Norma Colucci stretched. “Really want to know?” They were at Piantic Bay in the early evening and there was still light. She raised herself onto her elbows on the beach blanket and looked over her toes at the water. “I’m thinking that my father should see me now. How well I’ve done.” She looked at him, squinting in the warm breeze. “You’re the kind of man he calls ‘Mister,’ and you love me.”

“It’s not really surprising,” he said. “The woman you’ve become since he saw you last, most men would love you.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I don’t care about that.” She sat up. “I’m happy. Content. Languid?” She laughed. “I don’t know how to say it. I love loving you. I love this. That’s what I was thinking when you broke in on me. You broke in on a variation of the theme. My parents can’t help me. There’s no way to better what I feel.” She rubbed her ankles. “The old griefs are gone. I want to do good things. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“This is the first time we’ve mentioned my trouble since I told you.”

“It was because I said ‘most men.’ I’m sorry.”

“No, no, not at all. I don’t want you to think that.”

He grinned. “Okay. I’m full of ‘okays’ tonight. You have me feeling content, too. Very content.”

“How did you get that scar on your neck?”

“Changing the subject?”

“No, silly, I—”

He laughed. “I got it when I was a kid. Another kid knocked me off my bicycle.”

“All right. Do you want to go in the water again? I want to. We can go back to my place and take a shower and maybe we can go out for a sausage pizza and a beer. I feel like putting on weight tonight.”

Which must have been the way it happened, Leland thought as he waited for Norma MacIver to return to the telephone. She hadn’t broken down; it was only that room service had arrived with her breakfast. She hadn’t broken down last night when she had studied her husband’s picture in the souvenir book and had seen no scar. He had lied to her. In a way, she had just said to Leland, she had expected it. She hadn’t known where the first lie would appear, and it was interesting that it would come up over something she had all but forgotten. Leland hadn’t mentioned the insurance file to her, and now he was thinking that he would wait until they left for Port Smith. She picked up the receiver again.