“That will be your mother.” Al Bolitar rose gingerly. Myron stood too. “Don’t tell her about tonight. I don’t want her worrying.”

“Okay. Hey, Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Nice tackle out there.”

Dad tried not to smile. Myron looked at the aging face. He had that overwhelming feeling, the melancholy one he got when he realized that his parents were getting older. He wanted to say more, wanted to thank him, but he knew that his father knew all that and that any additional discussion on the subject would be unseemly or superfluous. Let the moment alone. Let it breathe.

Chapter 19

19

At two thirty A.M., Myron headed upstairs to that same childhood bedroom he’d shared with Brad, the one that still had the Tot Finder sticker on the window, and flipped on the computer.

He logged on to Skype. The screen opened on Terese’s face, and as always, he felt the heady rush and, yep, the lightness in his chest.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said.

Terese smiled. “May I speak frankly?”

“Please.”

“You are the sexiest man I’ve ever known, and right now, just looking at you is driving me up a wall.”

Myron sat up a little taller. Talk about the perfect medicine. “I’m trying very hard not to preen,” he said. “And I’m not even sure what preening is.”

“May I continue to be frank?” she asked.

“Please.”

“I would be willing to try, uh, something via video, but I don’t quite get it, do you?”

“I confess I don’t.”

“Does that make us old-fashioned? I don’t get computer sex or phone sex or any of that.”

“I tried phone sex once,” Myron said.

“And?”

“And I never felt so self-conscious in my life. I started laughing at a particularly inopportune stage.”

“Okay, so we’re in agreement.”

“Yep.”

“You’re not just saying that? Because, you know, I mean, I know we’re far apart—”

“I’m not just saying that.”

“Good,” Terese said. “So what’s going on over there?”

“How much time do you have?” Myron asked.

“Maybe another twenty minutes.”

“How about we spend ten of it just talking like this and then I’ll tell you?”

Even through a computer monitor, Terese looked at him as though he were the only man in the world. Everything vanished. There was just the two of them. “That bad?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Okay, handsome. You lead, I will follow.”

But that didn’t work. He told her right away about Suzze. When he finished, Terese said, “So what are you going to do?”

“I want to chuck it all. I’m just so tired.”

She nodded.

“I want to come back to Angola. I want to marry you and just stay there.”

“I want that too,” she said.

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“Not really, no,” Terese said. “Nothing would make me happier. I want to be with you more than you could ever know.”

“But?”