One in which, I guess, her only refuge was in taking pen to paper and writing about the life she’d led before that man had come and taken her away. And who to share her most precious inner world with? Her daughter, of course, as trapped and soiled by Trevor as she was.

“Please,” Desiree said. “Will you help me?”

“Sure,” I said.

She reached across and took my hand. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Her thumb ran up the inside of my palm. “No,” she said. “Really. I mean it.”

“I do, too,” I said. “Don’t mention it. Really.”

“Are you and Miss Gennaro…?” she said. “I mean, have you been…for very long?”

I let the question hang in the ten inches of space between us.

Her hand dropped away from mine, and she smiled. “All the good ones are taken,” she said. “Of course.”

She leaned back in her chair and I held her gaze and she didn’t look away. For a full minute, we looked at each other in silence, and then her left eyebrow arched ever so slightly.

“Or are they?” she said.

“They are,” I said. “In fact, one of the last good ones, Desiree—”

“Yes?”

“Dropped off a bridge the other night.”

I stood up.

She crossed her legs at the ankles.

“Thanks for the coffee. How’re you getting to the airport?”

“I still have a car Jay rented for me. It’s due back at the downtown Budget tonight.”

“You want me to drive you and drop it off?”

“If you don’t mind,” she said, her eyes on her coffee cup.

“Get dressed. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Angie was still sleeping so deeply I knew the only alarm clock that could wake her would be a hand grenade. I left her a note, and Desiree and I went out to her rented Grand Am and she drove toward the airport.

It was another hot, sunny day. Same as every other one I’d seen since arriving. At around three, I’d learned from experience, it would rain for half an hour, and things would cool for a bit, then the humidity would steam off the earth to follow the rain, and it would be brutal until sundown.

“About what happened back in the room,” Desiree said.

“Forget it,” I said.

“No. I loved Jay. I did. And I barely know you.”

“Right,” I said.

“But, maybe, I dunno…Are you aware of the pathology of many incest and sex abuse victims, Patrick?”

“Yeah, Desiree, I am. Which is why I said to forget it.”

We pulled onto the airport roadway and followed the red signs for the Delta terminal.

“Where’d you get your plane ticket?” I said.

“Jay. He bought two.”

“Jay was going along with this?”

She nodded. “He bought two,” she repeated.

“I heard you the first time, Desiree.”