I watch her bare legs pumping, her calf muscles bunching as she picks up speed, cutting across the street, threading through the same gate I used earlier. I remember being that age when the best and worst was before me, and I wanted to know everything up front as if my fate could be negotiated. Who would I be with and what would I become? Where would I live and would I make a difference to anyone? I speculated, and at times tried to force my life in the direction I thought it should go. I wouldn’t do that now.

I watch the young woman’s retreating figure getting smaller, more distant and remote as she pedals through the Yard, between the sprawling brick Pusey and Lamont libraries. I don’t understand why anyone would want to know the future. I wonder if she does, and the conservative answer is probably. But the more likely one is absolutely. Whereas I don’t anymore.

“What did Marino want?” Benton lightly, affectionately touches my back as we follow the sidewalk.

Up ahead on our left is the split-rail paling, and set far back is the brick-and-white-trimmed neo-Georgian building, two stories with a glass-domed conservatory. The four tall chimneys rise proudly and symmetrically from different corners, and ten dormers stand sentry along the slate hipped roof.

THE LONG WALKWAY OF dark red pavers winds through rockery and ornamental shrubs. The sun has dipped behind buildings, and the oppressive air is like a steam room that’s slowly cooling.

Benton has taken off his suit jacket, and it’s neatly folded over his arm as we walk past the bright pink bottlebrushes of summer sweet, purple mountain laurel, and white and blue hydrangeas. None of it stirs in the breathless air, and only a scattering of dark green leaves shows the slightest blush of red. The longer it’s hot and parched, the more unlikely it is that there will be much in the way of fall colors this year.

As Benton and I talk, I do the best I can to answer his questions about Marino’s intentions, explaining he was emphatic that he didn’t want me out walking by myself. But I don’t think it’s his only agenda. I have the distinct impression that Benton doesn’t either.

“At any rate,” I continue telling the story, “he was out and about all the while he was on the phone, basically bird-dogging me while he pretended he wasn’t. Then he drove me the last fifty feet, and that’s where you found me a few minutes ago.”

“The last fifty feet?” Benton repeats.

“It’s what he mandated. I was to get into his car and he would drive me the last fifty feet. Specifically the last damn fifty feet.”