There’s no reason to be so derailed by this, I admonished myself. So you read a horoscope recently, a horoscope that led you to believe you were on the right track looking into your father’s death. Today you have read a horoscope in the same paper with no bearing on anything, a horoscope filled with gibberish, nothing to do with you. So what? It changes nothing.

“Get ahold of yourself,” I said quietly, and gripped the edge of the counter until I winced in pain.

Just so, I thought. The last thing you need is for someone to surprise you in the break room in a bizarre pose, muttering to yourself. I released my grip on the counter, wiped my forehead with a paper napkin, and went out into the hallway. I moved quickly, giving myself up to the thoughts that came.

Could it be? The idea growing in me now unchecked—could I have been wrong about everything? But, I protested, there had been that feeling, upon returning from my father’s house, when I’d sat at my kitchen table to watch the fog roll in from the sea, the feeling that I’d set something in motion. That sense—I’d had it so clearly. Was it so extraordinary to think? But—I stopped short, and some coffee from my cup sloshed onto the ground. Could my recent activities truly be called “looking into my father’s death”? What had I unearthed, exactly? I had read two horoscopes, one relevant, one not. I’d gone to a hotel, a restaurant, an open house; under a pseudonym, I’d acquired an empty leather briefcase. I’d declined to have intercourse with a mature and willing woman, and made myself god knew how many open-faced salmon sandwiches. Really, it could make a person weep.

When I reached the end of this last thought, I found myself at the door of my office. I eased it open, careful not to spill any more of my coffee, and sat down at my desk. There it was again, I thought with a shudder: in my excitement I had forgotten all about the red eye on the telephone—the envelope I had propped against it yesterday had slipped, and the light was pulsing on and off patiently, biding its time like a watchful cat. Not now, I thought, replacing the envelope, not this distraction.