After a while, with no sign of Anna wanting to break the silence, I did. I was puzzled by what she was doing in East Hampton, especially given her skepticism about the place. It didn’t appear to be her natural habitat.

“How come you work for the Shapiros?” I asked.

“How long have you got?”

“Until we reach the city, I guess.”

“It shouldn’t take that long. Let’s see. Grew up, went to liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Very pleased with itself, but I thought it was kind of crappy. I came to New York, got a job as an assistant to a magazine editor, and turned out to be good at that, weirdly good.”

“That’s great.” I noticed that she’d taken one open-ended question and given me a brief rundown of her entire adult life.

“Except I was working so hard, really hard, and holding myself to such an insanely high standard that I started to go a bit nuts. I was having panic attacks in my cubicle, sweating and freaking out.”

“Did you seek treatment?”

“I took drugs. They calmed me down a bit, but I knew by then that I wasn’t happy, so I quit.”

“That was brave.”

“Brave, reckless, stupid-all the things I’ve always been. Anyway, I thought I could teach yoga instead, so I took a course. That’s how Nora found me. I was covering a class for a friend at the Ninety-second Street Y and she came along. It went from there. Now I’m everything-housekeeper, cook, indentured servant. My job is to make things easy, whatever that takes.” Her voice was lightly satirical, but I heard a note of bitterness.

“What are they like to work for?”

She turned her attention from me to check her mirror and merge onto the Long Island Expressway. We passed low pine forests on either side as we headed into the city. She overtook two trucks and then, pulling into the right-hand lane, answered my question as if she’d been considering it since I’d asked.

“Nora’s great. I love her and she treats me like family. It’s almost too cozy with her sometimes.”

“And Mr. Shapiro?”

“Harry’s fine,” she said tonelessly. “Anyway, you know all about me now. What about you?”

There was a glint in her eyes as she looked at me. She seemed to find me entertaining, which was a start.

“What do you want to know?”

“Okay, you’re a psychiatrist, right? Nora says you’re treating Harry.”

“I can’t talk about that, I’m afraid.” Even as I said it, it sounded stiff and ponderous, and I wished I didn’t have to rebuff her.

“Wife, children?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Can we change the subject?”

Anna grinned. “Why? That’s all my therapist wanted to talk about, my old boyfriend. Him and my childhood and whether I was seeking a father figure. Nathan would have been a terrible choice if I had been.”

“So you’ve seen a therapist?”

“I admit it.”

“And you had a boyfriend?”

She laughed, giving me an amused glance that made me feel good, but then stopped talking as we passed under bridges with ragged American flags fixed to them in memory of soldiers who’d died in Iraq. When she spoke again, she was quieter.

“He was borderline, my therapist reckoned. He hooked me, and then made me suffer for loving him. I would have talked about it forever, but I had to stop in the end. You guys charge a lot for a forty-five-minute chat. You know why I really ended it, though? One day I was listening to myself talking and I thought: I could be making all of this up.”

“Were you?”

“No, but I might have been, right? He’d listen to me each week and take everything I said seriously and try to find a meaning in it, but how did he know any of it was true? He thought he needed to make me feel good-explain away everything I’d done as a reaction to my past or something. I could have been a terrible person. He wouldn’t have known.”

“You’re nota bad person, are you?”

“I don’t know. Honesty matters to me. I’ve always got into trouble for trying to tell the truth. People think I’m just a bitch. Maybe I am. Anyway, I didn’t think he could keep me honest, so I stopped.”

She laughed sheepishly, as if she had given away more about herself than she had intended. Dusk was falling and taillights were glowing in a red line ahead of us as we passed the big-box stores and projects of Queens. The vehicles around us gradually adopted New York driving habits and started to weave in and out of the lanes, making her curse softly. We popped into the Midtown Tunnel and out onto the city streets. I’d done that swift border crossing a dozen times, but it always surprised me. Despite my halfhearted protests, she drove down Lexington and around Gramercy Park to deposit me on Irving Place by my apartment building.

“Bye,” I said, holding out my hand as she idled the Range Rover at the curb.

She grasped it and gave it a satirical tug, as if I were being absurdly formal. Then she pulled out a scrap of paper, wrote a number on it, and gave it to me.

“Call me if you like. I’m in the city sometimes.”

I felt the urge to justify to myself asking her out, but I resisted. It was a bad idea, no matter how tempting.

“I don’t think I should. Business and pleasure, you know,” I said awkwardly.

“So,” she said. “You think I’m pleasant.”

I laughed despite myself as I climbed onto the sidewalk. Then she eased the Range Rover into the traffic while I stood and watched her disappear.

That Saturday, I went to the greenmarket in Union Square, and when I returned, laden with paper bags, I was halted in the lobby by Bob Lorenzo, the head doorman of my apartment building. Bob had a neatly trimmed beard, bloodhound eyes, and an air of fortitude under pressure. We got on fine, though I tried to avoid discussing the Mets or the co-op board, both of which were painful topics.

“Dr. Kaufman came by, Dr. Cowper,” he said, holding up an envelope with “Ben” written on it in Rebecca’s round script and then underlined. “You just missed her. She asked me to give you this.”

“Thanks, Bob,” I said. I had once tried to persuade him to call me by my first name, but it had not stuck. The envelope was weighed down at the bottom by something, and I felt the shape inside: her key to my apartment. Bob regarded me with a look of disapproval, as if he knew what the package signified.

“She said she wouldn’t be here so much anymore. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. I felt a surge of irritation at his silent judgment, compounding my guilt. What was wrong with these people?First my father and Jane, and now I couldn’t walk into my apartment building without being made to feel ashamed. That probably would have been my mother’s reaction, too. Are you quite sure, Ben?she’d have said with an undertone of reproach.

Back in my apartment, I lay on the bed, took a breath, and tore open Rebecca’s envelope with my thumb. Inside was a sheet of paper folded over upon itself, with her key attached with Scotch tape.

Ben,

I’m sorry I had to go. I miss you already but I think it’s for the best. I expect I’ll see you at work. I’ll be the one who looks like she’s been crying.

R.

I wanted to weep, but nothing came-my emotional tank was empty. It would have been easier if she’d been angry with me. Her affection and sad dignity were a kick in the stomach. If I hadn’t known her so well, I’d have thought that she’d calculated it to cause me pain, but she wasn’t like that.

I got up and paced around the room for a while, but the desolate feeling wouldn’t pass. I felt weary, but I didn’t want to stay at home, feeling bad about my ill treatment of Rebecca and entanglement with Harry, and worrying about my father’s heart. I needed something to distract me. I laid her note on the bed, walked into the living room, and called a friend from the hospital. He was a party animal who’d known in our first week of residency which bar to drink at and where to go afterward. Sure enough, he was heading out to a gathering later on.