As he approached, the oblique evening light caught his eyes, revealing their deep Mediterranean blue. Abruptly she recalled the day she had gone skinny-dipping, swimming farther out than she ever had from the shore of the Italian fishing village in which she had grown up, remembered her fear and strange ecstasy as the shadow of a shark had passed beneath her.

Ruth glanced at the letter again. She hadn’t read it because she needed to finish this chapter today. She felt nervous: Haig hadn’t sent so much as a note all summer, despite her numerous inquiries regarding his plans to collect the boy. She got up from her desk, sat on her bed, and opened it.

August 12, 1954

Dear Ruth,

I realize I have been somewhat remiss regarding communication. And you have every right to be, as you gently put it in your last note, “disappointed.” Nor could I argue that I haven’t, in some way, abandoned the boy. I have to say, though, that he would be better off almost anywhere other than here. My wife refuses to have him back in the house. She and the boy have never got along, and her ire has been piqued by our rather straitened financial circumstances. This is the result of a failed speculation advised and administered by the boy’s father, from whom we have not heard since news of the share collapse. Needless to say, since I speculated without her knowledge, she and I are not on the best of terms. We have had to withdraw our daughter from her public school and move from our house to a rather incommodious flat in Knightsbridge.

Ruth, I’m not sure what to say. The boy is just a few years from an age when he can work and begin to support himself. He is a good boy and, I’m sure, provides company for you and some comfort following Oliver’s death. Certainly you should feel no compunction in getting him to do his fair share of work around your home and the farm.

If you need to put him into a government institution of any kind and require my signature, please send the relevant documents to me at the following post office box:

P.O. Box 229
17 Charecroft Way
Shepherds Bush
London, W12

I wish I could convey how devastated the writing of this letter leaves me, what an injury this is to my integrity as a man, a gentleman, and the head of my family.

With gratitude and deep regard, Haig Travers

Ruth felt as if her chest had been cleft in, soft as clay. Reading the letter again, its embedded insults began their acid etching. He had not given her his new address, but some post office box, as if his communications with her were somehow sordid. Company for you and comfort: as if this boy were some kind of consolation for a pathetic widow. Not only consolation but compensation: no compunction in getting him to do his fair share. As if Haig were doing her a favor. She gripped the letter so hard her fingers almost tore through it. An injury to his integrity. His integrity. This man who, she was sure, would have left his wife and child if she had given him the slightest reason to hope he could. She had said yes to the boy just to get Haig away from her. Was there a single good man in the world? A single, good, feeling man in the world? She had respected Oliver, even loved him in some way, but he wasn’t a man, just the semblance of one.