I didn’t tell her everything. I didn’t tell her it was Jeff Slade. Instead, I signaled to the waitress for the check.

Anna leaned in and said, “What’s stopping you?”

I’d revealed too much.

“For starters, I’m married,” I said.

“Yes, but it could be fun. No one has to know. And it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Not mean anything? Is she whacked? I’d come to offer her encouragement, and now she was encouraging me to have an affair. I should have just ended the conversation. Instead, I asked, “But what if it did mean something?”

“Just decide in advance that it won’t.”

The bill came, and I started to calculate the tip. “Is it that easy?”

“I’ll know soon enough.”

I looked at her.

She gave a slight shrug and said, “I’m in the process of taking a lover.”

That was when Anna leaned forward, took my hands in hers, and said with complete compassion, “It’s okay, you know. Sometimes it’s what we need.”

TIM

TIM

DURING THOSE STRANGE, UNCERTAIN WEEKS, I BECAME A BETTER THAN USUAL DAD and a kinder husband. Kate even said so. It proved to be an unexpected benefit from the Anna Brody of it all. However, one part of my life had been neglected. This was made all too clear when Dr. Jamison Lamson called and left an emphatic message on the phone machine: “Timothy, do you read your mail?” The stern yet hurt tone in his voice stung. That was when I remembered the letter he’d sent, a letter I’d skimmed and then tucked away behind the unpaid bills.

It took a few minutes to find and reread the letter. Dr. Lamson had written to all his students, past and present, announcing the end of his “invigorating” and “satisfying” teaching career. He thanked all of us for “the privilege of witnessing the wonderment of history catching fire.” He wrote that he would miss us, his students, and that we had been his teachers, too. It was an exquisite letter, graceful and self-deprecating, worthy of framing, except in my case, he’d hastily scribbled across the bottom, Timothy—I need to see you ASAP!

As soon as possible was the following morning. After dropping Teddy and Sam at preschool, I caught the R train to Queens and sprinted across the St. Bernard campus to Dr. Lamson’s corner office on the third floor of the J. Arthur Kresge History Building.

I found Dr. Lamson packing up his office, standing among the stacks of books and half-filled boxes. He had the stunned look of someone who’d only just realized he had way too much stuff.

Seeing me, he squinted in disbelief and said, “Was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see you again, Timothy. Thought you were dead.”

I laughed nervously as he cleared a place for me to sit.