling at him, mocking him, reminding him who the real father was. The image he hated most was the framed poster in the basement, on the wall beside the foldout couch where he slept, an action shot of Holy Wayne on an outdoor stage, one fist raised in triumph, his face streaming with tears.

You motherfucker, Tom thought, last thing every night and first thing every morning. You don’t deserve her.

He knew he needed to get out of that house and away from that face. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave, to just walk out on Christine and abandon her to the Falks. Not when they’d come this far together, when her due date was only ten weeks away. The least he could do was stick it out until the baby came, make himself useful in any way he could.

THE MANDRAKE was a basement coffee shop on Mount Auburn Street that was one of the main gathering spots for Barefoot People in Harvard Square. Like Elmore’s in the Haight, it was owned and operated by people in the movement, and seemed to do a brisk business, not just in herbal teas and whole-grain muffins, but in weed and mushrooms and acid as well, at least if you knew the right person to approach, and the correct way to place an order.

Tom got a chai latte from the blissed-out kid behind the counter — the staff wore shirts that read, NO SHOES? WE LOVE YOU! — and then scanned the crowded room for a place to sit. Most of the tables were occupied by Barefoot People, but there were a handful of average citizens and slumming academics scattered among them, outsiders who had either wandered in by mistake or enjoyed the nostalgic contact high that came from being in close proximity to Grateful Dead music, face paint, and unwashed bodies.

Eggy waved at Tom from his table in the back corner — his bald head was impossible to miss in that sea of hirsute humanity — where he was engaged in yet another marathon backgammon session with Kermit, the oldest Barefoot Dude Tom had ever met. An unfamiliar blond girl around Tom’s age was the sole spectator.

“Yo, North Face!” Eggy called out. “Kill any caribou?”

Tom gave him the finger as he pulled up a chair. He took lots of ribbing at the Mandrake about the winter gear he’d borrowed from Terrence Falk, which was several cuts above the thrift-store crap most of the customers wore.

Kermit gazed at Tom with the bleary fascination of the permanently stoned. He had long, greasy yellowish gray hair that he liked to groom with his fingers when he was deep in thought. Rumor had it that he was a former English professor at B.U.

“You know what we should call you?” he said. “Jack London.”

The bestowing of nicknames was serious business at the Mandrake. In the few weeks he’d been hanging out there, Tom had already been dubbed Frisco, Your Excellency, and, most recently, North Face. Sooner or later, he thought, something would have to stick.

“Jack London.” Eggy murmured the name, testing it on his tongue. “I like that.”

“I read a story by him,” said the girl. She looked like a part-timer, round-faced and healthy, with the biggest bullseye on her forehead Tom had ever come across, a green-and-white swirl the size of a beer mat. “In high school English. This guy in the North Pole keeps trying to light a fire so he won’t get hypothermia, but the fire keeps going out. And then his fingers freeze, and he’s totally fucked.”

“Man versus Nature.” Eggy nodded sagely. “The eternal conflict.”

“There are actually two versions of that story,” Kermit pointed out. “In the first one, the guy survives.”

“So why’d he write the second?” the girl asked.

“Why, indeed?” Kermit chuckled darkly. “Because the first version was bullshit, that’s why. In his heart of hearts, Jack London knew that we can never build a fire. Not when we really need to.”

“You know what’s gross?” the girl asked cheerfully. “The guy wanted to kill his dog, cut it open, and warm his hands inside the guts. But by the time he tried to do it, he couldn’t even hold the knife.”

“Please.” Eggy looked a bit queasy. “Could we not talk about this?”

“Why not?” the girl asked.

“He’s a dog lover,” Kermit explained. “Hasn’t he told you about Quincy?”

“I just met her last night.” Eggy sounded indignant. “What do you think, I meet someone and immediately start blabbing about my dog?”

Kermit directed an amused glance at Tom, who knew all too well how often Eggy talked about Quincy, a two-hundred-pound mastiff who’d wandered off after the Sudden Departure and hadn’t been seen since. Instead of a wallet, Eggy carried a small album containing about a dozen photographs of the big dog, often in the company of a tall, unsmiling woman with scraped-back hair. This was Emily, Eggy’s departed fiancée, a former graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government. Eggy didn’t talk so much about her.

Kermit reached for the dice. “It’s my turn, right?”

“Yup.” Eggy pointed to a white blot on the middle bar. “I just took this guy prisoner.”

“Again?” Kermit looked pissed. “You could show a little mercy, you know?”

“What are you talking about? Why should I show any mercy? That’s like telling a football player not to tackle a player on the other team just because he has the ball.”

“There’s no law that says you have to tackle someone.”

“No, but you’d be a shitty football player if you didn’t.”

“Point taken.” Kermit shook the dice. “But let’s not remove free will from the equation.”

Tom rolled his eyes. The Barefoot People he’d known played different games in different cities — Monopoly in San Francisco, cribbage in Harrisburg, backgammon in Boston — but no matter what they played, the action always unfolded at a glacial pace, interrupted at every turn by pointless disputes and obscure philosophical digressions. More often than not, the games ended in midstream, called on account of boredom.

“I’m Lucy, by the way,” the girl told Tom. “But these guys call me Ouch.”

“Ouch?” Tom said. “Where’s that come from?”

Eggy looked up from the board. He wore round wire-framed glasses that, along with his shaved head, gave him a monkish air.

“She was one of the original Harvard flagellants. You know about that?”

