FIFTEEN.

FOR A MOMENT, Curt couldn't move. As if someone had injected him with one of those poisons that paralyzed a person, he couldn't breathe, couldn't lift his hand, couldn't blink his eyes. His heart stopped beating.

Just moments ago, it had been beating so hard, he wouldn't have been surprised to see it burst through his ribs. The s.e.x-d.a.m.n, it wasn't s.e.x. It was love. What he and Ellie had just experienced transcended s.e.x. It transcended their bodies. It was the most intimate, the most personal, the most emotional connection he'd ever felt with a woman.

s.e.x was what he'd experienced with Moira. They'd enjoyed each other, satisfied each other, but his soul had been light-years removed from the act. The evening at her hotel room in Boston, he'd been half-crazed with hunger and self-loathing. The few days they'd spent together in California, he'd been a little less crazed and a lot more riddled with guilt. When he'd volunteered to travel to California to finish up the Benzer deal, he'd known the real reason he wanted to fly to the West Coast. Whatever happened between him and Moira during that trip had been intentional. Curt had known what would happen. He'd hoped it would happen.

But once it had happened, he'd been riven with guilt, not just about Ellie but about Moira. Had he been using her? Taking advantage?

Late that Sat.u.r.day night in her elegant Pacific Heights condo, he'd tried to push back the guilt. That had been about as effective as pushing back the ocean with his hands. He'd done a deplorable thing to his wife and his marriage. He'd broken vows. No matter how desperate he'd been, how angry, how alienated from Ellie...he'd inflicted damage that was probably irreparable.

"What happens tomorrow?" he'd asked Moira.

"You go to the airport and fly home," she'd replied bluntly. "I meet a boyfriend for brunch." He must have seemed startled, because she'd added, "Come on, Curt-we both know what this was. Fun, friendship, something to tide you over until you figure out what you want to do about your marriage. Don't turn mopey on me."

He hadn't turned mopey. He'd been relieved to learn that Moira was as detached as he was, that her emotions hadn't been involved and no commitment, acknowledged or unspoken, had been made.

As she'd predicted, he'd gone to the airport and flown home the next day. He'd spent the entire flight thinking about what he'd done and what he wanted.

Not Moira. Not loveless s.e.x. His body had appreciated the workout, just as it appreciated a five-mile jog on the treadmill at the fitness club. But he'd realized, as the jet carried him back to Ma.s.sachusetts, that what he and Ellie had was so much richer than a brief fling with an old friend. It was profound, precious, essential.

What they'd had. Could they ever have it again?

Tonight, on Ellie's fiftieth birthday, he had his answer. They could have it again. They'd had it just moments ago.

Except for Ellie's confession afterward. I killed him. She might as well have plunged a knife into Curt's chest.

"What are you talking about?" he asked when he was finally able to make his mouth function.

"Peter's death."

He hadn't misheard. His heart started beating again-too fast. A chill spread through him; even Ellie's body, nestled against his, couldn't warm him. He inched away from her, sat up and stared at her. She looked normal. She looked beautiful, in fact, her skin flushed, her hair tumbling in glorious disarray around her face, her cheeks marked by glistening tracks left by her tears.

She'd killed their son? No.

"Ellie. If you unplugged his respirator or something, slipped him an extra dose of medicine-"

She cut him off with a shake of her head. Then she sat up, too. She kept her gaze focused on her hands in her lap, as if unable to meet his eyes. As well she should be, if what she was saying was true.

"I sat by his side that whole time, Curt," she said. "When he was in the hospital. I prayed for him. I held his hand and talked to him. I sang him lullabies. Even if the doctors had told me he was brain-dead, I couldn't have unplugged him."

"Then you didn't kill him," Curt said, feeling his panic begin to drain away.

She shook her head again. "It's my fault he died. He came home from school that day with a terrible headache and a fever, and I sent him to bed. I told him it was nothing. I gave him some ibuprofen and left him a bottle of Gatorade."

"Ellie-"

"If I had recognized the symptoms, if I had erred on the side of caution..." She lifted her face to him, and he saw nothing but despair. "If I'd gotten him to the hospital right away, he would have lived."

