"I'm Larissa's husband," Jared said, watching her face intensely. It was almost poker-like. Except for the three quick blinks, a zeroing in on him, a honing in, a sharpening of the wrinkled features, a breath before she spoke.

"What's happened?"

"She's vanished," said Jared. "She didn't pick up our youngest child from school on Friday. She wasn't there in the afternoon. She hasn't been home since."

Kavanagh was still clutching her purse. She slammed her car door. "Did she leave a note?"

"What kind of note?" said Jared. "She could be lying dead in a ditch after a brain hemorrhage. What kind of note do you leave for that?"

Jared hoped that she took pity, because after a brief pitying glance at his wretched face, she said, "Come with me. Come inside."

"Do you know where she is?" Jared said in the parking lot. "I don't want to come inside, because I'm afraid you're taking me inside to tell me to sit down, and I don't want to sit down."

"You're very perceptive as to my motives," said Kavanagh. Was it Jared's twisted imagination or did she place just a little too much unnecessary emphasis on the my in that sentence? "My next patient is not till one. I thought we could talk for a few minutes."

"Why can't you just tell me where she is?"

"I don't know where she is, Mr. Stark."

"Then why would I want to come inside?"

"You wouldn't," she said, nodding slightly. "But it's hot, and I'm not as young as I used to be. I'm sixty-seven, and not much of a fan for standing in the heat. I get easily winded, easily exhausted, and I have a full day today. I want to be fresh. By all means, don't come in. I hope the rest of your day will be better. I'm sorry about Larissa."

She started to walk toward the door of her office building. Jared followed her. "You don't think she is dead? Why don't you think so?"

"Mr. Stark," said a no-nonsense Kavanagh, her gravel voice hardening, "either come inside with me so we can talk, or have a good day. But don't engage me when I've asked you not to engage me."

Reluctantly he followed her inside, and she walked straight, without turning around, almost as if she knew he would.

The office hadn't been aired in days. It was stuffy, musty. The central air had been turned down to a minimum. Already shallowly breathing, Jared felt like he was suffocating. Actually suffocating. His chest was tight. He asked Kavanagh to open the windows. She started to protest about the AC, but then saw him gasping and relented. He stuck his head outside, to gulp the air.

"What's happened?" he asked dully, straightening up.

She put down her purse, took off her light gray jacket, cleaned her gray-rimmed gla.s.ses, tiny like the rest of her, and sat down, scrunching up into a small hard pretzel. She said nothing.

"What, you can't talk to me?"

"No, I can."

"Is this about some doctor-client privilege?"

Kavanagh smirked. "A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, Mr. Stark," she said. "No, this isn't about some doctor-client privilege. First of all, this isn't a court of law and you are not the Feds. I a.s.sume and presume a crime has not been committed, but even if it was and you were and a crime had been, there is no doctor-client privilege in the United States. Marital privacy, yes. But no doctor-client privilege exists for my legal protection, or for Larissa's."

"So why are you reluctant to speak to me then?"

"I'm not reluctant," she said. And nothing else!

"Do you think she is dead?"

"Anything is possible," said Kavanagh. "But I don't think she is, no."

"So where is she?"

"I don't know."

"Is there anything you can tell me? Besides I don't know?"

"Is there anything you can tell me?"

"I don't know anything! I came home Friday, and she was gone!"

"What did she take with her?"

"Nothing. Not a thing. Not even her car, not her purse. Nothing."

"Money?"

"No, no money. She didn't carry cash on her, and no unusual amounts of cash left our account in the last few days, few weeks." Jared held on to the narrow windowsill, shallow of breath. "You're asking about the money because you think she was planning to go?" he asked weakly. "But she took nothing with her!" He didn'ta"or couldn'ta"ask the follow-up question. Why would she go? Why would she want to?

Why did Jared, with his limited perception, his bewildered mind and exhausted body still feel that this expressionless woman knew things she didn't want to tell him?

"She's been coming to you for months. She never told me why she needed to come. She just said she needed to talk to someone, and I accepted it without argument, without too much worry. She said she wanted her head clear. There was a day in February when she seemed to have trouble coping with things. She said she felt anxiety, sometimes got depressed. It seemed normal."

"Did she seem normal, Mr. Stark?"

Jared intertwined his fingers in a knotted twist. "Doctor, I beg you, don't a.n.a.lyze me in hindsight. Don't get me to discover what I clearly have not discovered. Just tell me what I need to know. I can't play these games. Can't and don't want to. I just want to know what's happened in my life. Friday at four o'clock it was one way, and one hour later it was another. What's happened?"

"Only in your perception, Mr. Stark," said Kavanagh, "has the change been that sudden. I a.s.sure you, your wife's miseries have been continuing for some time."

"What miseries?" he cried.

Kavanagh said nothing.

