"Why? Did the other job not work out?"

"Well, this is the thingaI don't know if you would be interested in maybe having a live-in, but you know, I have been in child care my whole adult life, and in Slovakia, I lived with a family of eight childrenathat's a lot, right? And I did everything for the mother, I helped her, and I cooked, and cleaned, and took care of the kids, and then I lived in London for three years as an au pair for a woman with three children. You could call her for a reference, and then here in America, I worked for four years for two different families, and they'll tell you, I did everything for them, so I'm saying, I could help you, and you wouldn't have to worry about anything, your kids would be taken care of, and I'd do homework with them, and I love sports and playing outside. I'd take them to their after-school programs, and I know you said your youngest boy liked arts and crafts, well, I love arts and crafts, and I could do lots of stuff with them, and also I could walk your dog, because I bet she is lonely being by herself during the day; your mother-in-law, she probably doesn't walk her, does she?"

"No," Jared said slowly, "no, she doesn't. She's got arthritis. Makes it hard to hold the leash."

"Well, that's what I'm saying. Do you still have the reference letters I gave you last time? Because I can stop by tonight to drop another copy off if you don't have them."

"No, I probably still have them somewhere."

"I could start anytime for you. I don't have to wait till next Monday. I know it's Tuesday right now, but if you want, I can start tomorrow. And because I'd be a live-in, I won't need as much money. Oh, and I know you were worried before about me taking time offa"

"I wasn't worried."

"No, I could tell. You were. You thought it was too much time. And you were absolutely right. I won't take any time except when you go away. I'll just work around your vacation time. Because it must be hard for youaYour wife, she's not back yet?"

"She's not back yet."

"That's what I'm saying. It's not a bad deal. It would cost you less than a live-out."

Jared was quiet.

"Are you okay, Maria?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she a.s.sured him. "I just wanted you to know I was still available if you needed someone."

"To live in? But what about your husband? I don't think husbands like that very much, their wives living somewhere else."

She started to cry.

Jared turned his face away from the door in case someone came in, and pressed the phone tighter to his ear, as if Maria were crying right in his office and he didn't want his staff to hear.

"Well, this is the thing," she said. "The husband went on a fishing trip to Florida before Thanksgiving, and said he'd be back in two weeks, but two weeks pa.s.sed and he wasn't back, and wasn't picking up his phone, and then finally over the weekend he called me and said he wasn't coming back at all, and he was going to send a friend of his to get all his stuff from our apartment. So I locked his friend out, and he called the police, and told them it was his apartment, which it technically isa"his name is on the lease, but we're marrieda"but the police are like, lady you have to move, so I don't know what to do, and the landlord, I found out, hasn't been paid since September! So now they're telling me I owe four months rent on an apartment they're kicking me out of! I mean, is that crazy, or what?"

"That's crazy."

"So I have a double problem. I need a place to live, and I have to earn enough to pay the landlord so he doesn't sue me."

"Plus the husband is in Florida."

She cried.

Jared hired Maria and paid her back rent. They bought her a bed and she slept in Michelangelo's room like Mary Poppins in the nursery.

After the tree went up, and the season to be jolly sped by, Jared and Emily were wrapping Michelangelo's presents on Christmas Eve. The radio was playing Christmas carols, Jared poured his daughter a little punchless eggnog, while he punched his up with a dose of brandya"and rum and whiskey besides. They were casually chatting, about how happy the little boy was going to be with his Hot Wheels set and his Batcave and his Star Wars Lego ship, and Emily said, "Dad, what do you think happened to Mom?"

Jared blanked, stood there with the wrapping paper in his hands.

"I don't know, honey," he said at last. His mouth twisted, he was looking deep inside for a diplomatic thing to say, for the elegant thing.

"You don't think she's with Che, do you?"

"No," said Jared, knowing more than he wanted about Che and Lorenzo. "I don't think your mom is with her. Detective Finney told me she hasn't used her pa.s.sport to leave the country."

"What do the police think happened?"

"Finney doesn't know." Jared was making a mess of the wrapping. The scissors didn't function in his hand. The Scotch tape didn't tape. "He thinks she may havea"

He stopped, looked at his daughter. With her clear brown eyes, her open face, her ready smile, her straight brown hair, her light and steady posture, she looked so much like Larissa. So much like her and yet nothing like her. For Larissa had something else. The commonplace, yet unique. The eye-fooling thing. The heart-fooling thing. The mirage that told him she was all there.

