Hildegard walked away, then she turned and waved, calling out good-bye, and I waved to her and wished her luck and listened to the wooden clip-clop of her clogs receding in the night until all I heard was the hum of the traffic around me.

Part VII

Present: New York

Chapter 31

I HAD THOUGHT GLENNA was kidding right up until the Metro-North train stopped in Spuyten Duyvil.

“You live here?” I asked, after we had stepped out into the glow of the gooseneck lamps on the station platform.

“I do.”

We went into the skyway above the tracks, then down the steps and outside, where the snow had started up again and moonlight fell across the black water of the creek like bars of silver.

Glenna said, “Right before I finished med school, the house came on the market, and my dad bought it as an investment. He rented it out and held on to it until he died. I was never wild about the city, and as I got ready to sell the apartment for David’s boys, I bought the house from my mother, renovated it, and moved in.”

The road had been plowed, and as we went past the parked cars buried in the snow, I said, “Is it weird?”

“Not at all. It’s comforting.”

“Didn’t you just tell me you can’t go backward?”

“With people. Not real estate.”

The road curved up through the woods. Glenna was a step ahead of me, and as we passed between patches of moonlight and darkness, it seemed as though we were literally treading through time—from what lay ahead of us to what was gone.

I said, “You never told me how it ended with you and Hildi.”

“I suppose I realized that whatever my problems were, I wouldn’t fix them by crossing the street. After Hildi came back to the apartment, we talked, and she went to Westport, and I packed up and left. I was at my parents’ for a month, which was enough to convince me to find an apartment and start my internship.”

Glenna opened the iron gate, but before going up the steps, she said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to say all night.”

New pole lights topped with beveled glass had been installed on either side of the gate, and they were bright enough for me to spot the angry tightness in her jaw.

“When I got your letter from Vietnam, I was relieved we’d broken up. I didn’t want to live every day being afraid you might die. I didn’t want to carry that heaviness in my heart.” Glenna paused. “But I—I still loved you. And every Monday, when I was in California, I’d open up the San Francisco Examiner and read the names of the boys who were killed that week. I’d get nauseous reading the list, and I’d feel such joy when your name wasn’t there. I did that every week for a year.”