Tom nodded. He’d seen a video on the Internet a while back, a procession of college kids marching through Harvard Yard in their bathing suits, mortifying their flesh with homemade whips and cat-o’-nine-tails, some of which had nails and tacks affixed to the business end. Afterward, the kids would sit on the grass and rub ointment into one another’s backs. They claimed to feel purified by their agony, temporarily cleansed of their guilt.

“Wow.” Tom looked at Ouch a little more closely. She was wearing a pale blue cotton sweater that looked freshly laundered. Her complexion was clear, her hair fine and soft, like she still had access to showers and a meal plan. “That’s pretty hard-core.”

“You should see her scars,” Eggy said with admiration. “Her back is like a topographic map.”

“I saw you idiots once,” Kermit told her. “I was sitting outside at Au Bon Pain, beautiful spring day, and the next thing I know, a dozen kids are lined up on the sidewalk like an a cappella group, yelling out their SAT scores and flogging the crap out of themselves. Seven Twenty, Critical Reading! Whack! Seven Eighty, Math! Whack! Six Ninety, Writing! Whack!”

Ouch was blushing. “We did it like that at the beginning. But then we started to personalize it. Somebody would scream, Lead role in Godspell! and the next one would say, Congressional Page! or Lampoon Staff! I had a really long one: Two-Sport Varsity Scholar-Athlete!” She laughed at the memory. “This one guy who came a couple of times, he used to scream about what a stud he was, and how proud he was about the size of his penis. Eight Inches! I Measured It! I Even Posted Pictures on Craigslist!”

“Fucking Harvard guys,” said Eggy. “Always bragging about something.”

“It’s true,” Ouch admitted. “The whole idea was that we were supposed to be atoning for the sins of excessive pride and selfishness, but we were even competitive about that. This one kid I knew, all he ever yelled was I’m the Biggest Asshole Ever!”

“There’s a tall order,” said Kermit. “Especially at Harvard.”

“How long did you keep this up?” Tom asked.

“Couple months,” she said. “But where can you go with something like that? It just doesn’t lead anywhere, you know? After a while, you even get bored with the pain.”

“So what happened? You just throw away your whip and go back to school?”

“They made me take a year off.” She gave a vague shrug, like it wasn’t worth talking about. “I did a lot of snowboarding.”

“But now you’re back?”

“Technically. But I’m not really going to class or anything.” She touched her bullseye. “I’m more interested in this right now. It seems like a really good fit, you know? A lot more social and intellectual stimulation. I think I need that.”

“More sex and drugs, too,” Eggy added with a smirk.

“Definitely more of that.” Ouch looked a bit troubled. “My parents aren’t too happy about it. Especially the sex.”

“They never are,” Kermit told her. “But that’s part of the deal. You gotta break free of those middle-class conventions. Find your own way.”

“It’s hard,” she said. “We’re a really close family.”

“She’s not kidding,” Eggy informed them. “They phoned last night while we were fucking and she took the call.”

“Hello?” asked Kermit. “Ever hear of voice mail?”

“That’s our agreement,” Ouch explained. “I can do whatever I want as long as I answer the phone. They just want to know I’m alive. I feel like I owe them that much.”

“It goes way beyond that.” Eggy sounded genuinely exasperated. “They talked for like a half hour, this big convoluted discussion about morality and responsibility and self-respect.”

Kermit looked intrigued. “While you were fucking?”

“Yeah,” Eggy grumbled. “It was a real turn-on.”

“They made me so mad.” Ouch was blushing again. “They wouldn’t even concede that casual sex is healthier than hurting myself. They kept trying to draw a moral equivalence between the two, which is so ridiculous.”

“Then — get this — she put me on the phone.” Eggy pretended to shoot himself in the head. “She made me talk to her parents. I’m naked with a fucking hard-on. Unbelievable.”

“They wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to talk to them. How do you think I felt, getting interrogated by these people I never met — what’s my real name, how old am I, am I practicing safe sex with their little girl? Finally I just said, Look, your little girl’s a consenting adult, and they’re like, We know that, but she’s still our child, and she means more to us than anything in the world. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?”

“It’s just because of my sister,” Ouch told him. “They still haven’t gotten over that. None of us have.”

“Anyway,” Eggy said wearily, “by the time she got off the phone, I didn’t even feel like fucking anymore. And it takes a lot to make me not feel like fucking.”

Ouch gave him a look. “You got over it pretty fast.”

“You were very persuasive.”

“Ah,” said Kermit. “So there was a happy ending after all.”

“Two, as a matter of fact.” Eggy’s expression was smug. “She’s quite the scholar-athlete.”

Tom wasn’t surprised by this — Barefoot dudes bragged about their sexual exploits all the time — but he couldn’t help feeling offended on Ouch’s behalf. In a world that made any sense, she wouldn’t even be talking to Eggy, let alone going to bed with him. She must have sensed his sympathy, because she turned to him with a curious expression.

“What about you?” she asked. “Are you in touch with your family?”

“Not really. Not for a while.”

“Did you have a fight?”

“We just kinda drifted apart.”

“Do your parents know you’re alive and well?”

Tom wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“I probably owe them an e-mail,” he muttered.

“Whose turn is it?” Eggy asked Kermit.

Ouch took out her phone and slid it across the table.

“You should call,” she said. “I bet they’d like to hear from you.”

AT THE GRAPEFRUIT

NORA BOUGHT A NEW DRESS for Valentine’s Day and immediately regretted it. Not because it didn’t look good; that wasn’t the problem at all. The dress was lovely — a blue-gray silk/rayon mix, sleeveless, with a V-neck and empire waist — and it fit her perfectly right off the rack. Even in the dispiriting light of the changing room, she could see how flattering it was, the way it emphasized the elegance of her shoulders and the length of her legs, the pale matte fabric calling attention to the darkness of her hair and eyes, her enviable cheekbones, her finely formed chin.

