At her door, she said, “Go into the living room. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

“I’m not going to say anything sensible until I calm down. I controlled myself back there. And I didn’t do it only for you.”

“I know. Go inside. Do as you said. I know a little about her and maybe it will help you get her out of your system; Joe?” He turned around. She said, “If you know how you were able to take it, I wish you’d tell me. I could use it.”

“It’s no virtue,” he said.

She brought in the coffee. He had been thinking of what he had to tell her. It would take an hour and he might be weary enough to make a mess even if it needed only twenty minutes. There was no way to get around the whole truth. How her husband had acquired the scar was part of the pattern of the entire first marriage, but what Leland was concerned with at this moment was the control he could muster. There was a correct way to say anything and he did not want to hurt her because he was tired. It was his tiredness that made him want to believe that he could lead her to suspend her judgments until he was finished, and she would be able to see Colin MacIver with a measure of objectivity. MacIver had had two real marriages, two intense relationships with women; if she wanted to weigh one against the other, the one that counted was the second, because it had come after the failure of the first. It was all a question of self-judgment; MacIver had torpedoed her confidence. So far—and it was quite far—Leland had been able to find no connection between her behavior as a wife and MacIver’s death. The problem—because he was human—was in communicating that fact without actually having to say it.

“She’s not one of Wendell’s patients, if you’re thinking that,” she said.

“I’m not. How does he know her?”

“It’s roundabout, and I’m not really sure I understand it correctly. Her father is one of the administrative people at the University and Wendell knows her that way. She lives alone and she’s in therapy at the clinic with someone else. She bumped into Wendell there and insisted on being his friend on her own, not through her father. On the one hand, Wendell doesn’t want to discourage her from attending the clinic, but on the other, he doesn’t want her playing him off against the psychologist she’s seeing. He had a cup of coffee with her once, before he could see her psychologist, and she tried that, asking his opinion of things the psychologist had said. Since then he doesn’t give her the chance to be alone with him. When he can’t tell her he’s too busy to see her, he calls me or someone else and we talk about baseball—that’s what he calls anything that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”