“C’mon.” I stood up and held out my hand, then led him to the couch in the living room.

Unlike our kiss on the bridge, this one lasted a good long time. I lifted my hand to his face and felt hair thicker and wavier than mine. How far do I want this to go, at least for tonight? I wondered. How far does he? Not too far, Allen’s hands and lips soon made clear. Tonight at least.

After a few minutes I kicked off my shoes. I leaned my head against Allen’s chest, my knees pressing the side of his leg.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you a question,” I said, “but I’m not sure it’s something you’ll want to answer.”

“Go ahead,” Allen said. “I’ve spent most of my life asking people those kinds of questions, so turnabout is fair play.”

“Has writing about Ruth Kowalsky been hard for you?”

Allen didn’t say anything for a few moments.

“In some ways,” he finally said. “It intensifies certain regrets.”

“What regrets?” I asked, nuzzling closer, feeling the softness of the flannel on my cheek, the beat of his heart beneath it.

“That for a good portion of my daughter’s life I wasn’t even on the same continent. That she lived only nine years, and during that time she had a father who put her second to his career.”

“You couldn’t have known her life would be so short.”

“And I’ll never know if I really would have made Kosovo my last overseas assignment. That’s what I told both her and her mother. I want to believe that’s what I’d have done. But even if I had, that wouldn’t have changed nine years of only seeing her a week out of each month, less than that for the six months I was in Rwanda.”

Allen shifted so he could look at me.

“You know what she told me when she was five?”

“What?”

“That her friends had fathers they saw every day.”

“That must have hurt.”

“Not enough to do anything about it.”

I settled back into Allen’s chest.

“What about your wife. Regrets?”

“Sure, but they’re different. Claire didn’t need me the way Miranda did. Claire was independent. She’d made a life for herself when I wasn’t around. She had her own career and friends. She was an attractive woman. There may have been other men in her life—probably were, those last two years. But I didn’t blame her for that. How could I?”

“And you? Did you have other women?”

“No, though I’m not sure Claire believed that. I put all my energy into the writing. A lot of the other journalists would go out drinking and skirt-chasing, but at night I stayed in my room and wrote.”