" 'Law'! Tell that to the Jews. That the Nazis gassed in the ovens."

"-we have things we believe in, things we would die for, beyond just eating, and territory-"

"These 'beliefs,' they're just flimsy little canoes, O.K. to paddle around in, in good weather, but if there's a storm-it's every man for himself."

Middle Age: A Romance *

How to drive in snarled suburban traffic at Friday rush hour, and simultaneously defend humankind, and civilization, against the charges of a furious fifteen-year-old? Roger heard himself say, in the tone he'd used when Robin had been a little girl gazing up at her daddy with beautiful liquidy-brown eyes, "You're forgetting, Robin: love makes a difference.

Human beings are a species capable of love. Especially within families.

People sacrifice for one another, sometimes give up their lives for one another, it's an instinct. A parent for a child . . ." Roger's voice trailed off hopefully. He steeled himself for Robin's snorting derisory laughter that cut him to the quick, he felt he couldn't bear it.

But Robin surprised him by saying, in a quieter voice, "I was sorry to hear about-you know. Uncle Adam." She mumbled the name as if embarrassed to speak it.

"Oh. Yes."

"Mom told me. After you two talked. Some of it, anyway." She glanced at Roger, intent upon his driving. Something was being exposed in her, a tremulous little flame, she dreaded its exposure. She was roughly kneading her ankle and the surrounding bruised flesh.

"Well. It was sudden. We were all very shocked, and saddened. He died of heart failure, your mother probably told you, showed you the clippings?-trying to rescue a little girl in the river."

"Yeah. I saw. That was shitty."

Shitty! Roger stiffened, he hated such words in his daughter's mouth yet knew better than to protest.

"I mean," Robin said, relenting, "-it was, like, tragic. I got so mad at those assholes, the parents of 'Samantha,' I wanted to, God I don't know!

Drown 'em." She paused, breathing hard. "Did he ever ask, much, about me? After Mom moved us away."

"Of course, honey. All the time. You know, Adam was so fond of you."

"Was he!"

She knew, but had to be reassured. Roger reassured her.

So they talked, about Adam mostly. Roger was relieved to see the Hanover Inn ahead. He was feeling much better about Robin, and she appeared to be feeling better about him. If there was a single adult whom Robin had liked, from her years in Salthill, it had been Adam Berendt.

She said, hesitantly, "Mom was telling me, she'd heard from some friends there, Mr. Berendt had-some things?-people were surprised to find?-in his house?"

J C O*

"What things?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"What kind of things?"

"It's just gossip, you know Mom. She'll say anything people tell her."

"Honey, what kind of things? I'm Adam's estate executor, and I know."

"Mom was saying, she'd heard Mr. Berendt had, like, lots of money hidden away? In boxes? Like, buried in the cellar of his house? Millions of dollars?" Robin was watching him closely. Seeing his grimace, she said, "I never believed it, why'd Uncle Adam hide money like that, if he had it? If, like, anybody had it? You'd put it in a bank, right? I told Mom that. She's so credulous, it's pitiful."

Roger said carefully, "Of course, Adam didn't have money hidden in his house. That's an utterly unsubstantiated rumor."

"I told Mom it sounded ridiculous. Uncle Adam scorned money, he had no wish for material things."

"That's right, mostly."

"I was in Uncle Adam's cellar, a few times. When we were there visiting. I must've been, like, ten. A long time ago."

"Were you."

"The cellar was old. It was sort of creepy. Uncle Adam said maybe there'd been dead people buried there, a really long time ago? Like, if they'd been murdered in the tavern, that the house used to be, they were buried in the cellar. Was that so?"

Roger disliked the drift of this conversation, not knowing quite why. "I doubt it, Robin. Adam liked to tease, you know."

"He was so funny. He could make me laugh." Robin wiped at her nose, fiercely. "Even when there wasn't anything funny, Uncle Adam could make people laugh."

