hi. i hope you’re okay. i know you probably wish you’d never met me, but I’m going to leave for the city for a while and i’d love to talk if you’re willing.

Two hours later he was on East Twenty-Second Street. The town house Claudia lived in was almost as tall as Ben’s brownstone, but where Ben’s seemed to be hiding behind walls of ivy and spindly potted plants, hers stood out proudly, whitewashed brick and black shutters and a neat box of red geraniums outside each window.

The smile she greeted him with was mirthless, but sincere.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

Claudia’s hair was slightly damp, as if she’d just washed it. She shuffled inside in slippers and sweatpants. You know a girl likes you if she dresses up a little, Mike had told Trevor once. This was not going to be the beginning of their love story. What he’d done for her was humiliating. She was probably embarrassed by it, too.

They walked inside, into an enormous living room warmed by the sunlight coming from a wall of windows in the back. Just like at the house on Martha’s Vineyard, the furniture and the lighting and the art and the knickknacks created a tableau: A successful family lives here. A healthy, happy family. But Trevor knew too much about the Castros now to be fooled.

“Do you want to go out to the garden?” she asked.

“Sure.”

The garden was brick-paved, with a canopy of flowering trees above. A spiral staircase connected the patio to a balcony two floors above.

“This is nice,” he said.

“Thanks.”

She sat down in a cushioned outdoor armchair and he sat opposite her, at one end of the matching sofa.

“Are you coming back to school?” he asked.

“No, I’m gonna go to the Vineyard for a while.”

“What about the fall?”

Claudia shook her head.

He didn’t blame her. If he had her money he’d drop out, too.

“Have you told anybody?” she asked.

“I told my brother,” he said

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” All they’d done together, and she didn’t know basic details about his life. She hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered. “What’s his name?”

“He’s not going to say anything.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Claudia.

“Well, he’s not.” Trevor was angrier than he wanted to be. She was never going to look at him the way he wanted her to. He was always going to be the person who’d been with her at the rock bottom of her life.