“Yeah. Yeah. Regrets.” He wiped his eyes quickly, the corners of his mouth pulling down. “I got me a suitcase full of regrets, babe, believe me. The thing is, I just didn’t … I didn’t get it right, you know? I don’t even think I got the rules of the game right. Not until you dropped your glass at the party. Until I looked up at you. And then I thought: Oh, yeah, I get it. I get it now. I mean, what a shmuck, right? Ach …” He looked up into an invisible corner of the ceiling above her bed. “Christ, kid, I should’ve stayed away from you. I knew that, damn it. I knew it. Or I should’ve told you right off. But I should’ve stayed away, that’s the thing. What a jerk-o.”

Sophia—with what seemed to him calm, unaffected movements in the dark—took the pillow from behind her and set it against the headboard. She sat up, patted it, propped herself on it, sitting quietly, regarding him quietly from under the canopy’s fringe.

“I suppose you were pretending it wasn’t true,” she said after a while. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me.”

He smiled unhappily, his head going up and down. What a smart dame, he thought. What a champion dame. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Not really pretending, you know—not like I believed it, but just … acting the part, sort of. Acting like we could be together. Like …”

He couldn’t continue. He just went on nodding silently, biting his lip.

“Like we could go on to get married and have children and so on,” she said.

He laughed, his heart in a vice. “And so on. Yeah.”

“No,” she said after a second or two. “No, I don’t suppose we could do that now.”

“No,” said Richard Storm. “I don’t suppose we could.”

“Still,” said Sophia, considering. “Still, if you had told me, I might well have stayed away from you.”

“Well, that’s it,” said Storm. “That’s what I should’ve done.”

“No,” she told him. “No. Because then I wouldn’t have had the chance to realize that I love you.”

Storm made a choked noise, covered his face with both hands.

“Which I did. Realize,” Sophia said. “Just now. While you were standing there, while I was watching you at the window.”

“I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” She ran her hand up through her hair. Slowly, once and then again. “Don’t be foolish. Don’t be sorry. I love you, Richard,” she told him. “And at the end of the day …” But then her voice caught. Which surprised him. She had sounded so cool until then. But then her voice caught and she was silent for several moments, looking down thoughtfully.