“Oh. Well, I’ll check.” My eyes follow her as she leaves the kitchen, the dressing gown flapping around her. There must be any number of times that I have watched her leave a room, probably thousands in the seven years our lives crossed over, but none of those half-remembered occasions have any relevance now. It’s like studying for an exam and then finding that the curriculum has entirely changed. I’m starting from scratch.

My father is living under an assumed name in Europe. He wears flash suits that jar with the years on his face and dyes his gray hair with Just For Men. He travels in and out of European cities with an extraordinary quantity of gemstones hidden about his person, doesn’t file taxes and always has hard cash on hand. He drinks too much on his own in bars when he’s away from home. He drinks too much on his own when he’s at home, too, in his poky rental flat with barely any furniture and a gun in his sock drawer. It doesn’t matter anyway. It won’t be cirrhosis of the liver that kills him.

THREE

I drive Carrie to the station, marveling at her calm. We are well past cutting it fine territory now; we must surely be into Oh my God, oh my God, I’m so late, but the ever-increasing passage of time has had no impact on Carrie’s leisurely rate of preparations. I can feel my own heart rate rising on her behalf, but perhaps schedules run a little differently in the theater. After I’ve dropped her off, I head for the hotel, the route no less tricky for having just navigated it in reverse. There’s a beaten-up Land Rover ahead of me taking the same route at what seems like a suicidal pace. In minutes, it has gained so many twists and turns that it’s lost to sight. Will I one day know the road well enough to drive it at that pace? God forbid the Presumption of Death process takes as long as all that . . . I wonder what I would have to go back to if I stayed here for all that time, but then I shut that thought process down.