"Where do you go? Her house?"

"Angie, this isn't" "It is," she said, but quietly, sadly. "This is a small town. I know most of the people in it. I see many of them professionally. It matters to me how many of them know."

"Your image."

"It's more than that. My self-confidence has been shot to threads around here. You tell me I've been wrong. Dougie tells me I've been wrong. I want to know if I can leave here and pretend that I can still do something right."

"You do plenty right. Let's not get overdramatic."

She shot up from her chair. UOverdramatic?

I'm the last person to get overdramatic. I've been walking around for days like nothing's wrong." She sank back down and, quietly again, added, "I'm feeling my way through this. It's new to me. I'm doing my best, but if I ask something that you think is inappropriate, bear with me. You're not seeing things from my perspective." She sighed. "All I want to know is if everyone else in town knew about this before I did."

"No one knows. We've been careful."

"Are you still? Now that I know?" It was an oblique way of asking that other, more frightening question.

"I haven't been with her since you found out.

Not that way, at least."

"But you've talked."

"She's my best friend."

"I always thought I was that."

"You used to be. Then you got so that you didn't have time for me. I was like a piece of furniture. Once I was put in place, all I needed was a little dusting once in a while, a little fluffing up, a shifting one way or another to suit my surroundings. The original buy was the only critical part. After that" he made a disparaging soundUhabit set in."

1 RS ills this a midlife crisis?" she asked, half hoping it was.

Midlife crises passed.

He shook his head. "It's more fundamental than that."

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

"Are we breaking up?"

He was a long time in answering, a time of staring at the floor and frowning. Finally, in a quiet voice and with a wary look, he said, "I don't know. Is that what you want?"

At least it hadn't been an outright "no." She had been worried about that. Belatedly she started to tremble. "I don't want it, no. I like our marriage" "Like you like our goose-down comforter?"

There it was, the bitterness again. Given its depth, it amazed her that he had been able to hide it for so long. Unless he hadn't hidden it at all, and she had just been oblivious, which was his contention.

She couldn't believe she had failed to see or hear something so strong.

"You're very angry."

"Yes, I am. I'm angry that you weren't more attentive. I'm angry that your work is so important to you. I'm angry that you put Dougie before me. I'm angry that I was put in the position of needing something so badly that I had to betray you to get it.

"l am not the bad guy," she insisted softly.

"I didn't intend to do any of that. If you had spoken up soonerreally spoken up, like you are now, instead of just dropping vague suggestionswe might have avoided all this.

Eight years is a long time for you to be feeling bad about something without saying a word."

He lifted a shoulder. "It's done. Water over the dam."

"So what do we do now?" They were back where they started.

He realized it, too. She could see it in the slump of his shoulders.

She remembered when she used to l massage those shoulders, when as a couple they were younger, more dependent on each other, and yes, best of friends. At the earliest months of their marriage, she had loved touching him. Then time had become scarce, and she had lost the knack.

She wondered if she could get it back, wondered if she wanted to. But before she could give the problem the thought it deserved, she was diverted.

"We start," Ben was saying in delayed response to the question she had asked, "by letting Dougie board. It can be for a trial semester, with the understanding that if at any point it doesn't work out, he'll come back home."

Angie was fighting a losing battle. She was on the short end, two against one. "I'm very uncomfortable with this."

"Then let him be a five-day boarder. He can come home on weekends."

That didn't sound quite so badstill bad, just less so. "Will he agree to it?"

"If thats the only option we give him."

But there were drawbacks to that, too. She could think of them all and would have blurted them out, if she didn't have a sudden attack of unsureness. Once, she had known almost everything there was to know, and where knowledge left off, intuition picked up.

Latelyfirst with Mara, now with Ben and even Dougieshe was way off the mark.

"What?" Ben prodded impatiently.

She shook her head.

"I'd rather you say what's on your mind now," he said, "than hit me with an I told you so' later."

She was half-tempted to do just that. He wanted to let Dougie board, she could go along with it and then let him take the blame if things went wrong.

The only problem was that this was Dougie's life they were talkinR about. She didn't want things to go wrong for him, not ever, which was one of the very reasons she was hesitant to let him board at Mount Court. Okay, so she could hear Ben's arguments in favor of it, she could even give them some credence. Still, there was this other.

"It has to do with timing," she began hesitantly. "If we send him off to live at school now, he's apt to think it's because we want him out of the house so that we can either fight or get a divorce. He's apt to worry more there than he will here."

Ben thought about that in silence. In the past Angie might have filled that silence with more of her thoughts. Now she remained still.

Finally Ben said, "He'll do fine, if we handle it right."

Angie waited for him to go on. She was anxious to hear what he was going to say, because it went to the heart of the matter.