“I don’t know. It’s just that sometimes I think that life is this giant maze, very dark, with people wandering through it bumping into each other and going on, groping for that thing or person that will make the difference—you know, get them to the end—and it’s all so much chance. Look at us. We start at different places, you in Cleveland, me in Alabama, from people who are nothing alike, and then enter the maze to go through all the things that make us the way we are now and deliver us by sheer coincidence to a bad party in the middle of twelve thousand people, and by the time we’ve met maybe these same experiences mean that we’re people who can’t help each other, that at some point we’ll have to go on alone, bumping into more people and things. I mean, it’s hard to know when you’ve gotten to the end, isn’t it?”

I looked up at the ceiling. “For some people, I suppose.”

She rolled over, head propped on her elbow. “Adam, did any of what I just said make sense to you?”

I grinned. “Infinite sense.”

“Then how can you sound so blasé?”

“Because I know.”

“Know what?”

I turned to see her face. Her eyes were deep and dark and serious. I reached out, touching the nape of her neck, and said softly, “Because I know the maze ends here.”

For a long time she looked at me, seeming hardly to breathe. Then as if on impulse she stretched to pull me out of bed. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.” She tugged harder. “Hurry up.”

I began laughing. “Okay, okay. I’ll go quietly.”

We dressed and went down to campus with the key to the stark, unfurnished room that held her paintings, where she had never taken me. Beneath one bare lightbulb was an easel covered with white muslin. She went to it, removed the muslin, and turned.

Beside her was an oil of my face, each feature carefully drawn from memory. It was so much like my father I felt a kind of frisson.

Kris Ann studied me closely. “Do you like it?”

“It’s incredible.”

I couldn’t move my eyes from the painting. Then she stepped in front of it. Slowly, without speaking, she unbuttoned her blouse until it lay on the floor beside her. “Make love to me, Adam. Please. Right here.”

We did that. I held her for a long time after.

That Saturday we packed my car with her dishes and dresses on hangers. In the country we found a spool bed and mattress, and for Cade’s sake ordered his and hers telephones to go on either side.

The next week Cade called her, to invite us down …

When I came back from the doctor’s she met me at the front door. “Daddy’s here.”