"It's never too late for anything."

"You begin to feel that it is, and that's all that matters. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"She could have quit her job."

"That's easy to say, but I love what I do, and I believe Ellen did, too. When I dispatch an airplane every night that's going to be in London the next morning, or reach up and put my hand on the side of an aircraft engine, I still get the same charge I got the first time I ever did it. I love this business. I love the moving parts and every different way things can get screwed up. I love how hard it is to put it all back together, or to just keep it together on any given day. I love Majestic Airlines, and being part of a great company, even with all the demands that come with it. It's my home. It's more of a home than I ever had. I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't the person who did this job."

I took the ball from between his feet, stood up, tried another shot, and missed again. "Maybe that's why Ellen joined the dating service."

"Why?"

"To find out who she was outside of this job. Could be you talked her into believing it wasn't too late."

I walked across the court to retrieve the ball. My arms felt heavy as I leaned down to pick it up. It was the same heaviness I always felt when I allowed myself to think about my life, my choices, and the things I wished I'd done differently.

"You gonna tell me you feel that way, too?"

"I'll be thirty-two in a few months. I have no husband, no kids, and no prospects. I don't even have a dog. My apartment in Denver is filled with boxes I never unpack. Boston is supposed to be my new home, but I've been here two weeks and I've spent about five minutes thinking of finding a place to live. If it were up to me, I'd probably stay in temporary housing until it's time to move again. It makes it easier to leave that way."

I squared to the basket, dribbled twice, and really focused. If Ellen had believed that it wasn't too late, I envied her. When I let the shot go, it arced perfectly, angled off the glass, and swished through the net. The bank was open, as my dad always used to say. I looked over at Dan. He was watching me with his chin in his hands, elbows on his knees.

"No," I said, turning back to face the basket, "I don't think I'll be seeing Paris. But maybe Tulsa's not such a bad place. At least that's what I tell myself."

The ball rolled into a corner and died.

Boston-in-Common looked more like an art gallery than a dating service. It had polished hardwood floors, subtle indirect lighting, and small photographs with large mats punctuating smooth bare walls. It felt expensive and minimalist, and I felt out of place. I'd never been near a dating service before, and as far as I was concerned I could have gone my entire life without visiting one. Not that I'd ever had much luck on my own, but there was something about the arranged aspect of the whole affair, the forced conviviality that seemed so artificial. The very idea gave me the willies.

"Welcome to Boston-in-Common. May I take your coat?"

A young Asian woman with perfect, pale skin, red lipstick, and a helmet of precisely trimmed, gleaming black hair came out from behind her chrome desk and waited for me to slough off my coat.

"Sure, but it's pretty wet." I pushed a clump of matted hair out of my face. My newspaper-umbrella hadn't provided much cover, and it was not a good day for suede pumps, Scotchguarded though they might be. I felt as if I was standing on two wet sponges. "I have an appointment with Julia Milholland."

"Yes, we've been expecting you, Ms. Shanahan. Would you like to freshen up?" I took that to mean, "You look like hell and you ought to at least comb your hair," but I smiled and she pointed the way to the ladies' room.

When I looked in the mirror, I had to admit she was right. I hadn't been sleeping well, my running schedule was screwed up, and I wasn't eating right, all of which made me grumpy. I was spending my time either at the airport or digging around in Ellen's life, and my complexion was beginning to take on that Dan Fallacaro pallor. I felt even more disheveled thinking about what kind of place this was and why people came here. There wasn't much I could do except pass a comb through my damp hair and pretend I was supposed to look this way. I'd never been much good at primping.

The sound of heels on hardwood preceded the arrival of Julia Milholland. She was what people called a handsome woman, impeccably dressed with unusually good posture. Though she was probably closer to sixty, she looked fifty, and when she introduced herself she asked me to call her Julia. How convivial of her. Perhaps it was my own state of mind, but as I followed her back to her office, she appeared exceedingly well rested to me.

After she settled in behind her desk, she clasped her hands together and smiled at me across her desk as a pediatrician would smile at her patient. "Now then, Alex, let's get you started."

"I apologize if I misled you, Ms. Mil-Julia, but I'm not here to sign up for the service. I'm here to ask you about one of your members." I handed her my business card. "Ellen Shepard."

She didn't even glance at the card, much less take it. I laid it on the desk.

"I'm sorry," she said stiffly. "If I had known, I would have told you over the phone and saved you the trip. We are very protective of our clients' privacy, and I can't tell you anything unless you have Ellen's permission."

My shoulders sagged. I'd assumed she knew about Ellen. I don't know why. It's not as if someone had sent out announcements. Now I was going to have to tell her. I sat up straight in my chair and pushed that stubborn hair out of my eyes. "I have some bad news, Julia. About Ellen."

She turned her head slightly. "Oh?"

"She died. Two weeks ago."

An elegant gasp escaped from her lips as she touched her chin lightly with her fingertips. "Oh, my. I just talked to her last… oh, dear. What happened?"

"It appears that she took her own life."

Her hand moved to her throat, her fingers searching for an amulet hanging from a gold chain around her neck, some kind of a Chinese character. She found it and held on tight. "That poor, poor woman."

"Did you say you just spoke to her? Because I saw in her mail that you were trying to contact her. I had the impression you were having a hard time."

Julia, still holding the amulet, was considering my business card again and not listening. At least she wasn't answering.

"Ellen didn't leave a note," I said, "and when I found your name in her mail, I thought you might be able to help. I assumed that she was a client."

"Yes and no."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Let me tell you how our process works, and I think you'll understand." She let go of the necklace long enough to peel a form off a stack at her elbow and pass it across the desk. "When a client signs up at Boston-in-Common, we ask them to fill out this questionnaire, and then sit for a seven- to ten-minute video."

I looked at the form. A background check for a cabinet post couldn't have been more thorough. The questions were what I considered to be personal, some deeply, and I felt exposed just reading it.

"Information from the questionnaire goes into our database. We run comparisons until we find a match. The two clients, the matches, read each other's questionnaires and view each other's videos. If they both like what they see, we get them together."

"Did Ellen do the questionnaire and the video?"

"She sat for the video over a month ago, I think." Julia paged back in her desk calendar. "Yes, it was Tuesday, December 2. She brought her questionnaire with her when she came in. I made a match for her almost immediately. It wasn't hard. She was shy, but I found her to be very attractive and quite charming with a wonderful sense of humor."