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  “Oh,” Willa said, “I always think it’s a good sign when a man likes cats. It shows he doesn’t feel the need to be in constant control of things.”

  “Well, I certainly have no illusion that I’m in control of Robert,” Ben said amiably. He turned to let the cat pour from his hands like a liquid and stalk off into the interior of the house.

  “Anyhow, this gives me a chance to say goodbye,” Willa told him. “I’m going home tomorrow.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “So soon!” he said.

  “I think Denise has had enough of me.”

  “Oh, I can’t believe that’s the case.”

  “No,” she said, “take my word for it: we need to get on with our separate lives.”

  “Well, it was awfully nice of you to come all this way to take care of her,” he said.

  The kindness in his voice made her feel almost teary. “I don’t think it counts as ‘nice,’ ” she told him, “when it was mostly for my own benefit. I was sort of looking around at the time wondering what to do with myself, to tell the truth.”

  “Oh, it still counts,” he said. Then he said, “Darn. I had this devious scheme in mind: you were going to buy Lucinda Minton’s house and come help out with our immigrants.”

  “That would have been fun,” she said.

  “Why, we’ve even got some Syrians!” he told her.

  He sounded as artlessly boastful as a schoolboy; it made her smile. “You do?” she asked.

  “They seem to have trouble with the P sound.”

  “The P sound,” she repeated, intrigued. “Is that a fact.” But then she caught herself. “Well, maybe in my next life,” she said. “So, goodbye, I guess,” and she held out her hand.

  He took it and asked, “How are you getting to the airport?”

  Airplane, sniffing around Ben’s sneakers, pricked up his ears and looked at him, perhaps fancying he’d heard his own name. “I’m going to arrange for a cab,” Willa said.

  “Let me drive you, why don’t you.”

  “Oh, thanks, but you wouldn’t believe how early I have to leave,” she said.

  “How early?”

  “Um, four forty-five or so? I’m kind of a nervous Nellie about catching planes.”

  “All the better,” he said. “I can get back in time for my patients.”

  “Well…”

  “It’s a deal,” he told her. “See you then,” and he clicked his tongue at Airplane and turned to go into his house.

  When Willa got back to Denise’s, Cheryl was nowhere in sight and Denise had moved to the couch and was leafing through a magazine. A half-empty glass of wine sat on the coffee table in front of her. “Here’s Airplane, safe and sound!” Willa told her, and Denise said, “Hmm? Oh, thanks,” and turned a page.

  Willa climbed the stairs to her room, feeling bruised around the heart.

  There was a light shining under Cheryl’s door, and so she crossed the hall and knocked softly. “Cheryl?” she whispered.

  She heard Cheryl’s feet thudding to the floor, and a moment later Cheryl opened her door. She was in her pajamas but she hadn’t gotten into bed yet; her pillow was still propped upright against her headboard.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye,” Willa told her. “You won’t be awake yet when I leave for the airport.”

  Instead of answering, Cheryl flung her arms around Willa’s waist and pressed her face against her. “She didn’t…” she said, and then something unintelligible, her breath warming Willa’s midriff.

  “What, honey?”

  Cheryl drew back to look up at her. “She didn’t mean it, that you were super-whatever.”

  “Oh, well,” Willa said, “even if she did, it’s all right.”

  “Really she didn’t. She’s going to get over this in, like, just a day or two; you’ll see. Did you notice she’s not telling the police?”

  Willa hadn’t stopped to think about that, but it seemed in keeping with Denise’s lackadaisical attitude—her tendency to shrug off events like Amstel Light pregnancies and truncated college careers. She told Cheryl, “Well, good. I guess Erland can stop worrying.”

  Then she kissed the top of Cheryl’s head and said, “Bye, honey. I’ll miss you. Take good care of my cactus for me, will you?”

  “What do I have to do for it?” Cheryl asked.

  “Just water it from time to time, but not too much. It can stand a lot, remember; it doesn’t need to be pampered.”

  “Then will you come back in a while to see how it’s doing?”

  “Of course,” Willa said. Because she didn’t want to admit she had no intention of coming back.

  * * *

  —

  She had planned to phone Sean before she went to bed, just to say she was leaving and tell him she’d enjoyed meeting Elissa. But why, really? Considering that he hadn’t been in touch since their dinner, she doubted that he would much care if she was leaving. And in fact she had not enjoyed meeting Elissa, not really.

  These were ungracious thoughts, she knew, and she tamped them down almost immediately. But even so, she didn’t call him. Nor did she try calling Peter again. He had her message by now; let him come to the airport or not, as he wished. She was perfectly capable of finding her own way home.

  She set the clock on her bureau to wake her at 4:15. It wouldn’t take her more than half an hour to dress, and she would grab coffee once she got to the airport. She changed into her nightgown and packed what she’d been wearing; she washed her face and brushed her teeth; she turned off the light and slid into bed and gratefully closed her eyes.

  It had been a very, very long day.

  12

  Willa had no idea whether Ben was the punctual type. He might arrive late, or he might not show up at all. But at 4:45 exactly, just as she was tiptoeing downstairs with her suitcase, she heard a muffled knock. She set her suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. “Good morning,” she murmured, and Ben growled “Morning” on a whiff of peppermint toothpaste.

