“I have to admit,” he was saying, “I’m at a loss. I don’t know how to read this.”

So John was clueless and Caroline was cowardly, and what a great combination that was.

“What do you think?”

He was standing at the window that looked out over the garden, his back to her, oblivious to his nakedness or the picture he made. He had the build of a rower, his arms and shoulders and neck broad and strong. She could count his vertebrae, trace the flexing muscles in his back, the sun-bleached hairs on his long legs. His hips were narrow, his buttocks perfectly round and pale as milk compared to the rest of him, the color of toast. Turn around, she wanted to say. Come here. Touch me. Angie closed her eyes and counted to three until the tide rising in her subsided.

“You know Caroline much better than I do,” she said.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Bullshit.”

That took her by surprise. “Huh?”

“Bullshit. I’m missing something obvious. I know I am, for the simple reason that I always do, as you have pointed out to me before.”

Angie cleared her throat. She said, “Let me read the letter, then.” Not that it would be of any help, but it would buy her some time. She took the letter from him and ran her eyes over Caroline’s strong handwriting, but she was really weighing one statement after another and dismissing each in turn. When she was done, she put the letter down on the bedside table.

John had come back to bed and was stretched out beside her, his head propped on his arm.

“A few ideas come to me,” she said. “But first let me ask you. Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?”

“She’ll be here tomorrow—” Angie glanced at the sky outside the window. “She’ll be back here today, and she’ll … explain.” And then, in response to his blank expression: “I just mean—”

“You think there’s some simple answer to all this?”

“I think there’s no sense in anticipating trouble. We’ve got enough of that as it is.”

“Christ, I wish she had got that letter I wrote. The way things stand, I have no idea what to think. Rob took this as an indication that she wants out.”

Angie shrugged. “Sure, you could read it that way.”

“If that’s the case,” he said slowly, “then I’ve got to wonder why. Do you think she could be—” He stopped, and Angie could almost hear the words in her head: in love with somebody else.

“Angry—about you?”

She wanted to bury her face in the pillow, because the urge to scream or laugh or both at once was almost overwhelming. Luckily John’s mind and his attention were elsewhere. And he was trying, and so she made an effort and calmed herself down so she could listen.