Although I had rehearsed several clever remarks, the best I could do to break the ice was “We’ve got the same boots.”

Glenna didn’t reply. I had expected a melancholy rush of nostalgia. Instead, I felt the torment of unfinished business, regret without end.

But then, thankfully, Glenna laughed, her own special music, irony always playing around the edges of joy.

She put the box on the receptionist’s desk, then came over and lifted up my Irish-tweed cap. I didn’t spot a wedding ring on her finger, and while I was processing that information, Glenna touched my short gray hair.

“We’re old, Gordon.”

“We’re getting there.”

I can’t say who made the first move, but hugging her was perfectly natural, as if we had seen each other that morning, before Glenna left for the hospital and I returned to my writing, as though over thirty years hadn’t vanished. When her arms came up around me and the side of my face touched hers, memories flashed through my head like a movie being rewound so fast the scenes are reduced to a blur of colors. The smell of her hair, though, that was real, like crisp apples in the fall. My throat constricted; I almost started to cry; and yet, I also had the comforting illusion that my whole adult life was starting again, and everything that had happened had not happened at all. The disturbing sense that I had taken a wrong turn and lived the wrong life was gone.

She stepped back, looking up at me, and I remembered how I used to love the amused spark in her big green eyes—a deep, startling green, closer to jade than emerald.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked, grinning. “You lose your mind or something?”

“Something.”

“Well, that clears it up.”

I had prepared a lengthy answer for her, but what I said was “I wanted to see you.”

“C’mon, Gordon.”

I shrugged. “Do you have to get home?”

“No,” she said, staring at me, her eyes narrowed. I recalled that look. As if she was studying a slide under a microscope.

“Gordon, you all right?”

I nodded, wondering if I still had the heart to tell her my story. “Is there somewhere we can have a drink?”

“In New York City?” Glenna replied, smiling. “Probably.”

“You done for the day?”

She continued studying me. “I’m done. Let me lock up.”

OUTSIDE, IT was snowing again.

“Let’s walk,” Glenna said, slinging her leather briefcase over her shoulder. “I skipped the treadmill today.”

We went up to Broadway and headed downtown. I didn’t know where to begin, and when the silence became awkward, I said, “So you finished your internship and residency.”

“I started right after I saw you the last time.”

“I shouldn’t have taken off like—”

“It’s okay, Gordon. It was my fault, too.”

The snow was falling through the velvety blue evening the way it falls through a dream, slow, steady, the flakes big and bright, as if each one had been cut from a doily by a child’s jubilant hand.