"He had that gift. Yes."

Roger was parking the BMW at the rear of the inn, when Robin unexpectedly burst into tears. He hugged her, she pressed her face against his shoulder. "It's like, it came over me, I won't be seeing Uncle Adam again.

Wow."

They checked into the inn, where Roger had reserved a suite on the top, fourth, floor. The Hanover Inn was an "historic" inn on the Baltimore Pike, many of the furnishings were Colonial antiques. Scrutinizing the high-ceilinged, rather chilly rooms, Robin said, "It wouldn't surprise me, lots of people have died here."

Middle Age: A Romance *

In her baggy khakis, in her parrot-green T-shirt and flannel shirt buttoned tightly over her mature-woman's breasts, Robin stood with her hands on her hips, rocking from side to side as if taking the measure of the place. Elegant surroundings intimidated her, yet also provoked her to childish behavior. Roger, hanging clothes in a closet, saw her twisting her head, winking and smirking at herself in a mirror. The outburst of tears in the parking lot had embarrassed her but excited her as well. Her eyes still shone, she tilted her head to catch the light in the mirror; smoothed the ratty flannel shirt over her breasts, smirked again, and smiled. In the mirror, at a short distance, Robin's round Eskimo-face, her coarse soapstone skin, looked almost attractive. Casually she asked, with the air of a bright student, "Dad! You have a logician's mind, you're a lawyer, and all? What if I told you-this is just a hypothesis, Dad, see?-that a man who looked just like Uncle Adam 'touched' me, kind of, sometimes? When I was-"

Roger turned to stare at her. "Robin, what?"

Robin stared back, deadpan. She'd ceased her rocking but stood with arms akimbo. "What if ? Just a hypothesis."

"You-don't mean it, do you?"

"I told you, Dad. It's a hypothesis. Like, an experiment? In logic? I'm just asking what if."

"Robin, I don't think this is-funny." Roger swallowed hard. He held something in his hand, a wire hanger, and had no idea what he was doing.

Robin said, impatiently, "It isn't funny. It's, like, experimenting with what's real. Like, if you introduced an alien element, sort of, when people are serious? Like in church? At a funeral? Where people just say the same old things? There are counterworlds to this world, you know. Antiuniverses? Our math teacher says so."

" 'Antiuniverses'? What are we talking about?"

"We're not talking about Mr. Berendt per se, Dad. You don't need to look so sick, or-guiltylike, whatever. We're talking about what if. Like in logic. The antiuniverse.' "

"What kind of nonsense is that?"

"You can't prove that an antiuniverse doesn't exist, and as rightfully as our own." Robin spoke in triumph; Roger could hear the echo of a preen-ing adult here, impressing and confusing his young students. He wanted to bang some heads together.

But he said, reasonably, "What can't be disproved isn't scientifically valid as a proposition. It's bad logic, too. Like fairy tales."

J C O*

"Our math teacher says-"

"Tell him," Roger said, hanging the wire hanger in the closet with such force that the handle bent, "he's full of shit."

"Her. It's a her." Robin was elated that Dad should fall into such a trap.

She said mockingly, "O.K., I'll tell her: 'Miss Ringler, my dad, a hot-shit lawyer, says to tell you you're full of shit. Too.' " She laughed uproariously.

Roger backed off, not trusting himself to respond. He disappeared into the bathroom. He would shower, shave for the second time that day. He would cleanse himself of the filth this angry child had dumped onto him as, a naughty little girl, she'd taken fiendish delight in overturning her food onto the kitchen floor for a red-faced nanny to clean up.

O cryptic e-mail exchanges between DEARDEADDAD and NIBOR of the previous summer, which Roger had more or less forgotten until now, was: Why did you & mom get married, it seems like it was such a mistake.

N.

We married for the obvious reason: we fell in love. We were very happy together for many years. It WAS NOT a mistake. There's-YOU.

D.

EXACTLY!!!.

N.

