“Wow,” Caddie said. “And I thought I was the one who might be too young for you. I’ll see you around, Brian.”

She walked around the car to the driver’s side. Brian watched as she got in and slammed the door. Caddie started the car, not even bothering to look at him as she pulled away from the curb. When, unable to help herself, she glanced in the rearview mirror, he was still standing there.

She was surprised at how little she felt about him. Ever since the accident she’d been angry at him. She’d even considered going to his house to confront him. Now that she had seen him, she realized she just didn’t care. She was ashamed not of having slept with him but of using him against her father. And her anger, truthfully, was aimed less at Brian than it was at herself for not taking responsibility for her own well-being.

What an asshole, she thought, unsure of whether she meant Brian or herself. Probably it was a little bit of both, she admitted. When it got down to it, there had been screwups all around, and finding someone to blame was too much trouble now. There were bigger, more important, things to think about.

When she got to her father’s house, she found him sitting in the kitchen, drinking orange juice and reading the paper. She set the work she’d brought on the counter. “Rhodes says hi,” she said. “And Angela says that if you dare show up in the office before Thursday, she’ll personally kick your ass.”

Her father laughed. “She’ll have taken over the lab by Friday,” he said.

Caddie sat down and poured herself some orange juice from the carton sitting on the table. She didn’t tell her father that she’d run into Brian. She didn’t know whether he blamed Brian at all for the accident, but it didn’t seem worth bringing up. Instead she said, “Can I ask you something?”

Her father folded the newspaper and laid it aside. “Shoot,” he said.

“Did you leave because you thought you might be gay?”

Her father looked down, and for a moment she thought she had said too much. It was really none of her business, she told herself, and now he was embarrassed. “You don’t have—” she began.

Her father stopped her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I just don’t know where to start.” He tapped the edge of the newspaper with his finger while Caddie waited for him to continue. Again she wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to say anything, but before she could, he started talking.

“When your mother and I got married, my best man was a man named Ronnie Anchors,” he said. “We’d gone to school together. He was my best friend.”

And you were in love with him, Caddie thought. That’s why you left.