“What’s he like, your father?” Karim asked to break the sudden silence. “He’s … I miss him. He’s away a lot.”

“How do you know my mom?”

For a moment, he was afraid he had said something wrong. Then Laila shrugged. “I met her in Saks in New York.”

“Saks Fifth Avenue? The store?” He couldn’t remember his mother taking any shopping trips to New York. In fact, even in Boston, she complained that she never had time to go shopping.

Silence. It was as if Laila had gone a little distance away from him. “You were shopping?” he prompted.

“What? Oh.” She looked him in the eyes. Again, the feeling of recognition. Did she feel it, too? “Actually,” she said, “I was shoplifting.” Shoplifting? The daughter of the world’s richest man? “But why?” “It’s a long story. But she rescued me.” She outlined the events in Saks.

Nothing about it sounded like his mother, who was always so insistent on right and wrong. Something was going on here. Something was being with- held from him.

“Then you’re not one of her …” “One of her patients? No.”

A car pulled to a stop.

“My ride,” said Laila. “Thanks for waiting with me.” “I’d like to see you again,” Karim blurted.

She looked startled. “It’s not a good time.” “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Her face softened. “I know. It’s just that I’m leaving.”

He thought for a moment that she was going to touch him—his arm, per- haps his face. But she didn’t.

“I’ll send you both my address in California,” she said. Then she was gone.

O

In the apartment, Jenna had managed something like calm after Laila’s bitterly unexpected news.

What had Karim thought of the visitor? With luck, maybe nothing too hard to explain. If anything, he had seemed rather puppyishly smitten with her. He came back in, his expression one that was new to her, a mixture of puzzlement and—what? Hope?

“How do you know Laila Badir, Mom?” “She was a patient. Not for long.”

“Do you always cry about your patients?” “Sometimes.”

But now his expression was one she knew very well. She had seen it on his father a hundred times.

Eyes flat and blank, as cold and distant from her as some outer planet, he slowly shook his head and disappeared into his room.

O

After a night of broken sleep and a brusque “See you later” from her son on his way out in the morning, Jenna was trying to concentrate on her first patient’s troubles with his brother when Barbara, her new secretary, buzzed.

Jenna’s policy, like that of almost all her colleagues, was that sessions were to be interrupted only for emergencies.

“Yes?”

“Jenna, there’s a police officer out here. She says it’s important.” Jenna’s first thought was Karim. Then, for some reason, Laila.