  It was lighter outside than inside—a flat, opaque gray-white that made him a featureless outline, his expression unreadable. “Is this all you’ve got?” he asked, stepping in for her suitcase.

  Before she could answer, a stirring sound came from the living room. The two of them turned to see a column of white approaching: Denise, wrapped in a sheet. Nothing showed of her except the oval of her face, but she must have been wearing her day clothes because her footsteps made that boot-shoe-boot sound on the floorboards. Behind her came the click of Airplane’s toenails. “Hey,” she said to Ben. Her voice was a little bit hoarse.

  “Well, hey there,” he said.

  She rotated toward Willa—all of a piece, imposingly. “Listen,” she said, “you don’t have to leave on my account.”

  Willa said, “Well, it’s time, really. I should let you have the house to yourselves again.”

  “Oh, why do you have to take everything so personally?” Denise asked her. “Here I thought we were doing great! I even had this plan in mind where you’d go on living in the guest room forever. I mean, I know I flew off the handle, kind of, but look at my side of it! You and Cheryl all lovey-dovey, with your private secrets; I hate when someone keeps secrets from me! Sneaking around behind my back, whispering on the sly, let’s-keep-this-from-Denise-shall-we…I just hate it! For me of all people, after what Sean did! That was hurtful, Willa.”

  How did it happen, Willa wondered, that people apologizing for their anger so often got angry all over again? She said, “Well, I’m sorry, Denise. I didn’t mean to be hurtful. I hope you can forgive me.”

  She stepped closer and gave Denise a hug, but Denise made no move to hug her back. Although maybe that was only because she was swathed in her sheet. Then Willa bent to lay her cheek on the top of Airplane’s head, which smelled l
ike a well-worn sweater. He made a small whining sound that she chose to read as regretful. Reluctantly, she straightened. “Ready to go?” she asked Ben.

  He hesitated, but finally he nodded and stood back to let her pass through the door. “So long, Denise,” he said. “I’ll check on you later, if I may.”

  She was silent. She must have stayed there looking after them, though, because Willa didn’t hear the door close behind them as she and Ben walked toward the street.

  His little Corolla stood at the curb, its headlights glowing and the engine running. Above the hum of the motor Willa heard a few sleepy-sounding birds chirping in the trees, but otherwise the neighborhood was silent. No windows were lit, no cars passed. She felt she would be disturbing the peace if she so much as whispered.

  Ben put her suitcase in the trunk while she slid into the passenger seat. His car had the musty smell of old newspapers, and a Post-it reading “wiper fluid” was plastered to the dashboard. When he settled behind the wheel she saw by the light from the ceiling bulb that he hadn’t shaved yet; his whiskers made tiny white sparks across his weathered cheeks. He wore one of his plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled, so that he looked more like a farmer than a doctor.

  “You and Cheryl been keeping secrets from Denise?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

  Till now Willa had been impressed with his forbearance, but naturally he would be wondering. “Just about the shooting,” she said. “It turns out it was an accident, but Cheryl didn’t want to tattle.”

  Ben snorted. “Of course it was an accident,” he said. “No one’s going to shoot a gal like Denise on purpose.”

  He didn’t ask whose accident, to Willa’s relief.

  They crept past Callie’s house, and then Hal’s. So many people on this street sleeping alone and then waking alone, rising to go about their solitary routines. Willa already missed them. She pictured Callie tripping off to work on her tiny, brightly shod feet, a go-cup of coffee clutched in one plump hand, and Hal slouching toward Denise’s house on the off chance that today was the day she would finally agree to go out with him. And Denise herself making one of her emphatic declarations that ended with a “So…yeah!” like a stamp of self-approval.

  “Now, you’re sure you want to do this,” Ben said, as if he could read Willa’s mind.

  But she said, “Yes, I’m sure.”

  They took a right onto Reuben Road. Here too the houses were dark and the porches were empty. Ben’s radio had been playing at a very low volume—a news program—but now he reached over and switched it off.

  Willa took her boarding pass from her purse. For some reason, Denise’s printer had made a horizontal white scratch through every tenth line or so. One of the scratches ran smack across the bar code, and this worried her. (She could always find something to worry about when she was taking a trip.) She made herself look out the window again because she didn’t want to get carsick; they had left the residential streets behind and were speeding down the Jones Falls Expressway. Then they took an exit into the downtown area, where people were already stirring. Delivery men unloaded vegetable crates from their double-parked trucks; a woman cranked open a grate in front of a café; a man in a red apron hawked newspapers on a median strip.

  “You can always change your mind,” Ben said, as if no time had passed since they had last spoken. “I could turn around right now and take you back.”

  Willa smiled. She said, “Oh, well, Denise might have other ideas about that.”

  “Denise would love it,” he said.

  “Are you kidding? She just told me I was stealing her daughter.”

  “She most certainly did not tell you that,” he said.

  “In a way she did.”

  “I was there,” he said. “Remember? She objected to your keeping the truth from her, that was all.”