My mouth, she told herself. I have a very pretty mouth. (Her daughter had had the exact same mouth, but she preferred not to think about that.)

It was easy to imagine the looks she’d get in that dress, the heads that would turn when she walked into the restaurant, the pleasure in Kevin’s eyes as he admired her across the table. That was the problem, the ease with which she’d allowed herself to get swept up in the excitement of the holiday. Because she already understood that it wasn’t really working out, that she’d made a mistake getting involved with him, and that their days together were numbered — not because of anything he had or hadn’t done, but because of her, because of who she was and everything she was no longer capable of. So what was the point of looking this good — better than she had any right to, really — of eating a nice meal in a fancy restaurant, drinking expensive wine and sharing some kind of decadent dessert, starting something that would probably lead to bed and then end in tears? Why put either of them through that?

The thing was, Kevin hadn’t given her any advance warning. He’d just sprung it on her a few days ago as he was heading out the door.

Thursday at eight, he said, as if it were already set in stone. Mark it on your calendar.

Mark what?

Valentine’s Day. I made reservations for two at Pamplemousse. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.

It happened so quickly and felt so natural that it hadn’t occurred to her to object. How could she? He was her boyfriend, at least for the moment, and it was the middle of February. Of course he was taking her out to dinner.

Wear something nice, he told her.

ALL HER life she’d been a sucker for Valentine’s Day, even back in college, when a lot of people Nora respected treated it like a sexist joke at best, a Hallmark fairy tale from the bad old days, Ward bringing June a heart-shaped box of chocolates.

Let me get this straight, Brian used to tease her. I give you flowers and you spread your legs?

That’s right, she told him. That’s exactly how it goes.

And he’d gotten the message, too. Even Mr. Post-Structuralist had brought her a dozen roses and taken her out for a dinner he couldn’t afford. And when they got home, she held up her end of the bargain, a little more enthusiastically and inventively than usual.

See? she told him. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

It was okay, he conceded. I guess once a year won’t kill me.

As she got older, she realized there wasn’t anything to apologize for. It was just who she was. She liked being wined and dined, made to feel special, liked it when the deliveryman showed up at the office with a big bouquet and a sweet little note, and her female coworkers told her how lucky she was to have such a romantic boyfriend, such an attentive fiancé, such a thoughtful husband. That was one thing she’d always appreciated about Doug: He’d never failed her on Valentine’s Day, never forgot the flowers, never acted like he was just going through the motions. He enjoyed keeping her off balance, surprising her with jewelry one year, a weekend at a luxury hotel the next. Champagne and strawberries in bed, a sonnet in her honor, a home-cooked gourmet meal. She understood now that it was all for show, that he was probably rolling out of bed after she fell asleep and writing steamy e-mails to Kylie or some other other woman, but she hadn’t known that at the time. Back then every gift had seemed like one more nice gesture in a series that would go on forever, a tribute she deserved from the sweet man who loved her.

THERE WAS a candle between them and Nora’s face looked younger than usual in its flickering glow, as if the tension lines had been erased from the corners of her eyes and mouth. He hoped the soft light was doing him the same favor, giving her a glimpse of the handsome fellow he used to be, the one she’d never had a chance to meet.

“This is a nice restaurant,” he said. “Really down-to-earth.”

She glanced around the dining room as if seeing it for the first time, taking in the rustic decor with an air of grudging approval — the high ceiling with exposed beams, the bell-shaped light fixtures suspended above rough-hewn tables, the plank floor and exposed brick walls.

“Why do they call it the grapefruit?” she asked.

“Grapefruit?”

“Pamplemousse. It’s grapefruit in French.”

“Really?”

She held up the menu, pointing to a big yellow orb on the cover.

He squinted at the image. “I thought that was the sun.”

“It’s a grapefruit.”

“Whoops.”

Her eyes strayed toward the bar, where a festive crowd of walkins was clustered, waiting for some tables to open up. Kevin couldn’t understand why they all looked so cheerful. He hated that, killing time on an empty stomach, not knowing when the hostess would wander over and call your name.

“Must’ve been hard to get a reservation,” she said. “Eight o’clock and everything.”

“Just good timing.” Kevin shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “Somebody canceled right before I called.”

This wasn’t precisely true — he’d had to call in a favor from the restaurant’s wine supplier, who’d started out as a salesman for Patriot Liquors — but he decided to keep that information to himself. There were a lot of women who would’ve been impressed by his string-pulling abilities, but he was pretty sure Nora wasn’t one of them.

“I guess you’re just a lucky guy,” she told him.

“That’s right.” He tilted his glass in her direction, suggesting a toast without insisting on it. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

She mimicked his gesture. “Same to you.”

“You look beautiful,” he said, not for the first time that evening.

Nora smiled unconvincingly and opened her menu. He could see that it was costing her something just to be here, exposed like this, letting the whole town in on their little secret. But she’d done it—she’d done it for him—and that was the important thing.

HE HAD to hand it to Aimee. Without her encouragement, he never would’ve forced the issue, wouldn’t have had the courage to nudge Nora out of her comfort zone.

“I don’t want to push her,” he’d said. “She’s a pretty fragile person.”

“She’s a survivor,” Aimee had reminded him. “I bet she’s a lot tougher than you think.”

