She studied her fingers. If he didn't know, and if she wasn't supposed to tell him, where did that leave them? Holding her tongue, she looked up and waited.

After what seemed an eternity, he said, "There are two issues. One has to do with what's going on between us. The other has to do with him and the space he needs."

"They're connected," she said, and regretted it the instant she heard his drawl.

"Obviously, but one is more easily solved than the other." The drawl gave way to something more serious. "I think we should let him board at school."

She shook her head fast. Everything inside her rebelled at the idea, but she didn't say a word until Ben asked, "Why not?"

She calmed herself. "Because he's too young."

"He's in eighth grade. Mount Court kids start boarding in seventh."

"But if he's failing Spanish, he may need more suDervision." She had a cursory knowledve of the language and tested him regularly on vocabulary.

"He isn't failing Spanish," Ben corrected.

"He failed one test. And he might get better supervision at school, what with mandatory study halls every night."

"He'll be overwhelmed, being with kids constantly."

"Maybe. He'll probably say that that's better than being here every night. You smother, and I work. And he's a lonely only. It would be different if he had a sibling."

"We agreed that one would keep us busy enough."

"You agreed. Another Angie dictum."

"Well, damn it, you didn't argue, so you're every bit as much at fault!" She thought back to when Dougie was little. She couldn't even remember their discussing having another child. They had planned everything just so to allow for Angie's return to work.

They had planned? Or she had planned? She had the awful thought that it was the latter.

"Well," she said with a discouraged sigh, "it's a little late to be talking about this now. Just like it's a little late to be talking about Dougie boarding. The semester's already begun. I doubt they'd take him."

Ben guffawed. "Mount Court? For the price of room and board, they'd take a baboon."

Angie felt as though she were in a game of tug-ofwar, with Dougie in the middle and Ben on the other side. "Do you have no qualms at all?"

she asked bewildered.

"Of course I have qualms. I love the kid, too. I like having him around. But he wants this, Angie."

"He also wants a car for his sixteenth birthday, but that doesn't mean we have to give him one."

"Not the same at all," Ben said. "A car is a luxury. Granted, boarding is, too, but at least it's an experience with some merit to it."

"You're right. Boarders learn great things." l !

"You don't think he'll learn those things anyway? You don't think he knows that some cigarettes don't have tobacco in them? You don't think he knows what the term druggie means? Come on, Angie, get real. He's a bright kid. He's a normal kid. He'll be discussing girls' breasts with his friends whether he boards or not, and if he wants a condom, he'll get one without asking you to buy it."

"He's only fourteen!" she protested.

"It doesn't mean he's going to use one, but guys talk about it for years before they do it." He put a hand on the back of his head and held on tight. Angie hadn't seen that gesture since the day they had moved to Vermont, when the moving company had dropped his computer.

"Jesus, Angie, think about it, will you? You raised the boy. For fourteen years you've been teaching him to be honest and considerate and hardworking. Those values are part of him now.

It's not like all of a sudden he's going to forget themunless you put him in a little cage and make him break his way out by whatever means he can find. Give him air, Angie. Trust him a little."

"Like I trusted you?" she blurted out.

The words hung in the air. For the very first time, she saw guilt on his face.

ill did, you know," she said more quietly. "I assumed you believed in fidelity. It never occurred to me that you would have an affair.

Never occurred to me."

His hand was on the back of his neck now. He let out a breath. "It wasn't intentional. It just happened."

"For eight years?" she cried. "Ben, you get real. If it had happened just once, I might have been able to buy the fact that it wasn't intentional. But to continue it for that long?

You're a bright guy. You know what's happening in the world. You can sit over dinner and tell me about the latest scandal that's breaking in the government. Sometimes it has to do with money, sometimes perks, sometimes sex. I can't count the number of times you've talked about some man who was cheating on his wife. Didn't you see that you were doing it yourself?"

He looked away. "Of course I did."

"Do you know how much it hurts?"

He looked back at her, and though she hadn't planned it, tears came to her eyes. She brushed them away, lest he accuse her of being manipulative, but they came back. Ignoring them, she asked, "How did you get together with her?"

"It's not important."

"It is to me."

"Well, maybe I don't want to talk about it."

"Because it's special? Because it's yours and not mine? Because you're afraid I'll try to control it somehow?"

"Because, damn it, I shouldn't have said anything. I knew you didn't expect it. I knew it would hurt you. I may have blurted it out in anger, but that isn't how the thing itself has been all this time. I didn't do it out of defiance. I did it because I had a real need that wasn't being met."

A need Angie hadn't filled. She felt grossly inadequate for the hundredth time in a week, such that it wasn't quite as shocking as it had been at first. She couldn't do everything, be everything. She was coming to accept that.

Ben leaned against the wall with his arms folded and his ankles crossed, studying his deck shoes. In a weary voice he said, "I always go to the library to read the periodicals. She was there. We became friends."

"When did it become more?"

"I don't know."

Angie waited.

Finally he said, "We probably knew each other a year before it happened."