Well, you managed to cook up a little stupid jealousy just now, he reminded himself. A few weeks ago, you did a great job feeling greedy about the fish silverware. You’re not that far gone. Pull your shit together and look at the facts. Are you mad at Marta? Did she step on your little toes?

He wasn’t. She didn’t.

Did you catch that she’s having a baby?

He had. And holy shit. The idea of a half-sibling twenty-six years his junior was slightly absurd, but kind of neat. He’d get O’Hara to have another poke around in the hallway, see if they could find a silver cup or rattle, maybe some baby spoons.

See, there’s some genuine enthusiasm. You can feel things just fine. So how do you feel about seeing Astrid again? You’ll be the one stepping off the train in Clayton and she’ll be on the platform waiting.

“With her son.”

We’re back to this?

Kennet raked hands across his scalp. Regulation haircuts were de rigeur again and he didn’t have much to yank on. He tried instead to scratch some clarity into his thick skull.

“Christ, Hook, I wish you were here…”

He heard echoing laughter and footsteps coming down the corridor. He needed to stop muttering. He leaned to stuff the notebook back in his pack and slide it under the bed. He sat back up, then slowly turned his head over his shoulder to find Astrid’s gaze.

“What do you think?” he asked under his breath. “Have I built you up into another kind of dream?”

Her smile retained its ebullient joy but her silver gaze seemed flat and troubled.

I don’t know, she said. I don’t know you anymore.

Kennet put light fingertips on Marta’s letter. He looked at Astrid, thought a moment, then went to find O’Hara.

I Had a Lover

“So,” O’Hara said, after reading the letter.

“So?”

“Astrid’s coming back.”

“So it seems.”

“And she’s not married anymore.”

“I can read.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit on white toast.”

“I don’t,” Kennet said. “Once upon a time, the me of yesterday thought the me of tomorrow, if he survived the war, would catch the next boat to Rio and show up at her house. Tell her husband, ‘We can do this the easy way, or do it the hard way, but we’re doing this.’ Now tomorrow is today, but I’m not who I was and I don’t know who I am. I can’t smell. I can’t taste. I sleepwalk around with a sheet of dirty glass between me and the world and I’m not sure I want to break it.”

“You talk to someone about that?” O’Hara said. “The not smelling and tasting thing, I mean.”