Where had Robin gone? He was behind my chair, reaching his arms down the front of my body, casual as a parent preparing to pick up a child, careful not to touch anything personal. I knew his tactics. Drawing the space around an object renders the object more acutely. I turned to meet his lips, bare and warm in their furry surround, and upstairs I allowed myself to be undressed, caressed, and cajoled into hunger of the kind that makes its own decisions, that kicks things off and kicks things away. We had not been together long enough for boredom to set in—tragedy had set in—and now it was Robin I wanted, our particular history and our private games; but what was happening was impossible to separate from Antonio. The force of that encounter had been trapped in me for days. It had to go somewhere.

We lay together, Robin’s rib cage moving against mine. In an old film we would both be smoking. I kissed his hand and carefully replaced it on his chest. Pleasure held dangers, new ones all the time.

“What are you thinking?”

He gave me a postcoital smile. “I’m thinking how much I’ve missed you.” He eased his arm free and sat on the bed’s edge, looking down at me, his face in shadow. “I don’t mean when you were in London.”

Watching his sinewy back and pale flanks recede to the bathroom, I glimpsed the tail end of an idea just before it slid out of sight.

37

You’d think a homecoming like that would have cheered me up. The next day Robin sought me out with tender high spirits, backing off when he saw what a terrible mood I was in. I unpacked, did three loads of laundry, made a pointless trip to the drugstore to get out of the house, and, when questioned, blamed it on jet lag. An hour and a half was taken up by a visit from my parents. No one asked me about Antonio. In our family, delicate subjects were only broached one-on-one. After they left, Robin and I drove to get a take-out pizza and ate it at the dining room table from the box.

“Feeling any better?” asked Robin hopefully. “Have you landed?”

“Now I have to turn around and pack for the lake. Do you think we could invite Alison up?”

He folded the box in half. “Unless you want it to be just us?”

“I felt bad she had to go back before me. She doesn’t have much of a family life. Mom and Dad won’t mind.”

“Is it part of the transition?” he said, studying me across the table. “Settling back?”

I shrugged. “Maddy loved Christmas.”

“I know.”