“Okay, Hector,” she said, hiding her apprehension. The more she thought about it, the more she felt she had no reference point for this sort of thing. None of it felt quite right now, standing in the open New England air in her summer dress, holding a picnic basket. The girlishness she’d let herself experience earlier was lost. The flirtation she’d allowed herself stung. The noon sun intensified an immense guilt.

In the trunk Hector had found a blanket. “Grace thinks of everything.” Facing the water a few meters from the shoreline he considered where to put it. The ground was hard and stony where it slipped into the brown mountain lake. A breeze blew feebly. It wasn’t enough to cool Iris, who stood holding the basket.

“Here, Iris. Shade. Over there.” Hector had found a wooden table a little way back from the water’s edge. Into the pine woods of white, filtered light Iris made out a stone shelter. Hiking socks hung along a rope tied between two trees, and beach towels and T-shirts draped over bushes like scattered flags. A young woman in a bathing suit came from behind the cabin, chased by a young man in shorts. Sidestepping rocks as she reached the water, the woman dove and swam in strong strokes.

Hector brushed pine needles away and laid the blanket on the bench and the basket on the picnic table. “Madam,” he said, and gestured theatrically.

Iris sat facing the water, her back leaning against the hard edge of the table.

The man at the water’s edge dove in loudly after the girl and when his head surfaced he shouted. “Fuck! It’s cold!” He swam wild, jerky strokes with his head out of the water, not a match for the woman he was chasing, who had reached a floating platform a short distance out and emerged up the ladder like some water nymph. It was a summer’s scene worthy of an American movie, but it only made Iris feel worse.

Hector emptied the basket and came around to face her, offering a sandwich. “Has Grace told you yet she makes the best chicken sandwiches?”

Not looking at him, she unwrapped the sandwich and left it open on her lap. She wasn’t sure what to say. They sat in their silence together while the untroubled voices of the two swimmers echoed across the pond.

“Tell me what you know about her,” Hector said at last.

“About who? The real mother?”

Stunned, he looked at the ground, shifted his weight, and his shoulders rose to his ears. “It was all that dumb talk. What a jerk I am. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Iris put her uneaten sandwich on the table and stood up abruptly. “What am I doing here?” She turned around as if ready to go. It was as if her feelings had finally caught up with her thoughts. “I don’t even know you.” She smoothed the linen dress, which was wrinkled in lines across her thighs. “I’m in the middle of nowhere with a man I’ve only just met on my way to talk to a woman who might be the mother of my child. How unreal is that?”

Hector just looked at her, eyes of a wounded child who’d just been scolded.

“I’ve got to calm down before I lose the run of myself.” She sat again and started to take off her sandals. She had it in her mind to cool down by standing in the water, but changed her mind midway and restrapped them. She turned to Hector and said, “Can we go, please? I don’t want to be here.”

“Yeah, sure, Iris. Sorry. My fault. I thought it would be nice to come here. But it was wrong. I’m sorry. I—”

“Hector! Stop saying that. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I let myself be persuaded this was a good idea, to go looking for Hilary Barrett … with you. You’re just trying to help me.” She sat down again and, looking to the two swimmers in the pond, she said, “I did meet her once, okay? But I can’t tell you anything about her except what she was wearing. And that she was quiet. And very pretty. Young, in her early twenties. She seemed really nice, but it was extremely awkward. You get one chance at a thing like that. You hope for the best. You hope everyone is doing the right thing. The right thing for … for … for Rose. That’s what we all felt. And now, now. Oh! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Let’s go back to Boston.” Hector had jumped up and was already packing up.

“No.” She looked out to the swimmers on the float. “Take me to Becket.”

“What?”

“Take me to Becket.”

“Are you sure?” He stood his full height and came toward her. He put his hands on her shoulders.

She looked up to him and nodded. “At least I can feel that I’ve tried. I know it’s a long shot. Part of me feels now that I’m just going through the motions. On a quest that I already know will end without an answer.”

She felt it again. That buzz in her center, but she eased herself away from his gathering embrace. Now Hector seemed very unsure of himself. “Lily Pond was a bad idea,” he said.

“I felt trapped.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Please.”

His phone rang. He looked at the number. “I’d better take this,” he said, and while Iris put the basket and blanket in the car he walked back to the water’s edge with his phone. The call lasted only moments, but when Hector came back up and got into the car he seemed distant. He drove in silence. Lily Pond vanished behind them and the road flowed away ahead. Now as he drove, one hand on the wheel, he fussed with his hair with his free hand. The man who’d earlier been joyfully engaged in explaining the difference between Real Books and Fakebooks had become subdued. They were another ten miles farther on before he said, “Iris, we should talk about … Hilary.”

“There’s nothing more to say until I meet her. If … I meet her.”

“She…” He hesitated. With his right hand he pulled on the cords of his throat. He pressed his lips together, released them. “She mightn’t be there,” he said.

“I know.”

Approaching Becket, they came through a forested landscape: firs, birch, and beech, oaks and chestnuts. These were more trees than she’d seen in her lifetime. Quieted by the greenness of it all, the manicured, tree-shaded lawns rolling under sugar maples, and charmed, too, by the wood-shuttered windows, she said, “Everything’s so pretty. Anyone would want to live here.”

“Why exactly do you want to meet her?” His question stung and she knew he felt it, too. “Forget it, Iris. I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

Had she not told him about her breast cancer scare? No, she hadn’t. All she’d told him was about her promise to Luke, but not why he had asked it. It had all happened so fast and now here they were.

Well, anyway, he was right, it was none of his business.

“What are you going to say to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She reached into her bag for a hairbrush. “I haven’t thought about that. I mean, I have. A hundred times. But not really, as in, what I would really say if I met her face-to-face. I know it’s right that no one thinks about how the adoptive mother feels, but I have thought about her, I mean, Hilary, a lot. Down through the years. Mostly, I wished I could tell her how well Rose was doing.”

The truth was that in the last few days she had thought about nothing else—what she would actually say when she found her.

“Thank you,” Iris said very quietly. “Thank you, that’s what I’ve always wanted to say, Thank you, for Rose.”

Hector slowed down and eased the Jag alongside a footpath in front of number 43 and parked. “This is the street. Valley View Terrace.”

She glanced quickly at him and then up toward the small, gray-shingled house with a white porch. A row of trimmed, ball-shaped boxwood lined the path and house front like green rosary beads.

“Should I come in with you?”

“No. Thank you. I have to do this by myself.”

Iris got out of the car. She shook her dress and smoothed her hair and walked toward the house. At the front door she looked back. Then she stepped up under the small porch and pressed the doorbell.