But last year she'd finally begun to talk about them… the two other children. She'd said, 'They'd be so big now… ten and eleven. I try to think how they would look now, but can't seem to even imagine… Everything about that time is so blurred. Like a nightmare that I only dreamed.'

'It's supposed to be like that,' Ray told her. 'Put it all behind you, honey. Don't even wonder what happened any more.'

The memory strengthened his decision. He bent over Nancy and patted her hair with a gesture that was at once protective and gentle.

Nancy looked up at him. The appeal on her face changed to uncertainty. 'I don't think -'

Michael interrupted her. 'How old are you, Mommy?' he asked practically.

Nancy smiled – a real smile that miraculously eased the tension. 'None of your business,' she told him.

Ray took a quick gulp of coffee. 'Good girl,' he said. 'Tell you what, Mike. I'll pick you up after school this afternoon and we'll go to get a present for Mommy. Now I'd better get out of here. Some guy is coming up to see the Hunt place. I want to get the file together.'

'Isn't it rented?' Nancy asked.

'Yes. That Parrish fellow who's taken the apartment on and off has it again. But he knows we have the right to show it any time. It's a great spot for a restaurant and wouldn't take much to convert. It'll make a nice commission if I sell it.'

Nancy put Missy down and walked with him to the door. He kissed her lightly and felt her lips tremble under his. How much had he upset her by starting this birthday talk? Some instinct made him want to say, Let's not wait for tonight. I'll stay home and we'll take the kids and go to Boston for the day.

Instead he got into his car, waved, backed up and drove on to the narrow dirt lane that wound through an acre of woods until it terminated on the cross-Cape road that led to the centre of Adams Port and his office.

Ray was right, Nancy thought as she walked slowly back to the table. There was a time to stop following the patterns of yesterday – a time to stop remembering and look only to the future. She knew that a part of her was still frozen. She knew that the mind dropped a protective curtain over painful memories – but it was more than that.

It was as though her life with Carl were a blur… the entire time. It was hard to remember the faculty house on the campus, Carl's modulated voice… Peter and Lisa. What had they looked like? Dark hair, both of them, like Carl's, and too quiet… too subdued… affected by her uncertainty… and then lost – both of them.

'Mommy, why do you look so sad?' Michael gazed at her with Ray's candid expression, spoke with Ray's directness.

Seven years, Nancy thought. Life was a series of seven-year cycles. Carl used to say that your whole body changed in that time. Every cell renewed itself. It was time for her to really look ahead… to forget.

She glanced around the large, cheerful kitchen with the old brick fireplace, the wide oak floors, the red curtains and valances that didn't obstruct the view over the harbour. And then she looked at Michael and Missy…

Tm not sad, darling,' she said. 'I'm really not.'

She scooped Missy up in her arms, feeling the warmth and sweet stickiness of her. 'I've been thinking about your present,' Missy said. Her long strawberry-blonde hair curled around her ears and forehead. People sometimes asked where she got that beautiful hair – who had been the redhead in the family?

'Great,' Nancy told her. 'But think about it outside.

You'd better get some fresh air soon. It's supposed to rain later and get very cold.'

After the children were dressed, she helped them on with their windbreakers and hats. 'There's my dollar,' Michael said with satisfaction as he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. 'I was sure I left it here. Now I can buy you a present.'

'Me has money too.' Missy proudly held up a handful of pennies. 'Oh, now you two shouldn't be carrying your money about,' Nancy told them. 'You'll only lose it. Let me hold it for you.'

Michael shook his head. 'If I give it to you, I might forget it when I go shopping with Daddy.'

'I promise I won't let you forget it.'

'My pocket has a zipper. See? I'll keep it in that, and I'll hold Missy's for her.'

'Well…' Nancy shrugged and gave up the discussion. She knew perfectly well that Michael wouldn't lose the dollar. He was like Ray, well organized. 'Now, Mike, I'm going to straighten up. You be sure to stay with Missy.'

'Okay,' Michael said cheerfully. 'Come on, Missy. I'll push you on the swing first.'

Ray had built a swing for the children. It was suspended from a branch of the massive oak tree at the edge of the woods behind their house.

Nancy pulled Missy's mittens over her hands. They were bright red; fuzzy angora stitching formed a smile face on their backs. 'Leave these on,' she told her, 'otherwise your hands will get cold. It's really getting raw. I'm not even sure you should go out at all.'

'Oh, please!' Missy's lip began to quiver.

'All right, all right, don't go into the act,' Nancy said hastily. 'But not more than half an hour.'

She opened the back door and let them out, then shivered as the chilling breeze enveloped her. She closed the door quickly and started up the staircase. The house was an authentic old Cape, and the stairway was almost totally vertical. Ray said that the old settlers must have had a bit of mountain goat in them the way they built their staircases. But Nancy loved everything about this place.

She could still remember the feeling of peace and welcome it had given her when she'd first seen it, over six years ago. She'd come to the Cape after the conviction had been set aside. The District Attorney hadn't pressed for a new trial because Rob Legler, the vital prosecution witness, had disappeared.

She'd fled here, completely across the continent – as far away from California as she could get; as far away from the people she'd known and the place she'd lived and the college and the whole academic community there. She never wanted to see them again – the friends who had turned out not to be friends but hostile strangers who spoke of 'poor Carl' because they blamed his suicide on her too.

She'd come to Cape Cod because she'd always heard that New Englanders and Cape people were reticent and reserved and wanted nothing to do with strangers, and that was good. She needed a place to hide, to find herself, to sort it all out, to try to think through what had happened, to try to come back to life.

She'd cut her hair and dyed it sable brown, and that was enough to make her look completely different from the pictures that had front-paged newspapers all over the country during the trial.

She guessed that only fate could have prompted her to elect Ray's real estate office when she went looking for a house to rent. She'd actually made an appointment with another realtor, but on impulse she'd gone in to see him first because she liked his hand-lettered sign and the window boxes that were filled with yellow and champagne mums.

She had waited until he finished with another client – a leathery-faced old man with thick, curling hair – and admired the way Ray advised him to hang on to his property, that he'd find a tenant for the apartment in the house to help carry expenses.

After the old man left she said, 'Maybe I'm here at the right time. I want to rent a house.'

But he wouldn't even show her the old Hunt place. 'The Lookout is too big, too lonesome and too draughty for you,' he said. 'But I just got in a rental on an authentic Cape in excellent condition, that's fully furnished. It can even be bought eventually, if you like it. How much room do you need, Miss… Mrs…?'

'Miss Kiernan,' she told him. 'Nancy Kiernan.' Instinctively she used her mother's maiden name. 'Not much, really. I won't be having company or visitors.'