Kevin knew it was an iffy proposition, taking relationship advice from a teenager — a high school dropout, no less — but he’d gotten to know Aimee a lot better in the past couple of weeks and had come to think of her more as a friend and a peer than as one of his daughter’s classmates. For someone who’d made some pretty bad decisions in her own life, she actually had a lot of insight into other people and what made them tick.

It had been awkward at first, the two of them alone in the house after Jill left for school, but they’d gotten past that pretty quickly. It helped that Aimee was on her best behavior, coming downstairs wide-awake and fully dressed, no more sleepy Lolita in a tank top. She was polite and friendly and surprisingly easy to talk to. She told him about her new job — apparently, waitressing was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be — and asked a lot of questions about his. They discussed current events and music and sports — she was a pretty big NBA fan — and watched funny videos on YouTube. She was also curious about his personal life.

“How’s your girlfriend?” she asked him almost every morning. “You guys getting serious?”

For a while, Kevin just said, She’s fine, and moved on, trying to let her know that it was none of her business, but Aimee refused to take the hint. Then one morning last week, without making a conscious decision, he blurted out an honest answer.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “I like her a lot, but I think we’re running out of gas.”

He told her the whole story, minus the meager sexual details — the parade, the dance, the impulsive trip to Florida, the rut they’d fallen into when they got back home, his sense that she was pushing him away, that he wasn’t really welcome in her life.

“I try to get to know her, but she just clams up on me. It’s frustrating.”

“But you want to stay together?”

“Not if it’s gonna be like this.”

“Well, what do you want it to be?”

“A normal relationship, you know? As normal as she can handle right now. Just going out once in a while, to the movies or whatever. Maybe with friends, so it’s not just the two of us. And I’d like to be able to have a real conversation, not to have to always worry that I’m saying the wrong thing.”

“Does she know this?”

“I think so. I don’t see how she couldn’t.”

Aimee studied him for a few seconds, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek.

“You’re too polite,” she said. “You have to tell her what you want.”

“I try. But when I ask her to go out, she just says no, she’d rather stay at home.”

“Don’t give her a choice. Just say, ‘Hey, I’m taking you out to dinner. I already made the reservations.’”

“Sounds kinda pushy.”

“What’s the alternative?”

Kevin shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.

“Give it a shot,” she said. “What have you got to lose?”

NICK AND Zoe were going at it pretty good. They were kneeling on the rug, close enough for Jill to touch, Zoe purring happily as Nick licked and nuzzled her neck in what looked like a vampire’s idea of foreplay.

“It’s heating up, folks.” Jason spoke into an imaginary microphone, using a sports-announcer voice that wasn’t as funny as he thought it was. “Lazarro’s totally focused, working his way methodically downfield…”

If Aimee had been there, she would’ve made some clever, condescending remark to break Nick’s concentration and remind him not to get carried away. But Aimee wasn’t playing — she’d dropped out of the game a month ago when she started up at Applebee’s — so if anyone was going to intervene, it would have to be Jill.

But Jill kept her mouth shut as the kissing couple toppled onto the floor, Nick on top, Zoe’s fishnet leg wrapped around the back of his knees. She was surprised by the depth of her indifference to this spectacle. If it had been Aimee beneath Nick, she would’ve been sick with jealousy. But it was just Zoe, and Zoe didn’t matter. If Nick wanted her, he was welcome to have her.

Knock yourself out, she thought.

It was almost embarrassing to remember how much time and emotional energy she’d squandered on Nick in the fall, pining for the one boy she couldn’t have, the prize Aimee had claimed for herself. He was still beautiful, with that square jaw and those dreamy lashes, but so what? Back in the summer, when she’d first gotten to know him, he’d also been sweet and funny, so attentive and alive — she remembered laughing with him more than she remembered the sex they’d had — but these days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection. And it wasn’t just his fault — Jill felt clumsy and tongue-tied in his presence, unable to think of anything to say that might disturb the blankness on his face, make him remember that they were friends, that she was something more than an obliging mouth, or a hand with some greasy lotion on it.

But the real problem wasn’t Nick, and it wasn’t Jill or Zoe or any of the other players. It was Aimee. Until she stopped coming to Dmitri’s, Jill hadn’t realized how important she was, not just to the game, but to the group as a whole. She was the one essential member, the sun in their little solar system, the magnetic force that held them all together.

She’s our Wardell Brown, Jill thought.

Wardell Brown had been the center on her brother’s high school basketball team, a six-foot-six superstar who had regularly scored more points than the rest of his teammates combined. It was almost comical to watch them play together, four average-sized, perfectly competent white guys hustling to keep up with a graceful black giant who played the game on a whole different level. During Tom’s senior year, Wardell led the Pirates all the way to the final round of the state tournament, only to sit out the championship game with a sprained ankle. Deprived of his services, the team fell apart, losing in a humiliating blowout.

“Wardell’s our glue,” the coach said afterward. “He’s not there and the wheels come off.”

That was how Jill felt, playing Get a Room without Aimee nearby. Inept. Unglued. Adrift. Like a small planet wobbling through deep space, cut loose from its orbit.

THE ENTRÉES were taking forever. Or maybe it just felt that way. Nora wasn’t used to eating in restaurants anymore, at least not restaurants in Mapleton, where everyone did such a bad job of pretending not to stare at her, sneaking sideways glances and peering over the tops of their menus, directing sly beams of pity in her direction, though it was possible that this was just her imagination, too. Maybe she just wanted to think she was the center of attention so she’d have an excuse for how conspicuous she felt, as though she were up onstage with a white-hot spotlight shining in her face, trapped in one of those bad dreams where you had a starring role in the school play, but had somehow neglected to memorize your lines.

