Mooring spun, eyes angry and luminous, as if he were ready to strike. Subtly, quickly, he reconsidered. “I apologize for my wife,” he said without feeling.

She began to cry with drunkenness and humiliation. He turned and steered her roughly toward the parking lot, avoiding the party. I went to the bar and got Kris Ann her drink.

Driving home, she said, “I’m ashamed I asked you to go.”

“Don’t worry, hon. It was a chance to think about things.”

Kris Ann lay her head back against the car seat. “Like what?”

“Like that Tom Threadgill is the biggest waste of time since the Parcheesi board.”

Kris Ann smiled slightly and was silent. I lit a cigarette. “Was there something wrong with her, Krissy?”

She rolled her head to see me. “Adam, you can’t even be sure what Joanne Mooring was talking about.”

I took a deep drag on the cigarette, its ash an orange circle in blackness. “Maybe. But Susie made sense for once. Something like this happens and you have to look differently at the woman it’s happened to.”

“I don’t,” she answered, “and don’t want to. Lydia was our friend—my good friend.”

For a moment I listened to the low snarl of the motor. “I had a friend once at Notre Dame—Eddie Halloran. Eddie was a skinny, sensitive guy with a nice smile. Everyone liked him. He was quick and funny, but when you needed to talk he had this special knack of listening, and somehow you knew that he could slip into your skin and feel exactly what you felt. When Eddie got beaten up one night in a tough neighborhood off campus I was as mad as anyone else. It never occurred to me to wonder why he’d been there.

“Eventually we all forgot it until about a year later, it happens. Same neighborhood, two guys with a knife take Eddie for a ride and kill him. It turned out he was trying to pick them up. You see, anyone could tell him their problems, but he didn’t want us to know. So he played it too close to the line.”

Kris Ann touched my arm. “You never told me—Adam, that’s so sad.”

“Sad, and to the point. What I’m wondering is why Lydia seemed so remote. If anyone knows besides Henry, it’s you or Roland.”

Kris Ann sat up in the car seat, staring out. “Whatever,” she said tiredly, “I don’t believe it was anything like I think you’re asking. There’s only one time I can ever remember her seeming less than perfect and I only understood it later, if I ever did. It was the summer I was twelve, I guess, and Daddy had a cocktail party on a Sunday afternoon. He would sort of let me be hostess and I was there in a blue silk dress he’d bought, feeling like a lady.”