I was angry now and amazed how old wounds can bleed like new.

“Gordon?”

I finished my martini. The vodka didn’t help my anger.

“You look ready to leave,” Glenna said.

“You wanna go?”

She sighed. “It was a lovely winter.”

“Absolutely lovely.”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Absolutely lovely. Till you planned your party.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.”

“You didn’t have to try. You had a gift for it.”

She stood up. “I won’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“This,” she said, taking her coat off the chair at the next table. “This evening of—of you getting even.”

On the verge of losing her again, a feeling of dread came over me, and I pictured myself walking back to the Hyatt alone, drowning in the nighttime blue.

“Sit down,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Please. Sit down.”

She stood there, her eyes traveling over my face.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I’m hungry. Let’s split a club sandwich.”

“You’re done?”

“I’m done.”

She draped her coat back over the chair. “I’d also like another cognac.”

I went to the bar. The bartender, a guy about my age with steel-gray hair slicked up like an Elvis impersonator, appeared transfixed by the images on the flat-screen TV up on the wall. Down at the end of the horseshoe, two twentysomethings in jackets and ties sat on stools, talking and drinking beers. The one in the blue pinstripe suit reminded me of Alex, with his chestnut hair and how he sat straight up on the stool, his hands moving as he spoke, as though he were conducting an orchestra.

“Helluva thing,” the bartender said, nodding at the flat screen.

Fox News was running footage of a marine convoy in eastern Afghanistan that had been hit by an IED. A marine was dragging the driver from the cab of the lead truck. The driver’s arms and legs were limp, and his helmet had fallen off, so I could see how young he was, and from the way his head was rolling around on his neck, it was even money that he was dead.

“Yeah,” I said, my stomach contracting into a fiery knot.

I gave him my order and pulled my iPhone out of my pocket; no messages, though I already knew that because I had the phone on vibrate.

As the bartender scooped ice into the cocktail shaker, he said, “Our waitress got snowed in on Long Island. I’ll run the sandwich over to you.”

“I’ll wait,” I said, glancing away from the TV and over to our table.

Glenna was gazing out the window again, watching the falling snow.

Part IV

Past

Chapter 15

THAT WINTER, GLENNA and I lived in glorious harmony. Sympathetic vibration, she called it, tuning forks humming at equivalent frequencies. Her metaphor was a tad scientific for my taste, but I couldn’t dispute its precision. Glenna was different from what she had been in the fall, and consequently, I was different, too. I can’t clarify exactly what motivated the change, but once Glenna lowered her guard enough to tell me about her half brother, our daily activities away from each other became no more than a pause in an unbroken conversation.