She choked on the coming tears. “I’m so sorry. I can’t explain it. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t know where I was, who I was. I don’t know how to tell you. . . . I don’t know how to make it up. I don’t know . . .” The old feeling—the one from her life before she was an adulteress—the feeling that she had to rush out the words, finish quickly or he wouldn’t hear her, overwhelmed her.

Phil turned away from her and started to leave the room. She wanted to scream, Listen to me. Just listen to me. But she didn’t. She couldn’t say it before—and didn’t deserve to say it now.

He turned back to her. She didn’t recognize his set, hard face.

“Listen, Amy. I told the kids and anyone who asked that you went to Oystertip for research, got confused and lost, then headed the wrong way in the marsh.”

“Why? Why did you protect me like that?” She dropped her head back down.

“I wasn’t protecting you. The truth is yours to tell if you want.”

“You were protecting me.”

“I was protecting me . . . the kids.”

“Same thing.”

He sighed. “Amy, the doc said you still need a lot of rest. I’ll take Molly to tennis this afternoon. Go back to bed. I’ll be in to check on you.”

“I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Then read, rest. I have to go to work. I have to . . . leave.”

“Of course you do.” She sank into herself, leaned back on the pillows. Anger prodded her for recognition, but it was his turn to be angry—she had nothing to rage at; he was the offended one.

He left the room without kissing her, without touching her. She lay down on top of the unpacked pile of clothes and sleep crawled upon her. Phil had never, ever walked out of their bedroom without kissing her. Then again, she’d never run off and slept with an ex-lover.

She made an effort to piece together how she had arrived here; one step forward, back two, over one and here she was. She could only see betrayal in the looking back, not the stepping ahead; in the forward movement she had seen nothing but her own reasons.

She still couldn’t believe she’d done it—the memory of it nothing more or less than the memory of other times with Nick, twenty-five years ago. The night on the island hid in shadow—in the same gauzelike, fragmented pictures as the memories of college: separate from her, part of her.