“What were you like as a kid?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Like everyone else, I guess.”

“Not everyone’s the same.”

“They’re not as different as they think.”

“Were you a girly girl?” he pressed on. “Did you wear pink dresses and stuff like that?”

She could sense some scrutiny coming from a table slightly behind her and a little to the right, where a woman she recognized, but whose name was escaping her, was sitting with her husband and another couple. The woman’s daughter, Taylor, had been a student at Little Sprouts Academy during Nora’s stint as an assistant teacher. The girl had a wispy, barely audible voice — Nora was always asking her to repeat herself — and she talked obsessively about her best friend, Neil, and all the fun they had together. Nora must have known Taylor for six months before she figured out that Neil was a Boston terrier and not a boy from the neighborhood.

“I wore dresses sometimes. But I wasn’t a little princess or anything.”

“Were you a happy kid?”

“Happy enough, I guess. I had a couple of bad years in middle school.”

“Why?”

“You know. Braces, acne. The usual.”

“Did you have friends?”

“Sure. I mean, I wasn’t the most popular kid in the world, but I had friends.”

“What were their names?”

God, Nora thought. He’s relentless. He’d been grilling her like this ever since they’d sat down, as if he were a reporter writing an article for the local paper—“My Dinner with Nora: The Heartbreaking Saga of a Pathetic Woman.” The questions were benign enough—What did you do today? Did you ever play field hockey? Have you had any broken bones? — but they annoyed her nonetheless. She could tell they were just warm-ups, standins for the questions he really wanted to ask: What happened that night? How did you go on living? What’s it like to be you?

“That was a long time ago, Kevin.”

“Not that long.”

She spotted the waiter moving in their direction, a short, olive-skinned man with the face of a silent movie idol and a plate in each hand. Finally, she thought, but he just floated by, on his way to another table.

“You really don’t remember their names?”

“I remember their names,” she said, speaking more sharply than she’d meant to. “I’m not brain damaged.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

“I know.” Nora felt like a jerk for snapping at him. “It’s not your fault.”

He glanced worriedly toward the kitchen. “I wonder what’s taking so long.”

“It’s a busy night,” she said. “Their names were Liz, Lizzie, and Alexa.”

MAX STARTED undressing as soon as Jill shut the door, as if she were a doctor who didn’t like to be kept waiting. He was wearing a wool sweater over a T-shirt, but he removed both garments in a single hurried tug, the static electricity causing his wispy hair to crackle and float up into a boyish halo. His chest was narrow compared to Nick’s, smooth and unmuscled, his belly taut and sunken, but not in a way that made you think of sexy underwear models.

“It’s been a while,” he said, unbuckling his pants, letting them slide down his skinny thighs and pool around his ankles.

“Not that long. Just a week or so.”

“Way longer than that,” he said, stepping out of his jeans and kicking them against the wall, on top of his shirt and sweater. “Twelve days.”

“But who’s counting, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice was flat and bitter. “Who’s counting.”

He was still mad at her, offended by the eagerness with which she’d pounced on Nick the moment he became available. But that was the game. You had to make choices, express preferences, cause and suffer pain. Every now and then, if you were lucky the way Nick and Aimee had been lucky, your first choice chose you as well. But most of the time it was messier than that.

“Well, I’m here now,” she told him.

“That’s right.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling off his socks and tossing them onto the pile of discarded clothes. “You get the consolation prize.”

It would have been easy enough to contradict him, to remind him of how willingly she’d just surrendered the alleged first prize — on Valentine’s Day, no less, not that any of them cared about that — but for some reason she withheld the kindness. She knew it wasn’t fair. In a more logical world, her disappointment with Nick would have made her more appreciative of Max rather than less, but it hadn’t worked out that way. All the contrast had done was highlight the shortcomings of both guys, the fact that the sexy one wasn’t nice, and the nice one wasn’t sexy.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’re just standing there. Why don’t you come to bed?”

“I don’t know.” Jill tried to smile, but it didn’t really work. “I’m just feeling a little shy tonight.”

“Shy?” He couldn’t help laughing. “It’s a little late for shy.”

She moved her arm in a vague arc, trying to encompass the game, the room, and their lives in the gesture.

“You ever get tired of this?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Not tonight.”

She didn’t move. After a few seconds, he stretched himself out on the bed, ankles crossed, fingers interlaced beneath his head. His briefs were unfamiliar, brown tighties with orange piping, unusually stylish.

“Nice undies,” she told him.

“My mom got them at Costco. Eight-pack, all different colors.”

“My mom used to buy me underwear,” she said. “But I told her it was weird, so she stopped.”

Max rolled onto his side, propping his chin on his hand, studying her with a thoughtful expression. Now he really did look like an underwear model, if there was a world where underwear models had hairy pipe-cleaner legs and bad muscle tone.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I saw your mother the other day. She followed me home from my guitar lesson. Her and this other woman.”

“Really?” Jill tried to sound casual. It was embarrassing, the way her heart leaped every time someone mentioned her mother. “How’s she doing?”

“Hard to tell. They just did that thing, you know, where they stand really close and stare at you.”

“I hate that.”

“It’s creepy,” he agreed. “But I didn’t say anything mean. I just let them walk me home.”

Jill felt almost sick with longing. She hadn’t caught a glimpse of her mother for months and never bumped into her on the streets of Mapleton, though she was apparently a familiar figure around town. Other people saw her all the time.

“Was she smoking?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see her light a cigarette?”

“Probably. Why?”

“I gave her a lighter for Christmas. I just wondered if she was using it.”

