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“And you will the fruits too,” she said.

By the time she brought out oranges and strawberries, he had told her everything he could think of about Cincinnati, Kentucky, and New Jersey, and he had become thoroughly informed about her wholesalers, orchard suppliers, and favorite customers—the guy with the tattoo of the Virgin, the old couple with the Great Dane who pulled them everywhere, the homosexual couple with a fondness for artichokes, the matron who offered frequent updates on her fibroid problem. Caroline rose to fetch a sharper knife for the fruit. Returning to the table, she brushed his arm with her hand, and he pressed his hand on hers, almost involuntarily, as if the gesture were a part of speech. But it was momentary.

While she was clearing the table, he ducked into the bathroom, where he faced lingerie hanging on an ornate collapsible rack. Dainty things—placed there deliberately? The bidet looked like a good place to give a small dog a bath. He steadied himself by gazing at his hard, lined face in the mirror. His unblinking eyes.

It pained him to remember how mechanical and inattentive sex had become with Loretta in the last couple of years of their marriage. He had, however, shared a few passionate nights with a flight attendant he saw on some of his London trips. She was a purser, somewhat older than most of the attendants. Her name was Penny, and she was planning to retire from the airline and start a florist’s shop. She took him to the Coventry flower market, where she bought flowers for her room—something she always did, she said—and she pressed a small white flower into the lapel buttonhole of his jacket. At Loretta’s funeral all the flowers made him remember Penny, and he wept.

He had rationalized infidelities to Loretta by telling himself that his sporadic overseas flings were an alternate reality. He believed she would understand that. He could come home and enter into her world as if he had never been away. He was a false-hearted fool.

He studied Caroline’s lingerie. He imagined slipping such garments off her youthful body.

But the image was off-kilter. It would be like seducing a friend’s daughter, he thought. Robert Lebeau, the buoyant, active résistant. How could he have become the sad man in the photos, the bad father to Caroline?

If Annette had not survived the war, she could not have become either Robert’s wife or his mistress, he thought.

“CAN’T YOU STAY?” Caroline asked when he emerged and checked his watch. “I will make coffee.”

“I have to get my beauty sleep,” he joked. “And I have to make some phone calls to the States.” A lie.

“Don’t go yet,” she said.

They sat on the divan with another glass of wine, and then the dog began whimpering.

“Go away, Bobby. Wait.”

The dog padded out of the room. But he quickly reappeared, whining insistently.

“I must take Bobby out. He cannot hold himself long.” She eased into her flung-off sandals.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “I need to leave.”

“Non, non, et non! Come with me and then we will return.”

She fumbled with the leash, murmuring to the dog as if she was sharing intimate secrets. The sounds blurred—her key in the door, the jingle of the leash, her whispering to Bobby.

Her walk was something of a prance, the self-aware gait of a woman who had a man’s attention. It was dark in the small park they passed. Marshall found himself praising Bobby’s absurd little merde production. Robert Jules Lebeau was going through his mind, flip-flopping images of hateful man and good man.

“It’s too early for you to go home,” she said.

“I’m an old man. I get tired,” he said.

She touched his arm. “I would make you coffee.”

“No. Thanks. Really.”

“Are you bothered with me?” she asked as they turned down a broad street.

“I’m sorry. I’m just finding it so hard to get the story about your father straight in my mind.”

She didn’t reply for a moment.

“He was not a father to me,” she said.

“No.”

“Let’s stop at this café,” she said, tugging his arm. The tables were not crowded, but on the sidewalk a woman with a stroller of twins in pink rolled by, almost