“Explains what?” I said, purposely keeping my own voice low.

“Well, he hasn’t been around here since … I don’t know, years. And he used to come regularly. He used to do the Figawi race with us.”

“The one to Nantucket?”

“Yes, we do it every Memorial Day. At least one boat. Sometimes my uncle enters his boat, too, but Paul used to always be there and I bet we haven’t see him since—”

“Nineteen ninety-nine?” It was a guess, but not a wild one.

She moved her lips, counting to herself. “You know, it could have been. I really don’t know. It’s been a long time.” She took another somewhat sloppy sip of her coffee. “A river guide, huh?”

“I was just wondering if anything happened the last time he was here. I mean, I know he loved to come to the Cape and he loved the race and he was good friends with Peter.…” I ran out of reasons why I might be asking these questions and hoped she would pick it up from there.

She did. “Well, I’m six or seven years younger than those guys and I’m trying to figure out the last time I saw Paul, whether I was in college or at Putney.”

Our muffins arrived, my muffins, with appropriate fanfare. “Here’s your muffins,” said Maxine. One plate, two muffins, banged into the middle of the table. Cory absently picked the edge off the bran muffin and began to nibble at it.

“Didn’t you guys used to have parties at your house after the race?”

“Well, usually, yeah. There was always something going on.” She must have liked the bran muffin because she took another piece.

“And was there a party the last time he was here?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. The race back from the island is on Monday and there’s always a post-race party in Hyannis and then people tend to wander over to our house and stay the night, so, yeah, there could have been. But, see, 1999 was the year I graduated from Putney, and graduation was the week after Memorial Day, so I probably went right back to Vermont that day.…”

She was drifting off, so I gave her what I had, twisting it only a little. “Nineteen ninety-nine was the last time I heard from him. He said he was coming up here to race on The Paradox—”

“I don’t like that name,” she said. “I told Ned I wasn’t going to race on it anymore unless he changed it—”

I talked over her, tried to get back on point. “He told me Peter was going to crew and Jamie and you—”

“Peter? Well, that should be easy to figure out, because he hasn’t raced in years, either. Let me see, he was just like a first-year med student at Northwestern when he had that trouble down in Palm Beach and I know he was up here after that went away. So what is it? How many years is med school—four? So, 1996, ’97, ’98, ’99. Yeah. And after that he didn’t come anymore. He was an intern or whatever out in San Francisco and said he couldn’t get the time off. So if Paul was sailing with him, the last year it could have been was 1999.” She seemed pleased to have figured that out and ate more of my muffin.

I was pretty sure I was no longer in love. It wasn’t fair, I realized. She was answering my questions without guile or subterfuge, taking me at my word as to the reason for my interest. And yet something about the way her mind meandered, the way she bopped about in her seat when a thought occurred to her, the way bits of bran muffin stuck in her teeth—I wondered what it would be like waking up next to her in the morning. I wondered if she would be attractive at first light, if she would expect me to get up first, open the curtains, run the shower till it was hot, water the plants.

Cory drank more coffee and smiled at me. It was a genuine smile, a lovely smile. The bits of bran muffin had disappeared.

I said, “So Peter, I can understand. But I’m wondering if something could have happened that weekend that affected Paul.”

Was I being too direct, too obvious?

“Like what?” Cory said, still smiling.

“Look.” Emboldened by what I had gotten away with so far, I set off on a new lie. “That was the last time any of his old crowd heard from him, that weekend of the race. After that he seems to have taken off out west, almost as though he was trying to get away from everything in his old life. Sort of escape, maybe.”

She was still regarding me as if she and I were the only ones in the café, but the look of confusion had crept back into her eyes.

“So there was your cousin Ned, your cousin Peter, your cousin Jamie—”

“Jamie’s my brother.”

“Sorry.” Cory’s appeal took another slight tumble.

“Okay, the three of them, plus you, Paul, and a guy named Jason Stockover—”

“Who?” She blinked, thought about it, then sparked again. “Oh, Jason, I remember him. He was so cute. Okay, it was my graduation year, because that was the last time he ever came and I had such a crush on him and then I never saw him again. So, okay, 1999 it was.”

“You know what happened to him? Know where he is?”

“No. Like I said, we never saw him again. He went to Deerfield or Dartmouth. One of those green schools, because he had a dark green baseball hat with a white D on it.” She finished, and there was a new clouding on her brow.

I had to ask what was wrong.

“You know, it’s kind of funny because we had such a good time. But you think about it and there were, what, six of us, and three of them never sailed again. I mean, like I said, Peter has an excuse, but our two friends, to just never hear from them after that …”

“Which is why I’m asking if something happened.”

And suddenly Cory Gregory was not having such a good time anymore. “George,” she said, not Georgie but George, “what is it you do? For a living, I mean.”

“I work with Barbara Belbonnet. I thought she told you.”

“You’re a district attorney?” She seemed shocked. Her hand went to the center of her chest.

“Assistant. I’m an assistant D.A., like Barbara.”

Now her hand started grabbing around her hip, both hands did, she was getting her windbreaker. I started to speak again and she stopped. “No, George. You seem like a really nice guy and all, and I’m sure you only want to get hold of your friend, but we have to be really careful who we talk to and what we talk about. So I thank you for the coffee, but I’m afraid this conversation is over.”

I reached across the table and saw the same ice coldness come over her that I had seen when Buzzy grabbed her in the British Beer Company. “Don’t,” she commanded. “I’m going to leave now and, I swear, if you so much as get out of your seat I’m going to press a button and a guy is going to come flying through that front door and it is not going to be pretty. Understand?”

I told her I did.

She stood up, did not put on the windbreaker, just tucked it under her arm. She started forward, hesitated in mid-step, said, “Thank you,” again and walked out of the café.

My date with Cory Gregory was at an end.

8

.

CORY GREGORY WAS NOT THE FIRST WOMAN TO DITCH ME ON Cape Cod. Marion had left me with a three-bedroom house, a two-vehicle carport, and a third-of-an-acre yard.

The first time she came down the Cape I took her to the dunes at the National Seashore. I had gotten a fire permit, and we went to Marconi Beach and walked far away from the guarded area to a spot where we could lay out a blanket and have nobody within a hundred yards of us. As it grew dark, we dug a pit and filled it with driftwood. Then we spent hours huddled next to the flames while she told me all of her frustrations and I told her none of mine. Later, when ours was the only light on the beach and there was nothing else around us but millions of stars in the sky and the sound of waves crashing on the shore, we made love in the sand and she proclaimed it the most perfect moment of her life.