“Beats me.” His face tightened with thought. “No, wait. They had matches.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” The doubt had left his voice. “This was like last Friday. Remember how cold it was with the windchill? Her hand was shaking and she was having a really hard time striking the match. I offered to do it for her, but she wouldn’t let me. It took her like three or four tries to get the thing lit.”

Bitch, Jill thought. Serves her right.

“Come on.” Max patted the bed. “Relax. You don’t have to take your clothes off if you don’t want to.”

Jill considered the offer. She used to like resting with Max in the dark, two warm bodies under the covers, talking about whatever came into their heads.

“I won’t touch you,” he promised. “I won’t even jerk off.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she said. “But I think I’m gonna go home.”

THEY WERE both relieved when the food finally arrived, partly because they were hungry, but mainly because it gave them an excuse to suspend the conversation for a little while, take a breather, and maybe start over on a lighter note. Kevin knew he’d made a mistake, peppering her with so many questions, turning the small talk into an interrogation.

Be patient, he told himself. This is supposed to be fun.

After a few silent bites, Nora looked up from her mushroom ravioli.

“Delicious,” she said. “The cream sauce.”

“Mine, too.” He held up a morsel of lamb for her perusal, showing her how perfectly grilled it was, brown at the edges, pink in the middle. “Melts in your mouth.”

She smiled a bit queasily, and he remembered, too late, that she didn’t eat meat. Did it disgust her, he wondered, being asked to admire a piece of cooked flesh skewered on a fork? He understood all too well how you could talk yourself into vegetarianism, teach yourself to think “dead animal” rather than “tender and succulent.” He’d done it himself on numerous occasions, usually after reading articles about factory farms and slaughterhouses, but his qualms always vanished the moment he picked up a menu.

“So how was your day?” she asked. “Anything interesting happen?”

Kevin only hesitated for a second. He’d seen this moment coming and had been planning on playing it safe, saying something bland and innocuous—Not really, just went to work and came home—saving the truth for later, some unspecified time in the future when he knew her a little better and their relationship was a little stronger. But when would that be? How could you get to know someone a little better if you couldn’t give an honest answer to a simple question, especially about something so important?

“My son called this afternoon,” he told her. “I hadn’t heard from him since the summer. I was really worried about him.”

“Wow,” she said after a brief silence that didn’t quite thicken to the point of awkwardness. “Is he okay?”

“I think so.” Kevin wanted to smile, but did his best to resist the impulse. “He sounded pretty good.”

“Where is he?”

“He wouldn’t say. The cell phone he used had a Vermont area code, but it wasn’t his. I was just so relieved to hear the sound of his voice.”

“Good for you,” she said a bit stiffly, making an effort to sound pleased and sincere.

“Is this okay?” he asked. “We can talk about something else if you—”

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “I’m happy for you.”

Kevin decided not to press his luck.

“What about you? Do anything fun this afternoon?”

“Not really,” she said. “Got my eyebrows waxed.”

“They look good. Nice and neat.”

“Thanks.” She touched her forehead, tracing her fingertip over the top of her right eyebrow, which did seem a little more sharply defined than usual. “Is your son still part of that cult? That Holy Wayne thing?”

“He says he’s done with that.” Kevin looked down at the fat candle in its stubby glass holder, the quivering flame floating on a puddle of melted wax. He felt an urge to plunge his finger into the hot liquid, letting it harden in the air like a second skin. “Says he’s thinking about maybe coming home, going back to school.”

“Really?”

“That’s what he said. I hope it’s true.”

Nora picked up her knife and fork and cut into a ravioli. It was big and pillowy, crimped along the edges.

“Were you close?” she asked, still looking down, slicing the halves into quarters. “You and your son?”

“I thought we were.” Kevin was surprised by the shakiness in his voice. “He was my little boy. I was always so proud of him.”

Nora looked up with an odd expression on her face. Kevin could feel his mouth stretching, the pressure building inside his eyeballs.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in the instant before he clapped his hand over his mouth, trying to muffle the sound of his blubbering. “Just give me a second.”

IT WAS maybe fifteen degrees out, but the night air felt clean and invigorating. Jill stood on the sidewalk and took a good long look at Dmitri’s house, her home away from home for the past six months. It was a shabby little place, a generic suburban box with a concrete stoop and a picture window to the left of the front door. In the daytime the exterior was a dirty shade of beige, but right now it was no color at all, just a dark shape against an even darker background. An odd sense of melancholy took hold of her — it was the same feeling she got walking past her old ballet school, or the soccer fields at Greenway Park — as if the world were a museum of memories, a collection of places she’d outgrown.

Good times, she thought, but only as an experiment, just to see if she believed it. Then she turned and started for home, the street so quiet and the air so thin that her footsteps sounded like a drumbeat on the pavement, loud enough to wake the neighbors.

It wasn’t that late, but Mapleton was a ghost town, not a pedestrian or a stray dog in sight. She turned onto Windsor Road, reminding herself to look alert and purposeful. She’d taken a self-defense course a couple of years ago, and the instructor had said that not looking like a victim was Rule Number One. Keep your head up and your eyes open. Look like you know exactly where you’re going, even when you don’t.

At the corner of North Avenue, she paused to consider her options. It was a fifteen-minute walk from here to Lovell Terrace, but only half that if she cut across the railroad tracks. If Aimee had been there she wouldn’t have hesitated — they took the shortcut all the time — but Jill had never done it on her own. To get to the crossing, you had to walk down a desolate stretch of road, past auto repair shops, the Department of Public Works, and mysterious factories with names like Syn-Gen Systems and Standard Nipple Works, and then slip through a hole in the chain-link fence at the rear of the school bus parking lot. Once you crossed the tracks and circled around the back of Walgreens, you were in a much better area, a residential neighborhood with lots of streetlights and trees.

