She had never mentioned a son, and there were no pictures in the house, of a husband or anyone else. Only landscape portraits and a variety of mirrors and clocks. “I didn’t know you had a son,” Cliff said.

“That’s his room across from yours. I keep it locked. But it’s there for him when he visits.” Her mouth turned down in a way that suggested to Cliff that her son did not often visit. “It wasn’t as bad as you’d think. Sometimes people, especially people who love one another, need space so that they can miss each other. A certain degree of loneliness can be critical to a marriage.”

Cliff wanted to ask what had happened to her husband but was worried she might cry and that he would be expected to consol her. He stared into his coffee and tried not to think of Jill, which was, in the end, just another way to think of her. He had work in the afternoon and then a dinner date with a girl named Sandy who was a line cook at the restaurant. Dating coworkers was strictly forbidden, but Cliff felt the misdemeanor was owed to him. He saw it as a chance not for romance but as a way to get out and do something in this town, which was a sleepy, uninviting place if you weren’t affiliated with the university. He also had a secret hope that he would bump into Jill. Sandy was a junior in the school’s journalism program and was bound to have large circles of friends. He was taking her to dinner and a show at a bar downtown, a bar that Jill had once mentioned to him.

“When should I expect you home tonight?” Heidi asked.

Cliff stood and placed his cup in the sink, not wanting to meet her gaze. He suspected she wanted to make him dinner.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Probably late.”

Work was fine and the date was fine. Sandy was, in every way, average, if not a touch irritating. All through dinner, she kept asking Cliff if she had food in her teeth. He thought of Jill, of the endearing gap between her front teeth. Later that night, when he noticed a piece of spinach pasted to the surface of Sandy’s front tooth, he said nothing.

The only interesting part of the date was during the walk to the bar, when Sandy tripped over a stone in the middle of the sidewalk. The stone was situated on top of a metal manhole cover, along with four other rocks of different sizes and shapes. “God damn these things,” Sandy said, rubbing her toe. When Cliff asked what they were, she explained that every Sunday for the past few months, a woman had gone around placing exactly five stones on every manhole cover in the downtown area. He’d wanted her to explain more, for this little story to open up a trap door that would lead to other interesting stories about the town and the people in it, but Sandy said this was all she knew—how was anybody supposed to know why a crazy lady did crazy things?—and requested that they stop at a drug store so she could put antibacterial ointment on her big toe, which had begun to bleed, but only slightly.