The truth was in their bed, when she appeared wholly to be hisa"but wasn'taand soon, disappeared entirely, like a magic trick, like Houdini in the wilds, a vanishing act: drink dirty martinis by the jamb of the door, smiling, wiling away the hours, candles burning on windowsills and mantels, while you are planning the impossible, hiding the impossible, hiding the missing fundamental part of yourself.

The part that would stop you.

What would Emily like to hear? What would a child prefer?

"What, Dad?" Emily stopped wrapping. "What? Does Detective Finney think Mom had some kind of accident?"

Jared shrugged. "He doesn't tell me."

Emily vigorously shook her head and resumed wrapping. "No." She forced her voice to become steady and firm. Just like her mother used to. "No. She's just traveling. You'll see. She'll be back."

"Ema"

"She will, Dad. I know Mom. She'll be back."

"But what if shea"

"No. She is alive. I know it. I feel it."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"You'd prefer that?"

"As opposed to what?" Emily put the garlands down.

He put his whole soul down. He couldn't face her, couldn't reply to her.

"So what do we do? We wait?"

"We wait," said Emily. "But we live our life, too."

"Well, we can hardly help that part." But how did Jared do that? Live his?

"That's right. Soon it'll all clear up. It'll be all right, Dad. Don't worry." She patted him on the back.

He waited for more wisdom from his teenager. All she ever learned, she learned in kindergarten. It will be all right if you put a Band-Aid on it. And then pat the wounded on the back with a brief word of comfort. "And if it doesn't?"

"I don't have all the answers, Dad. I'm only fifteen. Ask me again in a few years." Emily grinned. "But in the meantime, it's not too early to start thinking about my sweet sixteenth. I want to have it at the Swim Club. I'm thinking of inviting a hundred peoplea"

In the new year Jared went to see Dr. Kavanagh. She seemed stunned by his reappearancea"if he was here, that meant that Larissa wasn't here. Or perhaps it was his appearance. Jared was pretty sure he didn't look like the same man. His hair had gone gray. He'd lost a remarkable amount of weight. The saddle of what had happened sloped his shoulders downward, the weight of it had shortened him. He felt half-man standing before her.

Kavanagh herself didn't look too good. She looked collapsed. She was thinner, though that seemed impossible; she had started out so small. The bags around her eyes, the sallowness of her skin; Jared hoped it was the light, the lack of it. She really didn't look well. But then neither did he. And so they stood at the open door and eyed each other warily until she spoke. "Do you want to come in?" and he said, "No. But I will."

In her office he paced once or twice from the window to the couch, and finally sat. When he looked at her again, she seemed so tired. She wasn't curled up in the chair, she was just sitting, her hands falling onto her knees.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm a little under the weather. I'll be fine." She coughed. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure. Yeah, doing swell. Work is good."

"Kids?"

"Kids are good."

"They've adjusted?"

"As much as you can adjust to this sort of thinga"

"Kids are resilient."

"Yes."

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"Seeing? You meana? Um, no. Not like that. There's a woman I work with who comes over on Sat.u.r.days, brings her two boys. We have dinner, the kids play."

"Is she nice?"

"She's nice." Jared was uncommitted. "A bit of a whiner. I'm not much for that. You know, everything's going to h.e.l.l in a handbasket type of whining. I don't know what she expects me to do about it. I'm like, welcome to the club, sister."

"That seems insensitive. She must know about your situation."

"She does. But you know how quickly people forget."

"Yes."

"She says to me, I've been so unlucky in love. This is what she said to me! I mean, come on, that takes b.a.l.l.s, don't you think?"

"Yes." Kavanagh shook her critical head.

"I said to her, listen, you've been unlucky in love? Everybody's unlucky in love! What do you think love is, anyway? You think it's all dinners and walks on the beach? That's not love. Love is seeing the laundry, the unclean kitchen, the tired husband who still wants s.e.x, love is the everydayness of it, and you know what? It's not s.e.xy. It's not romantic. It just is. Like the kids. There will be one or two moments of pure joy, that oh my G.o.d feeling, like, I can't believe they're my kids, but most of the time, it's just doing doing doing. It doesn't stop. And even when you don't feel like it, don't feel like checking their homework or worrying about dinner or listening, or bathing them, or watching TV with them, you still do it. That's love. And you know, this woman looked at me like she had no d.a.m.n idea what the h.e.l.l I was talking about."

