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awhile," he said.

"I know."

"This last year ... this last year, I've been over in Finden."

She nodded calmly, even gracefully, qualities he'd never even imagined in her before.

"Why don't you come into the kitchen?"

He followed her there, keeping his distance, observing as if from afar her motions as she took a filter from the box and placed it in the top of the coffeemaker and poured the grounds into the holder. From the cabinet she took down a packet of cigarettes and offered him one. He declined and she lit hers with a match from the stove.

"I quit," she said. "It's just now and then ..."

If only she had been here on her own. If only she had been on the old couch, by herself, he thought.

"I want you to know, the reason - "

"Don't," he said. "Don't."

She straightened, and then stubbed out into the sink the cigarette she'd just lit. One hand gripped the counter while the other floated up across her chest to grasp at her arm.

"I never wanted to trouble you. You going - I understood that. I wasn't well." She clutched her arm more tightly. "Won't you at least sit down?" she said, pleading with him now.

He shook his head.

"Please."

"I can't stay."

His brain had begun to numb, the light and sounds of the apartment hitting on a dullened surface.

Through the door to the other room he could see a sideboard standing where his desk had once been. A lace doily rested on its polished surface beneath a large bowl of fruit.

He had built the house in Finden for her. He saw this now. He had built it so that he could come here and rescue her. Drive her back across the town line, this time for good. What other purpose had the house ever really had? But the woman he'd come to save - she had left before he arrived. Replaced by someone different.

He watched her pour him a cup of coffee and edge it down the counter toward him, her shoulders slightly hunched, her breasts hanging a bit lower on her chest, her hips a bit wider than before, but the color in her face, the new life - it was unmistakable. She was happy.

"I came to say goodbye," he said. "I never said goodbye before."

"In the fridge ... there's meat loaf ... I can make up a salad."

"I have to go."

"Or a pasta ..." The tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as she spoke.

Doug walked from the kitchen into the hall, hearing her footsteps behind him.

I carried you, he wanted to say. Down this passageway, from our couch to your bed when you couldn't walk, I carried you.

At the door, he felt her hand on his shoulder and he turned out from under it.

"Don't," he said.

"But where will you go?"

"It doesn't matter." In the doorway, he paused. "My place in Finden. It's over by the golf course. A mansion along the river. You can't miss it. You should go see it sometime."

And with that he stepped back onto the landing and quickly descended the stairs.

Chapter 20

The bright fluorescence in the foyer of Emily's dorm hit Nate like the glare of dawn and he squinted to avoid it. He heard Emily and her friends spill through the doors behind him, laughing. It was two in the morning and they'd been drinking since before dinner, roving through parties on campus and off.

"You can't sleep there," someone shouted, calling Nate off the bench where he'd taken a seat. He rose, trailing behind the others. Emily was toward the front of the group whispering something to her friend Alex. He was a slender boy, a bit shorter than Nate, his hair slicked up in the front with gel. Though he wore vintage T-shirts and hipster jeans and had that well-groomed dishevelment about him that suggested a perfect nonchalance, he'd seemed anxious to Nate ever since they'd met a few months ago, when Nate had come for his first visit, sometime before Christmas. Anxious in a way Nate recognized. Emily's other friends had welcomed Nate as a part-time member of the scene, but Alex had mostly avoided talking to him.

Now he knew why. This evening Emily had told him that Alex had asked her what Nate's status was - gay or straight, available or taken. "You're fair game," she'd said as they left the dining hall. "You might as well live here."

Her dorm room was a social hub of sorts from where her hall mates came and