She waved to the diploma. “That was only recently put up there, part of my own self-acceptance. My mother says that when I asked her to send it to me, she sat down and cried for an hour. For joy. My mother has her own problems, but I’ve led her a merry chase around a very big circle, the way coyotes do with a dog they’re trying to exhaust and kill. That metaphor, when I finally saw the truth of it, turned me one hundred and eighty degrees as a human being. Loyola Marymount is in Los Angeles, andwhen I was growing up, in La Mirada, we knew all aboutcoyotes.” She clapped her hands. “Thirteen years sober, huh? I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“Not, too—that doesn’t help.

“Maryellen is eager to see you, just as I thought. She was able to get an appointment with her hairdresser this morning, and she drove off in an absolutely euphoric high. She’s still up there.”

“I remember.”

“There’s much more to her now than what you remember, Mr. Devlin.”

“Frank.”

“Thank you. Frank. She has never, ever, experienced the straight and level flight that many people are on naturally, and the rest of us aspire to.”

He shifted in the chair.

“I was told she’d gone to Minneapolis.”

“Minneapolis? Whatever for?”

“To teach. She has a certificate. I think I had to believe it for my own sake. I didn’t want to question. I had to work to close my mind to her for my own sake. To use your phrase, we had been in a tailspin together. It took me a long time to realize that. We didn’t have a relationship based on understanding, respect, and consensus.”

Ann Elizabeth smiled. “You have that now.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m happy for you. You seem like a man who’s taken charge of his life. You seem at peace with yourself.”

“Not what you were told to expect, eh?”

“Maryellen will say anything about anybody, anytime, anywhere, you know that. Are you at peace with yourself?”

“Yes. But now this—what you’ve been reading about in the papers.”

“Accept the things you cannot change.”

“I can change it,” he said. “I’m not lying to myself. I can. It’s why I’m here.”

“I’m not playing games with you, Frank. This is serious. I want to feel that you’re not here to test yourself, no matter what you may think about Mafia dons and your life being in danger. The way your relationship with Maryellen ended left a lot of questions unanswered. Are you getting this? The way she tells it, whether you like it or not, Maryellen Brennan was the great passion of your life.”