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said.
    She sounded horrified, like a teen scared of exposing weakness to a tutor, reminding Sam again of how young she was.
    â€˜I’m sure Linda would gladly organize some extra rehearsals,’ he said. ‘Though it’s Mondays and Thursdays from next week, so that should help.’
    â€˜I’d rather it was just the two of us, just this one time.’ Billie stuck to her guns. ‘So I could really feel I was getting somewhere before next week.’ She paused. ‘I’ll understand if you say you don’t want to, only please don’t.’
    It was exactly like talking to a kid.
    Sam sighed. ‘You’d have to come to my house. We could work in the lanai.’
    And Claudia would be around.
    Grace’s sister, who’d been horrifically widowed last year, had moved to Sunny Isles Beach a few months back, close to where Saul – Sam’s adoptive, much younger brother – and Cathy shared an apartment. And with his dad and Mildred just up in Golden Beach, all of them in easy reach of the Bay Harbor Islands, where Sam and Grace lived, they were spoilt for choice when it came to babysitting.
    And in this case, chaperoning.
    Better safe.
    â€˜That would be just great,’ Billie said. ‘Tomorrow?’
    â€˜I’ll have to run it by my sister-in-law,’ Sam said. ‘She’s staying with us while my wife’s away.’
    â€˜Taking care of your little boy?’ Billie said. ‘Joshua?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Seven o’clock, if it’s OK with her?’
    â€˜Sure,’ Sam said.
May 11
    Grace’s address – titled ‘Irrational fears and phobias in the young teen’ – began at nine a.m. on the penultimate morning of the conference.
    She was buzzing with tension, her pulse racing, but she took a calming breath, conjured up a favorite image of Sam and Joshua playing, and took in her audience.
    Those whose faces she could see looked expectant, interested.
    Having no viable alternative, she began. ‘The title of my talk this morning is misleading. One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions of the word “irrational” is “not based on reason”.’
    She paused, plucked a single face out of the front row.
    Female, fortyish, anonymous.
    She talked to her.
    â€˜It seems to me,’ she went on, ‘that any young person has an incalculable number of reasons to experience fear of some sort. Being a still-growing, developing, unfolding human is both fascinating and terrifying. And even those children and young teens most capable of superficial toughness – the ones who appear to skate through – are often deep-down scared.
    â€˜I know I was,’ she said. ‘Weren’t you?’
    In the long, narrow foyer just outside the conference room, a young man watched and listened through the slightly open glass doors.
    And smiled.
    He had wavy brown hair and rimless glasses, and he was dressed in a well-cut gray suit, blue silk tie and perfectly polished shoes.
    A middle-aged woman in a navy-and-white-spotted dress came out of the room, moving carefully, quietly, so as not to disturb the speaker or her audience. The young man held the door open for her, and she nodded her thanks.
    He stepped inside the room, took out his phone.
    Went on listening and watching.
    And, every now and then, discreetly, took photographs.
    Sam called Grace before he took his shower.
    Five a.m. in Miami. Eleven in Zurich.
    Her printed schedule stated that the talk after her own was set to begin soon, which meant that Grace’s phone was probably switched off.
    She picked up instantly, which told him she’d been hoping he’d call.
    Which he loved.
    Something to be said about separation, perhaps – so long as it was brief.
    â€˜It’s early,’ she said. ‘You should be asleep.’
    â€˜I should be speaking to my wife,’ Sam said. ‘How’d it