“You’ve never let this go. I prayed and prayed that somehow you’d let this go. That you’d given up wondering, that the anger and impatience I’ve seen grow in you all these years had nothing to do with her not coming . . . nothing to do with her at all, but that it was all about what you went through there, in jail. Twenty-five years later I’d actually convinced myself this was true. When I figured out who she was, I thought it was a test from God. I thought it was a sign to prove to us that it was over, that we’d survived her memory, her perfect almighty memory.”

Nick lurched toward her to stop her words, her pain. She held up her hand and he remained still as she continued. “I fell in love with you in Costa Rica, and have never stopped—not once—loving you the same way, and you still want to know about her, about what she thought then.” Spittle landed on her lip. “I loved you even when you came out of jail an angrier man. I loved you then, love you now.”

She wiped below her eyes with a rapid movement, as if the tears betrayed her in the same way he did.

“When you asked her if she received the telegrams, did you tell her everything? About jail, the accident?”

“Yes.”

“I know you didn’t tell her everything. You wouldn’t want her to know all of it.”

“Eliza . . . stop.”

“You asked her. You actually asked her about the telegrams.”

“Yes.” His voice seemed to come from the other side of the room, the other side of his life.

“Haven’t you had a good enough life to stop wondering? But you know, this is a betrayal I deserve.” Eliza stomped toward the door.

“What do you mean?” he called after her.

She didn’t answer as her dress swished in silver folds down the hallway. He thought of Carol Anne and the skirt she wore to the formal when he met Amy again; every thought these days was a link in a chain that ended with Amy. There was nothing he could do to stop returning to her—not that he tried very hard.

He heard a slam, wood against wood. He jumped up and ran to the hall, where muffled rap music emanated from Alex’s room. The attic ladder fell from the gaped opening of the attic and landed on the cream carpet; pink insulation tumbled out to mar the vacuumed surface.

“What the hell are you doing?” He grabbed the end of Eliza’s dress as she stepped onto the ladder.

“Let go of me. I’m going to finally end this wondering of yours, this endless fascination with what ever happened to the adorable Amy.”

“Stop.” All of a sudden he didn’t want to know; having Amy around right now was enough.