It wasn’t a guess. She knew. It was absolutely clear that she had the real story about why Abelard had withdrawn. You could see it in her eyes. The look that said: I know all the secrets. I couldn’t imagine who might have told her. But that was her gift as a reporter. She could peel secrets off the backs of people—men usually—without their feeling a thing.

I called her the next morning. It was early February. A foot of snow had fallen overnight, and Washington was paralyzed. I offered to shovel her walk, which was an innocent, easy way to come see her. We had learned to be careful since I moved to Washington. There was still too much electricity moving through our circuit; if we met unexpectedly—as had happened at Bob Marcus’s book party—we would crackle and spark. Our nominal dates for the evening would watch uncomfortably. What was this? should they leave? So we had learned to take precautions. It was better to meet during the day. Better to shovel snow.

She lived in a small Federal town house in Georgetown, on Twenty-ninth Street. It was a neat house, a woman’s house: it smelled of clean sheets and flowers and Chinese tea. I shoveled front and back, and then came inside and lit a fire. The living room was cozy, with a love seat and chair near the fireplace. When I finished shoveling, I sat in the love seat in front of the fireplace. She took the chair.

She looked beautiful, as always: straight brown hair that she kept unfashionably long; that delicate face; the long arms pouring tea as gracefully as a geisha. Her skin was tanned; she had recently returned from a brief winter vacation in the Caribbean. As was our custom, I asked nothing about it. She knew something was bothering me—I would never have called otherwise—but she was too cagey to ask me directly.

“I saw you on television last night, talking about Abelard,” I said eventually. “You know why he got out of the race, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered. “He was hospitalized a long time ago for depression. The Mirror was going to break the story. I know all about it. My sources tell me it was your story.”

“Your sources are pretty good,” I said. “Who told you?”

“Don’t ask me that,” she said, wagging a long index finger in my direction. “It’s unprofessional. But it wasn’t hard to find out. All you had to know was that the official version couldn’t possibly be right. Then I just began asking his friends.” She was so good at dissembling, and I understood so little.

“I’m glad you’re so merry. Personally, I feel awful. I hated going to see Abelard and telling him what we had. I didn’t feel like a journalist. I felt like an executioner.”