That made Angie think of Win Walker. She realized that she had successfully put the condom episode out of her head—so successfully that she had yet to tell John about what had happened after he shimmied out the bathroom window. But then she had run into Patty-Cake at least four times since the afternoon of the fourth, and there was no indication that her nephew had been whispering in her ear. Angie had to assume that he kept quiet out of professionalism, which made her feel guilty all over again, this time for underestimating him. She was thinking about that when she realized John was saying something quite important.

“—and then Rob called me an idiot.”

Which he was, most certainly. An infuriating, frustrating, gorgeous idiot she had missed beyond all reason for almost forty-eight hours, and what did that make her?

She said, “We agreed it was best to keep contact to a minimum.”

“I should have called, at least.”

True. Another thing not to be said aloud, not at this moment. Instead Angie said, “You look like you’re on your way someplace.”

“Reunions on campus, I have to go to a luncheon.”

“That explains all the people wandering around.”

“I have to give a talk this evening, too, and then there’s a supper—”

“Isn’t Miss Zula giving a talk, too? Because we’re supposed to shoot it.”

“Ah.” John looked disconcerted at this news. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you there.”

“I suppose you will.”

He cleared his throat again. He said, “There’s a letter from Caroline.” He said it lightly, but there was a tension in him that she could see in his shoulders and the tilt of his head.

Angie leaned against the closet door and crossed her arms on her chest. “She’s told her family?”

“No. Not yet. It’s complicated,” John said. “I need to talk to you, but I have—”

“This alumni thing, you said.”

“Are you around later this afternoon?”

The urge to hear what he had to say, good or bad, to get it over with once and for all, that urge was at war with the far less pleasant compulsion Angie was feeling. If suffering and regret were going to be on the itinerary, she would take him along for the ride. She said, “We’re in the middle of a big logging session, and we’ll be at it all day.”

His face fell. “Okay, well. Maybe after this alumni supper thing? You could come over to the house, that might be safer.”

Hours and hours and hours from now. Angie nodded.