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set, which was now showing a commercial for a weight-loss program. “Everything okay?” he whispered.
    “I’ll speak to you later,” Diana said to her father. She hung up the phone, slipped it back into her pocket, and turned to her … what was Doug, exactly? Her boyfriend? Her lover? Her man on the side?
    “Everything’s fine,” she said, and did her best to sound as if she believed it.
    Doug gave her a puzzled look. “Catch up later?”
    “I’ll text you.” That was how they communicated, by texts, like love-struck teenagers, all abbreviations and emoticons: Need 2 C U. UR MY HRT. Silly little things, and yet she cherished every letter, every emoticon. Doug moved her, in a way that no one, including her husband, ever had.
    As if to confirm that unhappy truth, her telephone spasmed in her pocket. She lifted the phone to her ear. “Hi, honey.”
    “Diana?” asked Gary, whose voice was low and rattly, due to his extensive allergies and the hay fever he seemed to have for ten months out of the year. He sniffled, cleared his throat, and said, “Um, did you hear about …”
    “I saw.”
    Gary paused, fumbling for the words. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” She crossed the room and opened her locker. There were her running shoes, a pair of shorts, a sports bra, and a ripe T-shirt that she’d shucked off after a lunchtime five-miler two days before. It would do. She tucked the phone under her chin and started unbuttoning her lab coat. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “Well, right,” Gary stammered. A great stammerer was her Gary. “I mean, of course not. But it’s just …”
    “It’s a shock.” She shoved her feet into the sneakers, then bent and gave the laces a hard yank. “It’s appalling.”
    “It’s a surprise,” said Gary. “I thought your dad was one of the good guys.” Gary sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. No surprise there. Of the two of them, Gary had always been the crier. He’d cried at their wedding and when Milo was born, both occasions during which Diana had remained dry-eyed (although, to be fair, during the birth she’d also been heavily drugged). Gary, she’d thought more and more frequently as the years went by, was more of a girl than she was.
    “Listen,” he was saying, as Diana pulled the running bra over her head. “I know we were supposed to go out tonight …”
    “And we should,” she said, grimacing as the fragrant T-shirt settled over her shoulders.
    “Are you sure? We can reschedule.”
    She shook her head. This was typical Gary, looking for any excuse to stay home on the couch. “We can’t reschedule. We’ve already rescheduled twice, and the gift certificate expires next week.” They’d won the dinner at Milo’s school auction last year. She’d bid for it, paying too much money and not caring—it was for charity, and Gary would never take her anywhere fancy without some prepaid prompting.
    His voice was very small. “You don’t think people will stare?”
    “Let them stare.” She banged her locker shut. “I have to go.”
    “I’ll see you at the restaurant,” he said before she ended the call. Instantly, her telephone started buzzing again. She reopened the locker, threw the phone into her purse, retrieved her iPod, slammed the locker shut again, and walked swiftly past the receptionist on duty, a pale, pie-faced thing named Ashley.
    “I’m taking my break,” she announced; Ashley cringed and nodded and started to say something before Diana cut her off.
    “I need you to call my sister,” she said. “Lizzie Woodruff. Her number’s on my contact sheet. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes. Please ask her to meet me here.”
    “Yes, Doctor,” Ashley whispered, and then Diana pushed through the door to the stairs, taking them two at a time, until she came out on the steaming, humid pavement. Then she went running down Spruce Street, east toward the Delaware River