"You don't know that."

"They would have started pumping antibiotics into him sixteen hours sooner. It would have saved him."

"Maybe it wouldn't have."

She ignored Curt's remark. "I didn't rush him to the hospital, or even call his doctor. Instead, I told him to go to bed. I shrugged off his illness. I'm a nurse, Curt. I should have known. By the time we got him to the hospital, it was too late to save him. A day earlier, it wouldn't have been too late."

He was about to repeat that she couldn't say with certainty what might have happened if they'd gotten Peter to the hospital sooner. The fact was, she knew better than he did. She was a medical professional.

What if she was right? What if her delay had cost Peter his life?

He turned away. His gaze settled on the black TV screen across the room from the bed, and its blankness provided a frame for his thoughts, a backdrop for his memories. He recalled the evening Peter had fallen ill. Curt had poked his head into Peter's room and Peter had said he felt lousy-although, as Curt remembered, Peter had used a stronger word. And then apologized for using it. He'd been himself that evening-a tired, headachy version of himself, but Curt had certainly seen nothing in Peter's behavior or symptoms to cause alarm.

Ellie hadn't viewed Peter as a patient, either. She'd viewed him as a mother and done just what any other mother would have done: she'd ordered fluids and bed rest.

But what if? What if quicker action on Ellie's part could have saved Peter's life? What if he'd died because they'd gotten him to the hospital too late?

On the other hand, what if they'd rushed him to the hospital that evening and he'd still died? What if in their haste they'd gotten into a car accident and all three of them had died? A person could strangle on what-ifs.

All the twenty-twenty hindsight in the world couldn't bring Peter back. That was the bottom line. Peter was dead. Ellie had done the best she could. So had Curt. And they'd lost their son.

"If I'd gone to medical school," Ellie said, "I would have recognized the symptoms. But I didn't want to be a doctor. I let everyone down. My family, my professors...and my son."

"Ellie." Curt twisted back to her. "If you'd gone to medical school, Peter would never have existed. You would have been in school for years. We would have put off having children until you were established. Different sperm would have met different eggs. Katie and Jessie wouldn't have been born. Neither would Peter. If you'd been a doctor, you might not have wanted three children-or any children at all. You might have decided to devote yourself completely to your career."

"How would you have felt about that?"

If he hadn't had children, he wouldn't have known what he was missing. But..."I wanted children," he confessed. "We talked about that, back at Brown. I always wanted to be a father. If you'd decided you didn't want to be a mother..."

"You wouldn't have married me," she said, completing the thought.

He contemplated that possibility before answering. His own words echoed in his head: We've always had honesty. Now wasn't the time to stop being honest. "I probably wouldn't have married you," he conceded. "Part of what made me love you was that you wanted children. You wanted to create a home with me, and a family, and our own special world. If you weren't that way, I wouldn't have loved you."

"Would you have married me if you knew my stupidity would lead to the death of one of our children?"

Again he thought long and hard before replying. "You're sounding a little like a doctor now-like you've got control of who lives and who dies. Like you're that important."

Her eyes flashed. She looked indignant but also intrigued.

"You're not that important, honey. Sometimes fate decides these things for us. Fate or G.o.d or whoever you want to blame. Sometimes we can do everything in the world, and we still can't keep a terrible thing from occurring. We're just not that powerful, Ellie."

She seemed doubtful.

"We're only human. We make mistakes. I made a bigger mistake than you."

"You didn't-"

He held up his hand to silence her. "It doesn't matter. We made mistakes. But we loved Peter, we loved him as much as any two parents can possibly love a son, and we'll always love him. You don't get one without the other. If you're human, you make mistakes and you love your children. And we're human."

She sighed, evidently unable to argue. Instead, she sank back into the pillows. Her eyes grew shiny with fresh tears. "Do you know why I stopped seeing the therapist?"

He shrugged. "I a.s.sumed it was because she wasn't helping you."

"I stopped seeing her because she was wrong." Ellie sighed shakily. "She told me I refused to let go of my pain because I feared that if I let go of the pain, I'd be letting go of Peter. If I stopped hurting, it would be as if I'd finally lost him for good. But as long as I still hurt, he still existed for me."

