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My father nodded. "He's one of my regulars. For maybe fifteen years now, week in, week out, except for this last week. He came by yesterday, right after your mother left. She almost hit him pulling out of the driveway. He asked me where she was going in such a big hurry ..."

"And you told him."

"I did," he said. "That's the guy you were asking me about?"

"Thomas Coleman," I said. "You didn't know his name?"

"He probably told me once, but I forgot it," my father said, shaking his head. "I never thought it was important."

I could picture Thomas telling my father, I'm Thomas Coleman, and then waiting for my father to recognize the name and say, I'm so sorry for what my son did. I'm so sorry about your parents, so sorry for everything. Finally, though, Thomas realized that he wasn't going to get satisfaction from my father, so he tried to get it from me. I wondered if things would have been different if my father had recognized Thomas's name and apologized, if one apology really could have made all that much difference.

"How about the bond analysts?" I asked. "Do you know them, too?"

"The who?" my father asked, and I described all five of them. When I was done, my father nodded, and said, "That sounds like the writer and his assistants."

"The writer and his assistants," I repeated.

"Five guys came around a couple of days ago, but only one of them talked. He said he was writing a book about you; he asked if I could tell him anything about you that he might not already know."

"So you showed them the letters," I said, already knowing he had. "I can't believe you showed them the letters."

"He said he was going to portray you sympathetically," my father told me. "He said he was on your side."

"Didn't you think it was suspicious that there were five of them and not just one?" I asked.

"It takes a lot of people to publish a book," he said. "Trust me, I know."

"Dad," I said, "do you still work at the press?"

"No," he confessed. "I'm retired." This could have been the same kind of retirement as my mother's, but I didn't care enough to ask, and I didn't have to ask where he went during the day, either, every day, even on a Saturday. My father had been at Deirdre's for three years, and I guessed he still went there.

"Does Mom know about Deirdre?"

"She does and she doesn't," my father said. "It's hard to explain."

"Try," I told him.

"Bradley, we need to go." This was Deirdre, right behind me. She might have been there the entire time, listening to us. I didn't turn to face her, though. I didn't look at my father, either. I kept my eyes fixed on the kitchen table as he hauled himself out of his chair and out of the kitchen. As he passed by me, my father put his hand on my shoulder and left it there for a couple of beats. When he did that, I didn't hate him anymore, I really didn't, and maybe this is why people do so many hateful things to the people who love them: because it's so easy to stop hating someone if you've already started loving them.

Then my father lifted his hand and made his shuffling way out of the dining room. His hand was replaced by Deirdre's face: she leaned over me, with her chin practically on my left shoulder. She was too close to actually see, to focus on, and I wondered if anthropologists and people from other planets knew this: that it's better to look at alien cultures and worlds from afar, because if you're too close, you don't see anything but pores and the makeup that people use to try to cover them, and you don't smell anything but warm hair and toothpaste, which was what Deirdre was to me that morning as she whispered, "Your father and I have been happy for a long time. And then you came back. You should never have come back. Don't you dare judge us."

Then she was gone, too. I heard her slam the front door on her way out of the house. I waited several minutes so that I wouldn't have to see my father and Deirdre outside, in my father's car, arguing or commiserating or consoling. I drank my beer slowly, then walked into the kitchen and put the can on top of the refrigerator,