"You don't want to tell me?"

"I don't," she admitted.

"But she's vanished!"

"I can see," Kavanagh said, fighting for her words, "that this is deeply upsetting to you anda""

"Pleasea"don't euphemize what I'm feeling," Jared said. "Don't cover up my agony with your psychospeak. Just tell me. What? Was she suicidal? Was she having an affair?"

"Yes," said Kavanagh. Like a slap.

It was almost as if he had been expecting it. When the blood rushes away from the heart and the lungs, it's easy to remain sanguine, because you've got no life to react with.

"She was?"

"She was."

"Is that what this is all about?"

"I suspect that since she's not in your home, it might be."

"So she, without saying anything to me or to the children, just up and left without so much as taking her purse?"

"That gives me hope that perhaps she hasn't gone far," said Kavanagh.

"Who was it?"

"I don't know."

"What, she spoke to you about it, but never gave you any details?"

"It was some man she had met."

"Met where?"

"Perhaps on her daily errands?"

"What man, what errands?" Jared was still by the window, grasping the sill with his bloodless hands. "This isn't what happens," he whispered. "This is not what happens. There's a confession. A revelation. The spouse begs forgiveness. The husband is loathe to give it. There may be a separation, followed by counseling. There are reparations, a period of mutual gloom, a blackness in the house. Everything seems pointless. They decide whether it's worth staying together. Many times they decide it is. They try to work it out. What has happened here that is so far from that truth?"

Kavanagh mulled her words. "Sometimes a confession is so threatening," she said, "that most people would rather go on being deceived."

"Not me."

"No?"

"No!" Jared glared at her. "No," he repeated emphatically.

The doctor shrugged in acquiescence. "Perhaps had there been a discovery by you, that's what would have happened. Or perhaps something else would've happened, and she was afraid of it." She paused. "My guess is that's what will still happen. This could be her way of confession, and revelation. When she returns it will be followed by the other things you mentioned."

"She seemed exactly the same!" Jared exclaimed. "She did everything like always. She was beyond suspicion." His voice got lower and lower. "She was a good wife. This makes no sense. It can't be. I don't believe it's true." His voice got louder and louder. "What you're telling me is not possible. That is not my wife."

Kavanagh said nothing.

"Was she unhappy?" asked Jared. "Did you ask why she didn't talk to me?"

"She wasn't unhappy," the doctor replied. "She said she got herself in too deep."

Got herself in too deep. What did that mean? "Did shea" An incredulous Jared couldn't get the words out, "alove him?"

Kavanagh looked into her own twisted hands. "Yes. She said she did."

Jared's legs were weakening. The draining of blood, the evisceration going on inside him made it difficult for him to stand. He took a few shaky steps and sank into the hard chair by the window.

"Mr. Stark!" exclaimed Kavanagh. "I'm very sorry." For a few minutes neither of them spoke. "I tried for months to get her to talk to you, to look at her life in a different way. Your wife loved you and the children very much."

"How could you tell? Do her actions speak louder than her words?"

"She got in over her head. She thought she'd be able to continue living a double life."

"How long had she," Jared asked in a dying voice, "been living a double life?"

"When she came to me," said Kavanagh, "she said she'd already been involved with him for a year."

Jared drooped flaccid against the back of the chair. How long? he mouthed inaudibly. Kavanagh didn't respond.

They just kept on coming. One after another. Gasping to stave off shock, he hyperventilated into his hands; he covered his face. "Are you telling me she was having an affair for eighteen months and I didn't know it?"

Kavanagh said nothing.

"Who was it?"

"She never said."

"Was it one of our friends? Was it Ezra?"

"Ezra?" Kavanagh frowned. "Your best friend?"

"No, her best friend."

"No."

"What, you think that would be beneath her?"

"I don't know. I know it wasn't him. In any case, is Ezra still present in your life?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, then, she is not with him."

"No, buta" He raised his head. "Maybe she was so distraught over what was happening that she killed herself?"

"I don't think that's likely," said Kavanagh. "Have the police looked into it?"

Jared started to shake, from his effort to think, to get his heart to pump again. His lips trembled. "She could've drowned. We may be looking for her in the wrong place. What if she couldn't deal with it anymore, and left us, and him, and ended her own life? Somewhere we haven't been looking." He said this with the fiery excitement of a man on electro-shock therapy, all twitchy and disconnected. "I mean, that's possible, right?"

Kavanagh conceded it was possible.

"There! At leasta" He broke off. "We'll need to broaden our search, widen our efforts." He had to look away from the doctor's slowly blinking raisin eyes. "Did she tell you his name?" He jumped up.

"I don't remember."

He was pacing frantically. "You didn't write it down in your little notebook?" He stopped in front of her.

"Do you see a notebook? And no, I didn't write it down. She did tell it to me once."