Kavanagh laughed. "Who takes care of the children for you these days?"

"Things are actually okay on that front," said Jared. "Larissa's mother was helping for a while, but she had a minor stroke and couldn't drive the car. She's better. Still lives with us."

"Larissa's mother is living with you?" Kavanagh seemed sharply surprised by that, as if she knew things. "That's good, Jared," she said, calling him by his given name for the first time. "That's very good."

"Is it?" He shrugged. But he knew Kavanagh was right. It was good. "But this girl I interviewed back in September came to live with us. Maria from Slovakia." Jared paused. "I hired her before Christmas. We're a little cramped at the moment. I never thought my big house wouldn't have enough room. But my mother-in-law is in the guest room, and Maria sleeps with Michelangelo."

"Is she working out?"

"Yeah, she's great. She does everything. I come home, the kids are clean, the clothes are folded. Her husband ran off to Florida, so she's not exactly a ball of sunshine. But for me it works out great. Exceptashe cooks thisaSlovakian food that the kids and I are not used to." Jared smirked. "The kids are like, Dad, what's sauerkraut, what's kielbasa, what's barley?" He shook his head. "So Maria tries goulash, almost edible. Or these cookies made with sour cream. Listen, I'm not complaining. She works hard. I'm thinking of getting her a Betty Crocker cookbook."

"For when, Valentine's Day?" Kavanagh kept a straight face.

"What? No. Just because. Not as a gift. As a hint."

"Ah."

They sat for a few minutes in silence. He was hunched over, his elbows on his knees, looking at the carpet and his black shoes. She was squired into a tight twist roll, looking into her lap, breathing noisily.

"I'm not all right," Jared said.

A wilted mouth told Jared of Kavanagh's disappointment. As if she had a personal stake in this. "You seem better than before."

"Well, yes. Before, I walked like a dead man. Now I'm waking up to things. It's the end of January. There hasn't been a single word. She hasn't even sent a letter to the kids! I mean, how can that even be?" He clenched his uncomprehending fists.

Kavanagh stayed silent.

"Doctora?" A faint interrogative. He took a breath. "You said she'd be back."

"I've been wrong about many things in my life. I'm hoping this won't be the last." She broke into a nasty coughing fit.

"Do you think she'll get in touch eventually?"

She didn't look at him. "I don't know. Do you?"

"I don't think so," he admitted. The look in Ezra's eyes from the summer continued to p.r.i.c.kle Jared, burn him. That might be a conversation for another day: how to resume his intimate friendship with people he couldn't face. Maybe Kavanagh would tell him he needed new friends. "If she had wanted me to find out, I would've found out. It wouldn't have taken much."

"More than it took."

"Yes. But she wasn't just careful. She wasn't just meticulous. She was preternaturally scrupulous. I mean, she took thousands of dollars from our account in practically singles! She knew I examined the account, so she did it in tiny increments, making sure I wouldn't notice. She left behind her license, but got herself a new one, as if she wanted to give herself a head start to wherever she was going. She left her pa.s.sport behind, but got herself a new one. Why would she need a pa.s.sport, Doctor? She's never been out of the country, not even to Mexico. Last time I checked, Hawaii was still a state in the union. She doesn't need a pa.s.sport to go to Hawaii, does she? She didn't take any of her clothes, as if she wanted me to believe she just stepped out."

"What's your point?"

"It was a commando operation from the start. It was a tactical nuke. I was ambushed. I know you keep wondering how I could've been so blind. What I'm saying is, I don't think she was hoping I would find out. Just the opposite. She was hoping I would never find out."

Kavanagh sat. Her hands squeezed together.

He sat defeated. To a medical professional, as if to a secular priest, Jared couldn't for certain, for one hundred percent, for absolutely, deny whole-heartedly that he wouldn't have killed her if he found out. His face felt too hot, even now; his heart, too.

"Don't be fooled by the premeditation," said Kavanagh. "For her it was nothing short of agony." She paused. "And I use that word deliberately. Agony, the suffering preceding death. The anguish of her choicea"to stay, or to go. To lose her life, to regain it. I'm sure what she is going through right now is nothing short of the same."

Jared stood to go. There was nothing left to say. "What do you think this is for the rest of us?" he asked.