I was overwhelmed by Glenna’s confession, yet indignant with her for making it. Why tell me now? What purpose did it serve? I wanted to scream at her, and I wanted to lean through the muted gold light and kiss every inch of her face.

I said, “I never trusted enough to feel that way about anyone else.”

Glenna winced, as if I’d pinched her. “It’s my fault—”

“I’m not blaming you. It’s the feeling I didn’t trust—that deep sudden connection, that—”

“Chemistry?” she said, tossing her silver-threaded brown hair back from her shoulders.

“Chemistry makes it sound like it’s only sexual attraction.”

“You weren’t—”

“Of course I was. But if that’s all it was, it would’ve burned out in a month. My connection to you came out of nowhere. As if you stepped out of one of my dreams. It was magic for me the moment we met at Presbyterian, and a lot of the magic was that I felt so safe with you—so sure that the closeness would go on and on. When it ended, I figured I was crazy to believe it had ever existed in the first place. I was like a priest losing his faith.”

Glenna grinned. “So you’re a priest now?”

“You get my drift.”

“Trying to.” She gave me a piercing look—her doctor’s look, contemplating symptoms and treatments. “How would we have worked, Gordon?”

“Can’t say.”

“We wouldn’t have.”

I shrugged.

“I broke up with you, and I was miserable. That doesn’t mean I made the wrong decision. Neither one of us was—what, mature enough?—to really be in love. The right decision doesn’t always feel good.”

“Glenna,” I said, then drank the rest of my martini. It was my third, and on top of the vodka I’d downed at the hotel, it transformed Lally’s Tavern into a revolving restaurant. “Glenna, it hurt so much for me to lose you—guess what? I never did. Somewhere inside me, I just held on.”

I longed to hear the same thing from her. I didn’t. She nodded sympathetically. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

I looked over at the gas flames in the fireplace, and a familiar panic crept over me, with a fury hiding beneath it, like a snake coiled under a rock.

Glenna said, “Every once in a while it crossed my mind to get in touch with you. Eight months ago, I got your address and phone number on Any Who dot-com.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch?”

“Because most normal people wouldn’t.”

“That must be one of those left-handed compliments.”

“I’m not upset you did. But it is kind of nuts—maybe more than kind of. You can’t go backward. I’m sure you know that. So why did you show up at my office?”

“I’m nuttier than you?”

“Obviously,” Glenna said, laughing, and I marveled at her ability to mix so much gaiety and poignance in a single sound. “If you tell me, Gordon, I’ll let you see where I live. Where are you staying?”