Mike never learned that the strain between her and Leland had reached such intensity. He must have wondered why he and Leland could not seem to be closer friends—he had to assume that it had to do with Leland’s own life. They had casual friends in common, but they never stopped for a beer by themselves. Mike did not know it, but it was something that Leland had grown up with and missed badly.

Still childless, Mike coached a football team and Little League baseball, and Joan traveled back and forth to her family in Port Smith. For her part, Karen did not know yet about the attempt to buy her out, or the escapade on the dance floor. Karen would not start something on a dance floor or with the hands under a tablecloth without expecting an early good night. It was a matter of ethics. She had not seen Joan Petrakis except for one collision in the office in almost two years, and that was as she wanted. The things she did not know would infuriate her and perhaps impel her to take action even now. She would believe that she had been purposely protected, that Joan’s willfulness had been in her life even though she had not known it—no difference in the morality—and the action she might take would be only what she thought was long overdue. Probably it would come down to a telephone call. Joan was not the kind to hang up a telephone, no matter what was being said. Leland knew his wife: Karen would go to any cruelty to be assured that she had finally driven Joan out of her life. Karen Widener Leland was not a natural fighter; fighting was something she had had to learn. Of the sixteen years her husband had known her he could fairly say that she had never bitched or sought a fight. She would not agree, he knew; she would point to instance after instance in which she was sure she had looked for trouble. In his estimation she would be using a standard of judgment that could not apply. There had been circumstances that neither of them had understood. Those things still weighed on them, Karen having to bear the greater burden, and she felt—rightly—that she could do it even with a certain style if she had no trouble with people like Joan.