She didn’t hear the car. It just whooshed up from behind, a sudden alarming presence at the edge of her vision. She let out a gasp, then whirled into an awkward karate stance as the passenger window slid down.

“Whoa.” A familiar blissed-out face was peering at her, framed by reassuring blond dreadlocks. “You okay?”

“I was.” Jill tried to sound exasperated as she lowered her hands. “Until you scared the shit outta me.”

“Sorry about that.” Scott Frost, the unpierced twin, was the passenger. “You know karate?”

“Yeah, Jackie Chan’s my uncle.”

He grinned his approval. “Good one.”

“Where’s Aimee?” Adam Frost called from the driver’s seat. “We haven’t seen her for a while.”

“Working,” Jill explained. “She got a job at Applebee’s.”

Scott squinted at her with puffy, soulful eyes. “Need a ride somewhere?”

“I’m good,” she told him. “I live right across the tracks.”

“You sure? It’s fucking freezing out.”

Jill gave a stoic shrug. “I don’t mind walking.”

“Hey.” Adam leaned into view. “If you see Aimee, tell her I said hi.”

“Maybe we could party sometime,” Scott suggested. “All four of us.”

“Sure,” Jill said, and the Prius departed as quietly as it had arrived.

IN THE men’s room, Kevin splashed cold water on his face and wiped it off with a paper towel. He felt like a fool, breaking down in front of Nora like that. He could see how uncomfortable it made her, the way she froze up, like she’d never seen a grown man cry and didn’t even know it was possible.

He’d caught himself by surprise, too. He’d been so worried about her reaction to what he was saying, he wasn’t even thinking about his own. But something had snapped inside of him, a rubber band of tension that had been wound so tight for so long he’d forgotten it was even there. It was the phrase little boy that had done it, the sudden memory of an easy weight on his shoulders, Tom perched up there like a king on a throne, gazing down upon the world, one delicate hand resting on top of his father’s head, the heels of his Velcro-fastened sneakers knocking softly against Kevin’s chest as they walked.

Despite what had happened, he was glad he’d shared his good news with her, glad he’d resisted the temptation to spare her feelings. For what? So they could continue hiding from each other, eating their meal in uneasy silence, wondering why they had nothing to talk about? This way was harder, but it felt like a breakthrough, a necessary first step on a road that might actually lead somewhere worth going.

I don’t know about you, he thought he would tell her when he got back, but a nice dinner always makes me cry.

That would be the way to handle it — no apology, just a little joke to smooth things over. He crumpled the towel and dropped it into the wastebasket, checking himself one last time in the mirror before heading out the door.

A small seed of alarm sprouted in his chest as he made his way across the dining room and saw that their table was empty. He told himself not to worry, that she must have taken advantage of his absence to make her own trip to the restroom. He poured himself a little more wine and ate a forkful of roasted beet salad, trying not to stare at the balled-up napkin resting beside her plate.

A couple of minutes went by. Kevin thought about knocking on the ladies’ room door, maybe sticking his head inside to see if she was okay, but the handsome waiter stopped by the table before he had a chance. The man looked at Kevin with an expression that seemed to combine equal parts sadness and sympathetic amusement. His voice had a slight Spanish accent.

“Shall I clear the lady’s plate, sir? Or would you just prefer the check?”

Kevin wanted to protest, to insist that the lady would be right back, but he knew it was futile.

“Did she—?”

“She asked me to convey her apologies.”

“But I drove,” Kevin said. “She doesn’t have a car.”

The waiter lowered his gaze, nodding toward the food on Kevin’s plate.

“Shall I box that up for you?”

JILL CROSSED the street, keeping her chin up and her shoulders back as she hustled past Junior’s Auto Body, a hospital for cars with shattered windshields and dimpled doors, dangling fenders and crumpled front ends. Some of the bad ones had deflated air bags drooping from the steering wheels, and it wasn’t unusual for a bag to be spotted with blood. She knew from experience not to look too hard or think too much about the people who’d been inside.

She felt like an idiot for declining the twins’ offer of a ride home. It was just injured pride that made her do it, anger at them for sneaking up on her like that, even if they hadn’t meant to. There was also a certain amount of good-girl caution at work, the little voice in her head that reminded her not to get into cars with strangers. It was kind of self-defeating in this case, since the alternative seemed even dicier than the danger she was supposedly trying to avoid.

Besides, the twins weren’t really strangers, nor was Jill the least bit scared of them. Aimee said they’d been total gentlemen the day she’d cut school and hung out at their house. All they’d wanted to do was get high and play Ping-Pong, hours and hours of Ping-Pong. Apparently they were really good at it, even when they were wasted. If they ever had a Pothead Olympics, Aimee figured that the Frost twins would probably win gold and silver medals in table tennis, dominating the competition like Venus and Serena.

In the course of that same conversation, Aimee floated her suspicion that Scott Frost had a little crush on Jill, a possibility Jill had refused to take seriously at the time. Why would Scott have a crush on her? He didn’t even know her, and she wasn’t the kind of girl that guys got crushes on from afar.

There’s a first time for everything, Aimee had told her.

Except when there’s not, Jill had replied.

But now she wondered, thinking about the way Scott had been looking at her, the disappointment in his eyes when she told him she felt like walking, and even the way he’d chortled at her stupid Jackie Chan joke, which meant that he was either very stoned or very well disposed toward her, or both.

