“My poor dear, there you are.” She kissed his cheeks and hugged him, and he breathed in the scent of her Chanel. He didn’t understand what she was doing there. “I’m a sorceress,” she said. She’d paid the Bishops a little visit that morning, she explained, and convinced them to drop the charges. They’d called the station before she came over. Didn’t he remember? They’d been old friends of her mother’s. They’d been enchanted with Clara when she was a little girl. “Actually, I groveled,” she said. “I’ll probably hear it from Mother.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say nothing,” she said. “I feel like I owe you one.”

He didn’t ask what for. He collected his wallet from the officer at the front desk, and just like that, he was free to go.

It was a bright fall day. Leaves skittered along the sidewalk. Clara took his elbow and they started down Washington Street. He was free, he thought. All hope wasn’t lost. She asked if he was hungry, but he only wanted to get back to the cottage. He asked if she’d seen Effie, and she gave him a sympathetic look, and shook her head. “Maybe she’s at the house,” she said. “I thought of looking in, but I have a feeling she doesn’t want to see me.” She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his. “Don’t worry, dear. I bet she just went to a hotel to sleep it off. She’s a devoted girl. You’re both so young, you know.”

He nodded. They walked on, and turned right onto Madison Avenue.

Max and Alma were gone, she said. They’d left first thing that morning. “There was quite a scene last night, when Alma came back. Max wanted to kill you.”

He stopped, and let go of her hand. “He did?”

“You’re surprised? Alma was in pieces, you know. I don’t know what you did to her, darling, but she was inconsolable.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Believe what you want. I’m only telling you what happened.”

They walked on. He didn’t know what to think about anything.

“Anyway, he wanted to beat you to death, but Alma begged him to leave it alone, for what it’s worth. She said you were in the doghouse already.”

“She made sure of that,” he said.

“She said she just wanted to leave, and Max said yes, it was about time they went away—and so they’re gone. Just like that: gone, gone. Like always, everything comes to exactly nothing.”

They came out of a bend in the street and the sea loomed ahead, sparkling, electric blue. The sight of it pained him. He wished he and Effie had gone, like Effie had wanted to in the beginning, before they’d ever met any of these people.