"And that was wrong?"

"I held on to the pain because I felt responsible for his death." She sighed again. A tear streaked down her cheek to her chin and dripped onto the curve of her breast. "I couldn't feel happy ever again. I couldn't feel joy. I didn't deserve it. I didn't deserve to have a husband who loved me, and daughters who admired me. I didn't deserve lovemaking. I didn't deserve pleasure. I'd killed Peter, and I had to suffer for my mistake." She aimed her shimmering gaze at him, as if seeking absolution.

Her confession tore at him. Even tonight, when he'd been making love to her, she'd held back. He'd thought she was just rusty after such a longtime, or may be unable to open herself completely to her faithless husband. Now he realized the truth: she didn't believe she was ent.i.tled to that kind of fulfillment. She'd fought the ecstasy as long as she could before finally giving in to it.

"You should have told me what you were going through," he said. "All those months, that long, dark stretch when I just couldn't reach you, you should have told me. Instead, I a.s.sumed you were satisfied just to shut me out. And I acted like an SOB. I did a terrible thing. If only I'd known-"

"I didn't know. How could I tell you what I didn't know myself? I knew I'd done something tragically wrong, I knew I didn't deserve your love anymore-but I don't think I actually figured it all out until this evening, watching the movie."

He glanced toward the black screen again. What in the movie had led her to her epiphany?

"There was a period when I actually thought I was ready to face life again. It occurred to me that you didn't deserve to do penance for my sins. So I tried to pull myself together. I tried to be happy. I even thought I'd make love to you. I'd let human warmth back into my heart."

"What happened?"

"You came home from California," she reminded him.

He cursed.

"Bad timing," she said with a poignant smile.

"Oh, G.o.d, I remember. You'd made a fancy, candlelit, welcome-home dinner for me."

"And I'd cleaned Peter's room."

"Yeah." He recalled his shock when he'd carried his suitcase up the stairs that Sunday evening, preoccupied with how he was going to break the news to Ellie about his affair, how she would take it, whether his compulsion to tell her the truth would destroy her for good. As he'd pa.s.sed Peter's bedroom, he'd paused, his attention snagging on something. Nudging the door wider, he'd realized that the computer was off. The bed was made with fresh linens. All the teenage-boy clutter had been removed from the floor and that d.a.m.n bottle of Gatorade had vanished from the night table.

The altered condition of Peter's bedroom had disoriented Curt. For a few strange minutes, he'd wondered whether he had entered the wrong house that night, whether the cheerful woman arranging a gourmet feast downstairs in the kitchen was really Ellie, whether his flight had delivered him to some alternate universe. Whether sleeping with a woman who wasn't his wife-sleeping with a woman he didn't love-had transformed him or transformed the world around him.

He'd recovered from his shock. But he remembered how tense and unnerved and desperately afraid he'd been.

"So I decided to go to Africa," Ellie said. "I figured that if I could save enough lives over there, it might make up for what I'd done to Peter here. Pretty ridiculous, I guess-my traveling to a foreign country to cleanse the stains from my soul."

"You did save lives there," he pointed out.

She shrugged. "I saved a boy's hearing."

"I said it downstairs, and I'll say it again. You are not a failure, Ellie." He faced her fully, took her hands in his and held them tight. "You are not a failure. You've saved the lives of sick children. You didn't save Peter's life because you couldn't. And you shouldn't have become a doctor because that wasn't your calling. It wasn't your destiny."

She studied him as if he had all the answers, all the wisdom. He didn't. h.e.l.l, he knew how to negotiate a d.a.m.n good deal with other lawyers, how to litigate when negotiation didn't work, how to threaten and cajole and get all the conflicting parties to a mutual understanding and a workable agreement. He knew how to wash dishes and clean gutters and how to maneuver a hot sports coupe down a winding country road. He knew how to howl like Warren Zevon singing "Werewolves of London" and how to bench-press a hundred pounds. He could hold his own on a golf course and at any social event. He knew how to argue politics without offending too many people, and how to charm his in-laws when they were driving Ellie crazy.

