“You won’t talk about it?” he asked her.

She did not answer.

“All right, then. Any motel will do.”

But she did not turn in as they passed the first few blocks of motels.

“I could use a drink,” she said. “In fact, I need a drink. Will you have one with me?”

Hook looked at her. “In silence?”

She shook her head. “Any way you want.”

“All right,” he said. “Sure.”

She turned in at a place that looked at first glance like some kind of rustic wood fort, with its walls canted inwards, pyramid style, as if it had been designed against that revolutionary day when the unwanted would want in. But going inside, Hook saw that the “wood” walls were actually poured concrete and the rusticity strictly modern. The place was sumptuous, dark, candle-lit—and almost abandoned. A young woman in a muumuu-type dress led them past a few couples drinking around a hexagonal table in the center of which a gas fire blazed around fake wood. A half-dozen people were at the bar; a few couples sat drinking alone at tables; and one large noisy group was having dinner at three tables pulled together across the room.

The hostess showed them to a small table against the back wall and took their order, a vodka on ice for Hook and a daiquiri for Miss Madera. She got out a cigarette and lit it with the table candle, ignoring the match he was about to light, so he used it on a cigarette of his own. For a few moments longer the two of them just sat there, she studying him with a cool open gaze, barren of any slightest hint of fear or defensiveness or hostility, so Hook saw no reason not to go to the heart of the matter.

“In the car,” he said. “When you said you were sorry—”

“Yes.”

“I meant to ask you why. Was it your fault, Miss Madera? His death?”

She did not even blink. “In a way, yes. If I hadn’t picked him up, the whole thing might not have happened.”

“But that’s all? There’s no other way you were at fault?”

“I wish I could say there was. I have a feeling it would help you.”

“You mean I want someone to blame. Someone to put it all on.”

She regarded him coolly, without pity now. “It’s only natural, isn’t it? It must be a hard thing to accept, that your child would kill himself. You’d want to believe anything but that.”

“Yes, you would.”

“And you won’t accept it, will you? I can see that. You never will accept it.”

Again he agreed with her. “That’s right. I never will.”

As the waitress served their drinks now, Miss Madera looked down at the table. When they were alone again she stirred her daiquiri, sipped at it, and set it down, still not looking at him.

“All right then,” she said. “Blame me. I did pick him up. I don’t deny that. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have died where he did. That at least is true.”