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times on his way to and from the courts, until his knees betrayed him a few years back and he’d had to stop playing. She could see him in his ancient sweats, the racket held at his side, rising every so often to map out a stroke. It was as if she had done nothing her whole life but make a study of his movements: her father shaking hands—a slow, graceful greeting, not at all the firm spasm meant to convey power; throwing his head back in laughter as he tried to get through a joke he loved; reading while walking from car to house, anticipating when the slate steps began and reaching for the handrail without lowering his book; listening to music—choral, orchestral, surging—holding his hand up as if to draw her attention to the surge, transported, nearly tearful; staring at her mother in overt contempt. And now here they were, the images, reminding her of all she’d learned. What she had to show for the long work of growing up.
    At the side of her father’s house stood a woman, tall and thin, peering in the kitchen window. She turned at the sound of Flora’s footsteps. She was well into middle age, sixty maybe, with sharp features and veins of gray in the red hair that hung around her shoulders, wearing a green scarf, a purple vest, and sensible-looking Mary Janes. Had a five-year-old dressed her?
    “Flora?” the woman said, approaching.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m Cynthia Reynolds. A friend of your father. I heard I might find you here—I ran into Mrs. J. I’d left a message yesterday, but then thought I’d just stop by.”
    A message. In the garbage can. There had been three messages.
    “The machine broke,” Flora said. “Finally. The thing was a relic—I’d given it to him years ago and—”
    “It’s really so lovely to meet you,” Cynthia said. She wasn’t interested in the machine. She was searching Flora’s eyes, searching for him, maybe. But she wouldn’t find him there. It appeared she might cry. She looked down at her feet and said, as if by explanation, “I only just arrived.”
    “How do you do,” Flora said, and shook her hand, as Cynthia’s eyes moved past her, into the house. “Won’t you come in?”
    “Please.”
    Cynthia hung her vest on one of the hooks along the wall by the door, next to one of Flora’s father’s well-worn Darwin College sweatshirts: a familiar, almost proprietary act. To get to the kitchen they each had to step first over the body bag, rather rudely unzipped in the middle of the floor. Her father’s manuscript poked out of the opening, and Flora threw her coat down over it and kicked the suitcase out of the way.
    “I was just going to make some coffee,” Flora said.
    “That sounds lovely.” Cynthia moved to the kitchen table and sat down, unbidden. But of course he had friends. Friends who spent time here. He had a life. A life with other people in it.
    “You also teach at Darwin?” Flora asked as she filled the kettle with water. Someone had to speak, and it was a safe starting point. Almost everyone who lived in Darwin taught at the college, or that was how it felt. It was like Hollywood, a one-industry town, though less glamorous, and possibly meaner.
    “Yes, art history, nineteenth-century European,” Cynthia said. “You look so like him, you know?”
    “No,” Flora said. She wished she had bathed. Did she still smell of bus and sleep? “Actually, I look like my maternal grandmother. The family joke was that all her genes were dominant, like everything else about her.”
    “Oh, I see a strong resemblance.”
    “I think you’re the first.”
    “Modiglianiesque,” Cynthia said, undeterred, smiling warmly. Her teeth were even, and small, and stained. “Long-necked, long-bodied. I always thought he was, and you certainly are.” Always? She always thought? Cynthia followed this bold observation by turning shyly to stare out the window, apparently down to the flower beds below, where moments before she had stood outside, looking in. As comfortable