He knew how to love. He loved his daughters so much, just thinking about them caused his heart to swell painfully in his chest. He'd loved his son and would continue to love his son for all the days he had left to live.

And he loved Ellie. No matter what. For better or worse. He loved her.

But wisdom?

"What is my destiny, Curt?" she asked.

"To live each day?" He tossed the idea out for her consideration. "To embrace each day? To wring as much pleasure as you can from it? To try your best?" He contemplated, then added one more choice for her: "To forgive yourself, Ellie. To love yourself as much as I love you, and to be as forgiving with yourself as you are with me. That's your destiny."

She gazed at their hands, clasped between them. "That sounds like a good destiny," she said.

"What was it in the movie that helped you to figure everything out?"

"Oh. The movie." She peered past him at the television. "I don't know. Seeing myself at all those different ages. Remembering all my doubts and insecurities. I always thought I had to be perfect, and I always fell short. And this voice inside me whispered, 'You fell short with Peter.'"

"Can you forgive yourself for not being perfect?" Curt asked.

"I guess I'll have to."

He smiled. If she could forgive herself, their marriage would survive. If they could talk this way, if they could always be this honest, whether the honesty was brutal or gentle, they would never leave each other. When Curt had given Ellie his heart, the gift had been forever.

She had been his destiny. She still was.

He turned so he could lean back into the pillows, stretched his legs and curved his arm around Ellie, drawing her against him. Her cheek was damp against his shoulder but he didn't mind. He imagined his cheeks were a bit damp, too.

His hand brushed the remote control on the night table, and he scooped it up and pointed it at the television. He hit the b.u.t.ton to turn the TV back on, and then the pause b.u.t.ton to restart the movie.

"Don't cry for me, Ghana clinic," crooned the singer in his now-familiar voice. Curt grinned, imagining Katie in a sound booth with some guy, taping him as he sang a dozen different versions of that Evita tune. The singer must have considered her nuts. Curt wondered if Katie had had to pay him, or if he'd done it for free, as a favor. Maybe he was a friend.

Or a lover. Maybe he was as in love with her as Curt had been with Ellie at that age. If Ellie had ridden the bus up to Cambridge and asked him to stand in Harvard Square, at the busiest intersection in the city, and belt out a silly song, he would have done it without hesitation.

He was astonished to realize that his daughters were as old as he and Ellie were when they'd met. Now they were embarking on their own lives, seeking their own destinies. And Curt knew there was no way to protect them from the terrible things that might befall them. All he could hope was that they would be able to forgive themselves.

"Ellie returned home from her African adventure at the end of July," Jessie narrated. A video-Katie had brought her digital video camera to Logan Airport to film Ellie's homecoming-showed Ellie waving as she strode toward her waiting family in the crowded baggage-claim area at Terminal E. The camera bounced as Katie ran toward her mother. She filmed Jessie hugging Ellie, and then a wild arc of their surroundings as she kept the camera recording while she herself hugged her mother. Then she filmed Curt's approach.

He'd been apprehensive that day. Had Ellie come home ready to mend things with him, or determined to continue on her adventurous new life without him?

For the sake of the girls, he supposed, she'd smiled at him, given him a brief hug and turned her cheek toward his mouth for a kiss. She'd looked gorgeous, her skin darkened by the sun, her hair threaded with streaks of silver, her body taut and trim, her posture straight and her gaze determined. All he'd wanted to do was fall to his knees, right there in the terminal, and propose marriage all over again. If he had, though, she would have said no. For all her strength and confidence, he'd felt her reserve when he'd kissed her cheek. His lips could have gotten frostbite from the chill.

But the girls hadn't sensed anything amiss. They'd filmed the reunion as if it were the happiest moment in Curt's and Ellie's lives.

"Ellie's African sojourn was a fabulous experience," Katie continued in the narration. "Everyone who saw Ellie could tell. She glowed with a new spirit." The film showed Curt lifting her suitcase from the baggage carousel, and Curt and Ellie walking toward the exit, the suitcase between them, the way her trip to Africa had stood between them.