So I say now. And who’s this “us,” as in “none of us”?

Did you not know you were the object—or is it the subject?—of gossip? We were all sure you were fucking.

Well, we weren’t! she typed.

But then, startled by her own quickness to respond, to respond so emphatically, she began to think about it, her afternoon with Ian, remembering it more and more clearly through that day, through the next few days. The visual images arrived first—the silver drops falling behind his dark shape on the porch. The golden light on the leaves of the birch trees. The deepening twilight inside the studio as they talked.

And then the other details. (“Sticky,” he’d said.)

It came to her that the difference between fucking and what they’d done was what Graham might have called “pretty technical.”

How ridiculous, then, her prideful response to Gertie! In fact, the whole thing slowly began to seem laughable to her. And as her memory of the events sharpened, she recognized that over the years she’d created a particularly self-forgiving version of it for herself. That she’d been attracted to Ian, but had said no. It’s what she had confessed to Graham much later, her noble, noble confession. It’s what she had told Edith. And wasn’t it essentially what she’d said Thanksgiving weekend to Sarah, too? A sweet flirtation that hadn’t meant anything. Something like that.

But now she was remembering more and more her own part in it. How exciting the slender, muscled quality of his body had felt to her when they danced, when they lay down together, the otherness of it. She remembered, with a sense of surprise, that she had argued with herself about whether or not to sleep with him over the days that preceded the rainy afternoon.

She remembered the last night she saw him, wanting him to stay with her. Not wanting it. But really, wanting it. Crying when he left.

She remembered too asking her question of Graham those months later—the question about Ian’s books, and the sense she had immediately afterward of having done something wrong to Graham.

In late January, Lucas emailed Annie to say that Ian Pedersen was going to be reading at the bookstore. Just FYI, he wrote. No need for you to go. I didn’t mention anything about you to him. But just in case you want to see what “really old” looks like . . .

Then the postscript: The book, by the way, is doing okay. Not quite as okay as we had hoped. But then that never happens.

At first she didn’t plan on going. She had no wish to confront the version of herself that had been interested in Ian. Interested in Ian because she’d been furious at Graham. She had remembered that detail also—her anger.

Which brought with it its own humiliation when she recalled the reasons for it: she’d been so sure that her life was moving in a different direction from Graham’s, that he was holding her back. (It was at this point that it occurred to her that she might have thought of Ian at the time as a handy instrument of revenge. Admittedly a strange, private revenge. One she wouldn’t reveal to Graham. But was that part of the affinity between them, then? The use she might make of Ian in her anger at Graham?)

She suspected that Lucas was at least in part just trying to get her out of the house when he wrote to her about the reading. It seemed her friends took turns at this. But she reminded herself now that there had been also increasingly the sounding out of her possible readiness to meet someone. The odd tentative suggestion. Perhaps someone’s widowed brother? (This from Edith.) Or divorced friend? (Don.)

Her no to these invitations had been automatic, but now, with Lucas’s quasi-invitation, she began to consider it. And in the end, she decided she would go. Go, to see how Ian had weathered the years—she recognized her curiosity about that. Go, to see how she might respond to whatever the new version of Ian would be, without the complication of being married to Graham. It had been long enough, after all. It would have been long enough even without Graham’s affair with Rosemary, but perhaps that gave her a more powerful permission.

Why not? she thought.

Why not?

And maybe he’d have no memory of her. Fine. She was curious, anyway—or at least interested—to hear him read what Lucas had admired so, to buy the book.

And if he did remember her, if he was interested in her, they might have a brief conversation. That was probably the most likely outcome. A brief conversation.

But even that she looked forward to, she realized. An evening out, a conversation with a probably perfectly safe man. Any other possibilities seemed unlikely, and she tried not to let herself entertain them.

Annie was sure she’d be late. Just as she was leaving the house, she remembered that the cat was outside. She went onto the back stoop and called and called, her breath pluming thick and white in the light over the back door, but Sam didn’t turn up.

She didn’t really worry about his wandering. He had disappeared occasionally before, but he never went far from the yard—he hadn’t in Karen’s day either. Still, it would be a long time for him to be out on a cold night. She felt bad about leaving.

And then she felt anxious because she was going to be late, which made her realize how much she’d been looking forward to this evening, to seeing Ian again. She hadn’t fully acknowledged that to herself, she understood now, walking too fast to the bookstore over the icy sidewalks. She was breathless and frazzled by the time she arrived—a bit early, after all. She bought the book, she went to the open area for readings at the back of the store to find a seat.

There was a decent audience, Graham would have said.

Disappointing, Lucas would have said.

But the new owners (she’d met them, Sid and Olympia, a youngish couple) were as smart as Graham had always been about the number of chairs set up—never as many as you suspected you might need, in case it turned out you didn’t need them and the place wound up feeling disappointingly underpopulated.

In this case they’d set up about ten rather narrow rows, rows that were already about two-thirds full when she arrived. She waved to a couple of people she thought of as “Graham’s writers,” and sat near the middle, in a row with two or three empty seats.

Something about the store felt different to her. She had the sense that things had been rearranged somehow since she’d last been here. She looked around, but she couldn’t quite figure it out—what the difference was. It was a bit disorienting, so she stopped trying. She took off her coat. She opened the book to the back flap to look at the author photograph.

She wouldn’t have recognized him. His hair was white and cut close to his head, which made him look quite other. Tougher, she thought. None of that androgyny stuff anymore. She read the short bio, then the acknowledgments, then the dedication. There was nothing that signified wife to her, or even lover.

She felt self-conscious, suddenly. Foolish. She shut the book.

The rows had almost filled, and now a couple of store workers were setting up more chairs, the metal clanging and clattering. She watched the people arrive, and she waited.

At about five past the hour, Sid, the new owner, moved up to the podium, trailed by a tall, lanky man—the new, white-haired version of Ian. Sid welcomed people and read through the announcements of upcoming events. He had none of the palpable energy and enthusiasm Graham had brought to this task—the asides, the jokes. She thought of the way he used to worry before each of these evenings. Then his happy, busy hosting of things once they got started.

Sid introduced Ian. She’d been watching him the whole time. He looked the same in some ways—in many ways. His face was lined, she could see that even from where she was sitting, but it was lined kindly, gently, as if a faint netting had been set evenly over his features. He was dressed a bit like a cowboy (jeans, boots) but then wearing what looked almost like a woman’s shirt—white, slightly belled, no collar—and over that, a brown tweed jacket so old it was almost shapeless. He’d grown a mustache, which enhanced the cowboy look. (She remembered then how contemptuous Graham had been of mustaches when they came into vogue in the 1980s. He thought they signaled an absurd kind of vanity. Well, what about the mustache and beard upon his own face? she’d asked him. Completely different, he said. This was the way facial hair was meant to grow. A mustache by itself—he’d shaken his head pityingly—was an artifice.)

She’d forgotten Ian’s voice, how soft it was, how gentle. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and almost everyone more than three rows back called out “No!” in a ragged chorus.

He adjusted the mike so it was closer to his mouth. “Better?” he asked.