Maybe we could party together, he’d said. All four of us.

Maybe we could, she thought.

JILL HEARD the whistle of an approaching train as she entered the Stellar Transport parking lot, home to a vast herd of yellow buses, more than enough to evacuate the entire town. They seemed otherworldly at night, row upon row of hulking beasts, their front ends staring straight ahead, a regiment of identical stupid faces. She hurried past them, eyes darting warily left and right, checking the dark alleys that separated one from the next.

The whistle sounded again, followed by the clanging of alarm bells and a sudden whomp of displaced air as a double-decker commuter train blew by on the eastbound track, a speeding wall of dull steel and luminous glass. For a few deafening seconds, there was nothing else in the world, and then it was gone, the earth trembling in its wake.

Continuing on her way, she rounded the bumper of the last bus and turned left. She didn’t see the bearded man until they were right on top of each other, trapped between the bus on her left and the eight-foot-high chain-link fence on her right. She opened her mouth to scream, but by then she’d realized it wasn’t necessary.

“You scared me,” she said.

The bearded man stared at her. He was a Watcher, short and stocky, dressed in a white lab coat and painter’s pants, and he seemed to be having a medical emergency.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

The man didn’t respond. He was hunched over, hands on his thighs, gulping for air like a fish out of water, making a strangled sound every time he opened his mouth.

“Do you want me to call 911?”

The Watcher shook his head and straightened up. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out an inhaler and brought it to his mouth, pressing the button and sucking hard. He waited a few seconds before exhaling, and then repeated the operation.

The medicine worked fast. By the time he put the inhaler back in his pocket, he was already breathing easier, still panting a bit, but no longer making that horrible noise. He dusted off his pants and took a small step forward. Jill backed up to give him room, flattening herself against the fence so he could squeeze past.

“Have a good night,” she called after him, just to be nice, because so many people weren’t.

KEVIN LEFT the restaurant in a funk, the bag of leftovers bouncing gently against his leg. He hadn’t wanted to take it, but the waiter had insisted, telling him it would be a shame to waste so much good food.

Nora’s house was at least a mile away, so there was no way she could have made it home by now. If he wanted to find her, he could just cruise down Washington Boulevard, keeping his eye out for a lone pedestrian. The hard part would come after that, when he pulled up beside her and lowered the passenger window.

Get in, he’d say. Let me drive you home. It’s the least I can do.

Because why did she deserve that courtesy? She’d left of her own free will, without a word of explanation. If she wanted to walk home in the cold, that was her prerogative. And if she wanted to call him later and apologize — well, that ball was in her court, too.

But what if she didn’t call? What if he waited for hours and the phone never rang? At what point would he lose his nerve and call her, or maybe even drive over to her house, ring the bell until she opened the door? Two A.M.? Four in the morning? Daybreak? The one thing he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep until he’d at least talked to her, gotten some kind of explanation for what had just happened. So maybe the smartest thing was just to go after her right now, have it out as soon as possible, so he didn’t have to spend the rest of the night wondering.

He was so caught up in this quandary that he barely noticed the two Watchers standing by his car, didn’t even realize who they were until he’d already opened the locks with his remote key.

“Hey,” he said, feeling a momentary sense of relief that Nora wasn’t there, that they didn’t have to go through that particular drama just now, the new girlfriend meeting the estranged wife. “You guys okay?”

They didn’t answer, but they didn’t have to, not when it was this cold out. The partner looked hypothermic — she was hugging herself and rocking from side to side, a cigarette stuck in one corner of her mouth like it had been glued in place — but Laurie was gazing at him with a tender, unwavering expression, the kind of look people give you in the funeral home when the deceased is a member of your family and they want to acknowledge your pain.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

There was a manila envelope in Laurie’s hand. She held it out, jabbing it at his chest like it was something he needed to see.

“What is it?”

She gave him a look that said, You know what it is.

“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. “Are you kidding me?”

Her expression didn’t change. She just held out the envelope until he took it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking her vow of silence. The sound of her voice was shocking to him, so strange and familiar at the same time, like the voice of a dead person in a dream. “I wish there was some other way.”

*

JILL SQUEEZED through the hole in the fence and trudged up the gravel embankment, pausing at the top to check for oncoming trains. It was an exhilarating place to be, all alone in that wide-open space, like she had the whole world to herself. The tracks flowed into the distance on either side of her like a river, the rails catching the light of the three-quarter moon, two parallel gleams fading into the darkness.

She balanced on one like a tightrope walker, tiptoeing with her arms outstretched, trying to imagine what would have happened if the Watcher she’d met back there had been her mother. Would they have laughed and hugged each other, amazed to find themselves alone in such an unlikely place? Or would her mother have been angry to find her there, disappointed by the alcohol on her breath, her deplorable lack of judgment?

Well, whose fault is that? Jill thought, hopping off the rail. Nobody’s looking out for me.

She headed down the embankment on the other side, descending toward the service road that ran behind Walgreens, her sneakers slipping on the loose gravel. Then she stopped.

A sound got trapped in her throat.

She knew that the Watchers always traveled in pairs, but the encounter with the bearded man had been so brief and awkward that she hadn’t stopped to wonder where his partner was.

Well, now she knew.

She took a few reluctant steps forward, moving closer to the white-clad figure on the ground. He was lying facedown near a big Dumpster that said GALLUCCI BROS., his arms spread wide as if he were trying to embrace the planet. There was a small pool of liquid near his head, a luminous substance she badly wanted to believe was water.