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“When?” she said, lifting tearful eyes to mine.

“Sometime last night or early this morning. They’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report for a precise time.”

“How?”

“Gunshot. In the temple at close range. With what looked like a medium-caliber pistol.” My voice sounded mechanical.

“A revolver?”

I frowned at the question for some reason. “Or an automatic.”

“Oh, God, God …”

“I’m very sorry.”

She composed herself. “I’ll have to call Merissa.” Then: “How did you find out?”

I sighed, knowing that my story would take its toll on her just as it was taking its toll on me.

“I was the one who found the body.”

She gasped audibly. “Where?”

“On the roadway between the parking lots behind the museum. He was in his red car.”

“The Jaguar?”

“Yes.” I’ve noticed before that details take on an exaggerated importance in circumstances like these.

“Oh, Norman. I’m so sorry. It must have been …”

“It’s okay.” I was touched by her concern. “I drove out with Lieutenant Tracy to inform Merissa. I told her you would call her later.” I found I was drinking my gin and tonic without tasting it.

“How did she …?”

I thought I detected more curiosity than concern in her eyes and voice.

“Shocked, of course. And surprised.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Of course it was just …” I let it dangle.

“I’m going to call her. Will you watch Elsie for a minute.”

I nodded that I would and sat there, trying to amuse the little one, who has a finely honed instinct for knowing when her mother wants to be alone. I tried my foolproof ploy. I signed a familiar sentence. “Let’s take Decker for a walk.” Which worked. It meant getting his leash and snapping it on his collar. Then, with great ceremony, we went out into the garden, where I had begun to prepare the flower beds.

Despite her affair or whatever it was with Heinie, Diantha and I are doing well enough. That had happened during a spell when Di had grown restless. She talked of wanting to move to New York City. We had the kitchen renovated. We bought a new car for her of truck-like dimensions and sturdy enough to survive a direct hit from a howitzer.

Our tastes differ in some important things. She is indifferent, with a couple of exceptions, to objects and antiques, while I, more and more, cherish them. On evenings at home, she will watch a police drama on television while I read. Like her mother, she cannot abide Brahms, whose music for me grows more sublime as I grow older. She is fond of Broadway musicals while I remain all but clinically allergic to the things, a few caterwauling bars of which send me into something approaching anaphylactic shock. But then, I suppose there are inherent difficulties in any marriage where the age differences are as pronounced as ours.

Diantha has her moods. It’s been obvious for a long time that motherhood is no longer enough for most women of her station. Nor, it seems, is her profession. She has what she calls an idiotsavant facility for solving intricate computer programming problems for which companies large and small pay her generous sums of money. At the same time, she yearns for a larger world without quite knowing what.

Out at the lake she likes to lounge on the new deck we’ve put up, while I work in the garden, which I have enlarged considerably with hedges of high bush blueberries, a long lattice of climbing roses, and some dwarf apples espaliered against a south-facing wall. I had to put in a pergola of rough-hewn hickory poles for the wild Concords that grow like great clinging weeds all over the property. Di likes to potter about as well, but with nothing like my newfound enthusiasm. She all but accused me of “crucifying” the apple trees as I gently pruned or eased back their limbs and tied them to the tautly strung wire.

For all that, and despite our ages, we enjoy remarkable stretches of happiness together. Given Elsie’s condition, we are both growing fluent in signing, indeed resorting to it between ourselves from time to time. So that not only our little