  “I was sneaking around, she said. I was whispering behind her back.”

  “Well, choose to believe what you like,” he said.

  “I’m not choosing.”

  “You can creep away, all meek and wronged, or you can say, ‘You’re right, Denise. I should have been more forthcoming, and I promise this won’t happen again.’ ”

  “I am not meek,” Willa said stiffly. “I am not wronged.”

  “Okay. Have it your way.”

  They left the city behind. The sky was growing lighter now above a wasteland of widely spaced warehouses and storage tanks and electrical pylons. Willa kept turning her head to watch different scenes slide past, as if that would explain her failure to keep up the conversation.

  “My wife used to say that her idea of hell would be marrying Gandhi,” Ben said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Think about it: Gandhi was always the good one. Everyone else looked so rude and loud and self-centered by comparison.”

  Willa sat considering that. They overtook a stretch limousine with windows so darkly tinted that it might have been unoccupied.

  “I believe my mother may have married Gandhi,” she said finally.

  Ben flicked a glance at her.

  “My father was so mild-mannered that he thought it was impolite to pick up a telephone in mid-ring,” she said. “He always allowed a ring to finish before he answered.”

  “Ha,” Ben said.

  “It was marry such a person or be such a person, I used to figure,” she said.

  “You might want to rethink that,” Ben told her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those aren’t your only two choices, you know.”

  “Well, it can seem that way when you’re eleven,” she said.

  “Sure, when you’re eleven.”

  “Anyhow,” Willa said. She put her boarding pass back in her purse.

  They were far out in the country now, and the horizon was turning pink. The silence in the car began to feel wrong, like the silence after a quarrel, but Willa couldn’t think how to break it. Whatever subject she considered—the scenery or the weather or the traffic—seemed contrived. Ben may have felt the same way, because when they reached the airport turnoff he said, “So! Getting close,” as if he were relieved he’d soon be done with her, and he clicked his blinker to veer left. They began to see signs for long-term parking lots and motels and car-rental firms. “Which airline?” he asked.

  He sounded like any random shuttle driver, and she answered him as crisply as any random passenger.

  They passed the first terminal, where glaring overhead lights made them both wince. They passed a line of stopped cars. People were unloading baggage from their trunks, buses were wheezing to a stop behind other buses, taxicabs were honking, and everybody seemed rushed and frantic and startlingly wide awake.

  They drew up behind a station wagon where a woman was making kissy lips toward the grid of a pet crate that her husband had just hoisted from the rear. “Don’t bother getting out,” Willa told Ben. “Just pop your trunk.” But he opened his door as if she hadn’t spoken, and so she opened hers and stepped into the tumult.

  He took her suitcase from the trunk and set it on end and pulled the handle up. She said, “Thank you, Ben. I appreciate the ride.”

  His shoes were high-top black sneakers such as a schoolboy would wear, she noticed now. They made her remember how much she liked him. She stepped forward to give him a hug, but he was already holding out his hand. “So long, Willa,” he said.

  She said, “Goodbye, Ben,” and they shook hands, but then he went on gripping hers. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always meant to tell you that I like the way you look at people.”

  “The way I…?”

  “Like when you’re watching Cheryl’s face while she’s talking. You know? The corners of your mouth twitch as if you’re trying not to smile. Or Denise says something outrageous and you just stare at her all wide-eyed and innocent. Or you se
nd Sir Joe this mocking little tease of a glance when he thinks he’s being suave.”

  Willa felt a twinge of disappointment. It took her a moment to understand why: she had fancied, for an instant, that he’d been going to say he liked the way she looked, period.

  “So. Anyhow,” Ben said. “Okay.” And then he dropped her hand as abruptly as if he were throwing it away. He wheeled around and plunged toward his car, leaving Willa there on the pavement.

  She should have told him that she liked the way he looked at people, too.

  * * *

  —

  The security line was long and zigzagging, but it moved quickly. As she was nearing the scanner, though, everything came to a halt behind a man who seemed never to have flown before. He had to be told to take his shoes off, take his belt off, take his laptop from his bag, and every new instruction caught him completely by surprise. Then, wouldn’t you know, he set off the alarm when he walked through the X-ray booth, and he had to return and empty his pockets of coins and keys and Rolaids.

  Peter would have muttered something underneath his breath, and Willa would have had to mollify him with a secret, sympathetic smile.

  Her gate lay at the end of a high-gloss corridor that opened out finally into banks of waiting areas. Occasionally she passed lone passengers gazing at their phones among a sea of empty seats, or janitors listlessly pushing wheeled bins, but it didn’t seem to be a busy time of day for this particular terminal. And her own waiting area, when she reached it, was sparsely populated, although that may just have been because she was so early. She sat down in a chair that had several empty chairs around it, and then she took her phone from her purse. She was thinking she would send an e-mail to Cheryl—just a note for her to wake up to later, something casual and affectionate.

  But when her screen came on, she saw she had missed a call. Peter’s, she saw. He had phoned at 8:40 last night, when she must have been walking Airplane. She was annoyed with herself for not thinking to check. He’d left a message, though. She pressed Play and raised the phone to her ear.