Hook had the feeling that Miss Madera was forcing herself to meet his eyes, for throughout this speech of his she sat staring rigidly at him, almost not blinking. Her expression was flat, neutral.

“That’s the boy who left us a month ago,” Hook went on. “That’s the boy who jumped off your cliff because he had nothing to live for.”

Now she looked away, across the room at the fire blazing in the center of the drinking couples, who were all laughing loudly at something. “People change,” she said.

Hook shook his head in weariness and futility. “Miss Madera, don’t you think a father would know whether his son was queer or not? Don’t you think I ever overheard my boys talking, and knew something about their sex life?”

Hook thought he saw a wetness in her eyes again. She was pushing back her chair, preparing to get up.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I really do. It’s late. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry for everything, Mr. Hook. I really am.”

And now there was no doubt about her tears. They shone in the firelight. He reached out and took hold of her wrist, holding her there at the table a moment longer. Time had run out; what had to be said he would say now.

“I’m not trying to find out if your version is the truth. I know it isn’t. I know you lied—that you all lied. But I have to find out why. I have to find out what really did happen.”

She looked down at her wrist in his hand, and as he relaxed his grip she pulled her arm free slowly, almost voluptuously, watching him with her huge grave eyes.

“I’ll find out,” he told her. “I’ll find the truth if I have to come here and live.”

“Will that bring him back?”

“You admit you lied, then?”

“No. I’m just saying it won’t bring him back. Nothing will bring him back. Ever.”

Somewhere Hook found his voice. “I know that. But you want to take more than his life. And I won’t let you have it.”

He struggled to his feet as she got up from the table now. She repeated that she had to leave. She asked him if he wanted a ride to a motel.

“It’s not far,” he told her. “I can walk.”

She started to say something more, and then just turned and walked away. Watching her, Hook was reminded of Hemingway’s reference to Lady Brett as having the lines of a racing yacht, for that is what Liz Madera’s progress across the room was like, a sleek craft moving through still water, trailing waves of attention that spread ever wider through the small crowd until she finally disappeared out the front door. For some reason it angered him that she was so attractive, and that her anguish or fear or whatever it was she was feeling made her seem even more so to him, giving weight and substance to her beauty.