“Don’t I get some credit for discretion?”

Coldly: “You had no right. And you know it.”

I stared at him. “I had no right? What about you? Would your wife be interested to know what just went on over there?”

Antonio’s face was rigid. “You play games with me, Eve.” He started to speak again and stopped himself, scanning the pavement up and down Cheapside. “Should we be talking about this now? Here?”

“When else will we talk about it?” I tried to sound challenging. “Do you think it was easy? I thought I would feel connected to your boys through Maddy. I did in a way. But they’re your kids. They don’t have anything to do with her. Not really.”

“No,” said Antonio.

“At first I thought—There’s a piece of Maddy! She’s not completely gone! She’s still walking around, just in a different form.”

His eyes were glistening under the station lights.

“But she’s not,” I said.

“No,” he said. “She’s not.”

“The older one takes after you. The younger one is more like Maddy, in temperament, I mean. You need to watch out for him. Don’t assume he’s okay just because he doesn’t give you any trouble.”

“I told Maddy about the boys,” he said tersely. “She asked me about them.”

“And you wrote to her behind my back. And you did meet me. Not just once.” For your own complicated reasons, I thought, you did offer yourself to me. I could only hope his reasons were complicated. “Of course she would have asked about your boys. She would have been desperately interested in them.”

“I guess so.”

“But you know what would have been the main thing, for Maddy?”

“What?”

“She knew you loved them more than you loved her.”

There was nothing to say to that, and Antonio said nothing. The passengers parted and flowed around us. Robin stepped into my mind, as if he could see us standing at the top of the station stairs, not knowing how to end this.

Antonio’s hands were back in his pockets. My tone had reassured him I was not going to tear his family apart. He looked cold and forlorn. I felt sorry for him. I no longer wanted to know why he was with me, or what mix of vanity, curiosity, marital stasis, lost youth, true love, or the glamour of tragedy had been behind his passion in the Tanks. I had no urge to explain what he meant to me. Let him tell himself what he wanted about our encounter. I would keep to myself what I knew, or refused to know, or barely knew about it. We had met, and we had done nothing irreversible.