His door was open too. He was sitting cross-­legged on the bed, with the score propped on a pillow in front of him. He lowered his flute now and looked at me questioningly.

“It’s nothing,” I said. I put my arm around him and kissed him. He began to play again as I went downstairs. It was the last time I heard him play his flute until the night he died.

BOOK TWO

Book Two

6

Chapter Six

The next morning Jack telephoned the Scarsdale real estate agent and we learned that the tenant was already living in our house. He and his wife had moved in the previous afternoon, and the agent thought it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge them. What reason could we offer for wanting to cancel the lease? How had our situation changed overnight? He suggested we call the people directly and explain our problem.

I made the call. Mrs. Shaffer answered and began telling me how much she and Harold were enjoying our house. I said we’d been having second thoughts about renting it, and she replied sweetly that it was too bad but she and Harold loved the place too much to give it up now. She did agree to discuss the matter with him when he returned from Dallas in a week or ten days.

“We’re stuck,” Jack said. “We’ve signed the lease and accepted their check. Of course, maybe until we cash the check—”

I had deposited it. I had stopped at our bank in Scarsdale on the way out of town in the morning.

“All right, we’re stuck, but only until her husband comes back. Then we’ll have to persuade them to find another place. We won’t charge them for the time they’ve been in our house. In fact we might pay them something for the inconvenience.”

“From what I was told about Shaffer, I don’t think a few bucks will sway him.”

“Something will—your health or something. We’ll think of a good reason.”

Duff had come into the room. “Why don’t you tell the man the truth?” he said. “Tell him your son has been caught up in the evils of country life and you have to get him back to innocent suburbia.”

“Don’t be a wise guy,” Jack told him.

“Isn’t it the truth? Isn’t that why you want to go back?”

“We intend to go back because we’ll all be happier at home,” I said.

“I’m happy here,” Duff said.

“We know what’s best for you,” I informed him.

“Well I’m not going back.”