Unfortunately it was taking longer than he had ought, and his patience was growing thin.

For that reason he set great store in the upcoming fall break. It was only five days, Thursday through Monday, but it would be the first time that Sara had stayed at the house with him. It would also be the longest period of time they had ever spent together alone. The annual week with his parents didn't count. This was major parenting.

The prospect of it might have unnerved him if he hadn't been so excited. He wanted her to come to like him and to that end planned a dinner out and a shopping trip to Boston. He would take her to a movie, if she would go. He would play Boggle with her. He was hoping to involve her in redecorating the house, if only to make her feel that it was hers.

He was also hoping to take her canoeing on the river north of Tucker.

Canoeing was relaxing and peaceful. It was a tandem activity involving coordination and cooperation and created the kind of atmosphere in which the beginnings of a relationship might be forged, or so he hoped.

He knew he would meet resistance along the way, but he was determined to persist. If the weekend proved a bust, it wouldn't be for lack of trying on his part.

fifteen A NCIE, TOO, WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL break. Well in advance, she told Paige and Peter that they wouldn't see her in the office on those days. She wanted lazy time with Dougiesleeping late, having a leisurely breakfast, knocking around the house, lighting a fire. She wanted him to feel the pleasure of being home.

Had she been the only one involved, she might have pulled it off without a hitch. But there was Ben to consider. For two days, a normal weekend, they could pretend that things were fine, but five days would be harder.

They had canceled the New York trip. Ben hadn't wanted to go in the first place and was happy enough to let his agent do the honors.

Once upon a timej Angie would have insisted that they be there but her days of insisting were done. She didn't feel qualified to insist on much where Ben was concerned. Where once she had spoken for him, she was silent now.

She didn't know what he was thinking, didn't know what he was feeling.

He wasn't saying much to her but came and went, leaving her imagination to account for his time. She had been rarely home. He did his work, then was gone.

She didn't know where he went and didn't have the courage to ask, mainly because she wasn't sure she wanted to know. She did know that the thought of his being with another woman continued to cut to the quick.

Telling herself that something had to be resolved before Dougie came home for a long and potentially awkward weekend, she drove to the house the afternoon before he was due home, saw Ben's car gone, and kept on driving.

She went to the post office in the center of Tucker, but the blue Honda wasn't there, so she continued on down Main Street, past the row of cars parked diagonally in front of the grocery store, the hardware store, the bookstore. She turned the corner and tried the arking lot of the Tavern, then the parking lot of the Tucker Inn. She returned along Main Street, past Reels and the ice- cream shop, thinking she might have missed the Honda the first time around.

Then she went to the library. It was a small gray building with crisp white trim, a relic of Colonial days that was nearly as revered by Tuckerites as the church. When Dougie had been little, Angie had taken him to story hours there, when he had entered school, she had helped him research reports there. When judged by the number of volumes it held, the Tucker Free Library fell short. When judged by the charm of the place and the warmth inside, nothing could beat it.

The blue Honda was parked under a tree. Angie pulled in beside it and sat with her head bowed. From time to time she looked up, but the view was discouraging. Leaves that were a brilliant crimson and gold the week before were starting to fade. With their edges curled, they looked smaller, sadder, more self-contained. Every few minutes, given a fatal nudge l nerem say me gooa newsB tsen s car alon t nave enough leaves on it to suggest that it had been parked for long. The bad news was that it was there at all.

As she had so often in the past weeks, Angie recalled the first time she had set eyes on Ben. She had been drawn first by the air of quiet certainty about him, second by the dryness of his wit, third by the way his smile curled her stomach. He could coax her into taking time off from studying to go to a midnight movie, spend an evening laughing with friends, or climb into the car and drive for hours with the radio blaring their favorite songs.

His lightheartedness had complemented her seriousness. They brought out the best in each other.

She wasn't sure when that had changed. The years between that first day and the present seemed crowded together, twenty-one years of doing everything that had been productive and profitable. Somewhere along the line whimsy had been lost. Their lives had become programmed.

To suit her. He was right. Okay, so she was at fault there, but that didn't justify his taking up with Nora Eaton.

She heard a light tap on the window and looked up as Ben settled against her car mere inches from where she sat. He was wearing the leather jacket she had given him several years before, open to a plaid shirt. His hands were tucked in the pockets of his jeans. He looked healthy, even roguish with the smattering of gray in his hair, but there was neither quiet certainty about him nor a smile. He looked at the Honda, then at the ground, and in that instant, if she had been able to, she would have started the car, backed around, and sped off down the street. But Ben would have been injured, for starters. And then there was the matter of her tears. They came from nowhere and started pouring down her face. It took both hands to hide herself from him.

The passenger door opened and shut. He reached for her and held her with surprising ease over the gearshift. "Come on, Angie. It's not that bad."

"It's terrible!" she cried. The closeness of him, the familiarity of his touch, and the rightness of his scent drove home her dilemma.

"My life is coming apart at the seams!"

"It's just us having some troubles."

"But that is my life. Us is the key to the rest. It's what holds everything together."

He didn't say anything to that, and she herself was wondering where it had come from.

She hadn't planned to say it. But the words had popped out, and she couldn't take them back. They were more right than, career woman that she was, she wanted to believe.

It was a minute before she regained a semblance of control, and then she drew back, groped in her jacket pocket for a tissue, and blew her nose.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to break down. It was a buildup of things, I guess." When he didn't say anything, she took a deep breath.

It shuddered on its way out. "I never thought life could be so fine one day and so terrible the next. Since Mara died" Her throat grew tight again.

"What's happening to us has nothing to do with Mara" "I know." She wanted to say that Mara's death had set off a string of events, because that was truly the way it seemed, but he was right.

The problems with their marriage had nothing to do with Mara.

"Why aren't you at work?" he asked.

She looked anywhere but at him. "1, uh, take time off in the middle of the day sometimes thinking that maybe we can have lunch together, but when I go home, you're never there. Usually I don't want to know where you are. Today was different."

"How so?"

She would have mentioned Dougie's fall break, had she not realized that it was as irrelevant as Mara's death. So was Dougie if they were talking about the future. For the first time, she could accept that.

Holding the tissue tightly in her hand, she said in a broken voice, "I can't keep on this way. I'm not focusing in on much of anything I do, because my mind keeps wandering back to us. I need to resolve things."

She felt an overwhelming defeat. "I had to know if you were with her."

"Today's her day off. Lately I only come here when she's off."

Angie looked up to find him staring at her.

"Is that true?"

He nodded.

"She must have a lot of days off. Your car's never at home." aI drive around," he said in such a begrudging way that it had to be true. "I can't bear the quiet, so I get in the car and drive. There are some days when I start as early as ten in the morning."

Angie might have found solace in the fact that he was upset, had she known something about the nature of that upset. In the past she might have presumed to know that something, but she'd learned better.

"What do you think about while you're driving around?" she asked.

He snorted. "Us. What else?"

He was looking out the window now. Angie didn't feel as much on the hot line herself.

What about us?" she asked.