A truce. At dinner in the Inn, soothed by tiny flickering candles like votive lights, Roger and his daughter behaved cordially with each other. They were polite, they were smiling. They were patient with each other; Dad merely laughed at Daughter who kept changing her mind about her en-tree. Daughter had even washed her flamey face, made a gesture toward combing her disheveled hair, removed the offensive flannel shirt and replaced it, over the T-shirt, with a handsome cable-knit black sweater.

She'd dabbed lipstick on her mouth, Roger hoped not in mockery, and was looking, in the flattering light, rather striking, exotic. Smiling at her, Middle Age: A Romance **

Roger wondered if there might be Native American blood in his or Lee Ann's family? Eskimo, or Inuit?

They would not speak again of Uncle Adam. No more hypotheses.

Roger had been shaken by the exchange upstairs but consoled himself thinking, She's angry. Not at Adam but at you. Yes? He would have to accept it, though he believed her anger was unjust. He understood that, this evening, having pushed a little too far up in the room, Robin was now relenting, respectful and wary of Dad. Maybe her own coarse, cruel words had shocked her.

When her food came, Robin ate hungrily. Such a big, growing girl: appetite raged inside her, a fire that had to be fed. A porterhouse steak, french fries, hard rolls with butter. She ate Roger's french fries, drenched in catsup. Roger laughed and joked with her. She was a funny, quick-witted girl, mimicking her teachers, yes, even the revered Miss Ringler was slyly mocked, all adults seemed to her subjects for laughter, so self-regarding, pretentious. Roger couldn't disagree. He was charmed by her.

He wanted to be charmed by her. He ordered a second carafe of red wine.

He was feeling mildly depressed. No: he was feeling optimistic. This is going well. You saw her play hockey. She doesn't hate you. Because they were laughing, and running out of things to laugh about, Roger told Robin about Abigail's misadventure in Middlebury, Vermont. Robin had known Jared Tierney in the Salthill Middle School. "Jared's lucky to be alive, huh?" Robin laughed. "You wouldn't try to kill me, Dad, would you?"

"Robin," Roger said, wincing, though he knew she was joking, "that isn't funny."

"No. I was just kidding, Dad."

"Well. I know, honey."

Eating dessert, pecan pie with a double scoop of vanilla ice cream, Robin said, "You're a pretty close friend of Mrs. Tierney's, I guess, to drive up to Vermont to help her?" She squinted across the booth at Roger, as if she'd only just thought of this.

"Yes. I suppose I am."

"She wasn't one of the women Mom was saying-what she said?"

Roger's jaws tightened. "No, Robin."

"Are you in love with her, now?" The question was playful, almost mocking. But Roger understood the ferocity beneath.

"No. I am not."

"With Abigail Tierney, you are not? "

J C O*

Roger loathed having to answer. When Lee Ann had interrogated him like this, in their bedroom, often as he was undressing for bed and therefore vulnerable, exposed, resenting his wife and yet not wanting to antago-nize her, for he knew how she longed to lacerate both his flesh and her own, how she longed to be hurt, devastated, humiliated-he'd behaved stoically, calmly. He'd thought, I can't let it begin. Now he told Robin what was simply the truth: "No, honey. If it's any of your business. I'm not in love with Abigail." He paused. "She's Des Pres, now. Since the divorce."

Dogged as on the hockey field, trailing after faster players, Robin said, "But. You were in Vermont with her."

"Robin, I wasn't 'with' her. I drove up to help her and Jared. It was a pretty desperate situation. I'm Abigail's attorney."

"Since when?"

"Since a while."

"Is that what you are!-her attorney." Robin pronounced the word as you might pronounce the name of a rare disease.

Roger smiled. A sudden dark fury rose in him. He was watching his daughter spoon ice cream into her mouth, twisting the spoon in a way repulsive to him. "Look, Robin. My work, my profession, my life-you have no right to scorn. My income-"