She took a long, slow swallow of her wine and looked out at the river. A barge slid by exuding a long black cloud of smoke. A couple strolled by, leaning on each other’s shoulders and murmuring. Amy stared at them, tucked her hair behind her ears, twisted it behind her head; it all sprang loose before she even rested her hands at her sides.

She spoke without looking at him. “I was miserable. He wasn’t. I was on an emotional roller coaster. He was stable. I was tired. He was alive, funny, awake.”

“So you used him.”

Her head whipped around. “That is not fair. You’re not giving Phil credit for who and what he is to me. He took—he takes such good care of me. He loves me.”

“Yeah, you already said he takes care of you. I didn’t realize you needed someone to take care of you. Was it that easy, in a year, to fall in love again?”

“Do not do that—act like I left you and fell in love. I thought you were gone, really gone. I thought you’d left me. Until my parents died, it was the most horrible thing that I’d ever been through—thinking I’d been abandoned. And Phil wasn’t the most horrible anything. He was kind.”

“And simple.”

“Don’t confuse simple with kind.” Her lips were a tight thin line.

“I’m sorry.” The warmth of the wine filled his chest, so he could tolerate Amy’s confession of love for another man.

“Nick, there really is no reason to rehash this. To—”

“I want to know. I want to fill in all those blank spaces where I imagined what you were doing.”

“And you . . . what you were doing?”

“I was in jail, Amy.”

“No, after that. You married Eliza. You chose that. I wasn’t married yet.”

“I was so livid, Amy.” He slammed his glass on the table. Red wine splashed over the rim. “I thought you ignored my telegrams, ran off with some new guy. I was not gonna come flying back to the States to have you tell me in person what a schmuck I was, how I screwed up by killing someone, how you were in love with someone else.”

“So there you go. You found your comfort in Eliza. You married her.”

“She did so much . . .”

Amy held up her hand, swallowed the remainder of her wine. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Do you want to get something to eat? Oysters?”

“No, I’m really not hungry now. I need to go back to the dorm. I have an early field trip . . . papers to grade. It’s getting late.”

“Amy, I’m going to try to find the lawyer . . . ask him why he never sent the telegrams . . . never got through to you.”

“Don’t go there. It won’t make any difference.”