She adjusts a lamp on the table. Keeping the glare out of her face. She is about to speak, stops, then starts again:

The months after that … after we found out that we were about to become parents for the first time, those were the trickiest. I had to be so careful … so predatory … had to play things so precisely, always on the edge of being found out … that it was exhausting for me. As I look back on it now … I’m amazed that I could pull it off … how it was even possible … but I did it. I absolutely did. (Beat.) Without raising his suspicion, I had to begin to break things off with Tommy and also help him move on with his life—I’m sure this has sounded very one-sided, as if it was only about me—my pleasure … my desire for a child—but that’s absolutely not true. It just isn’t. I really did want to help Tommy … from that first day he walked into my office, I wanted to help him out of the situation he was in and that is what I did. Perhaps with … a bit more urgency than I would’ve with another student … that’s probably very true … but I just want to make that point because it’s important to me, that you understand that … I was helping Tommy during all this and not just using him. No matter what you or anybody else might say about it … I honestly believed in him and, in my own way … I was saving him. I know that word is … but, yes, I was. I was “saving” him. By this time Tommy and I were … well … basically over. We were … I mean … I would still meet him occasionally, not for sex, not for that anymore, but just to be with him and try to help him understand that I needed to stay where I was—in my marriage, with my husband—as much as I liked being with him, and I did, I’ve told you as much, I did enjoy it, but there was just no way … obviously no way on this earth that what we were doing was going to ever have a life of its own … I mean … come on, that had to be obvious, even to him. This was not going to be some kind of a fairy tale romance or … we were not about to run away together and hope for the best … love conquers all … I mean, please … I teach it but I don’t believe in it: drama. Not that kind of “drama,” anyway. I’m too old for that … even then I was, and that was years ago … I wasn’t about to go on the run with this boy and start over in another town, with our child on the way—that was just NOT gonna happen. No … not ever. I suppose … I mean, yes, it’s possible that in Tommy’s heart … or head … it may’ve felt like there was something that had a chance of happening … people can talk themselves into almost anything, they really can … so I’m not sure what Tommy might have imagined that we actually had going on … what his perfect world for us may’ve been.