Simmons raised her brows; her surprise was honest. "Now, that's serendipity."

"You could say so."

"You met in…"

"Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, Tina. I'm afraid it is."

"Venice."

"Venice?"

"Where we met. Vacation. I was eight months pregnant, alone, and I ended up spending time with the wrong guy. Or the right guy. Depending on your perspective."

"The right guy," Simmons said helpfully, "because you met Milo."

"Yes."

"Can you tell me about this? Really, everything does help.”

“Help you put my husband behind bars?”

“I told you before. I want you to help me get to the truth." Tina put her feet on the floor and sat up so she could face Simmons head-on. "Okay. If you really want to know.”

“I do."

Tina couldn't get over how hot it was. Even here, at an open-air cafe along the Grand Canal, just short of the arched stone monstrosity of the Rialto Bridge, it was unbearable.

Venice, surrounded by and veined with water, should have cooled off some, but all the water did was raise the humidity, the way the river did in Austin. But in Austin she hadn't carried an eight-month heater in her bloated belly that swelled her feet and played havoc with her lower back.

It might have been more bearable, were it not for the crowds. The entire world's population of sweaty tourists seemed to have come to Italy at the same time. They made it impossible for a pregnant woman to move comfortably along the narrow, bumpy passages and avoid the African vendors selling Louis Vuitton knockoffs, ten hanging from each arm.

She sipped her orange juice, then forced herself to gaze at, and appreciate, a passing vaporetto overflowing with camera-toting tourists. Then she returned to the paperback she'd opened on the table-What to Expect When You're Expecting. She was on the page in chapter twelve that dealt with "stress incontinence." Great.

Stop it, Tina.

She was being remarkably unappreciative. What would Margaret, Jackie, and Trevor think? They had pooled their meager resources and bought her this final splash-out five-day/four-night Venetian holiday before the baby arrived to put the last nail in the coffin of her social life. "And to remind yourself that that prick isn't the only example of manhood out there," Trevor had said.

No, philandering Patrick wasn't the only example of manhood out there, but the examples she'd come across here weren't encouraging. Lazy-eyed Italians whistled and hissed and muttered invitations at any piece of ass that walked by. Not her, though-no. Pregnant women reminded them too much of their own blessed mothers-those women who hadn't beaten their sons anywhere near enough.

Her belly not only protected her from the men, but encouraged them to open doors for her. She received smiles from complete strangers, and a few times old men pointed at high facades and gave her history lessons she couldn't understand. She started to think things were looking up, at least until last night. The e-mail.

Patrick, it turned out, was in Paris with Paula. All those P's confused her. He wanted to know if she could "swing through town" so she and Paula could finally meet. "She really wants to," he'd written.

Tina had crossed an ocean to get away from her problems, and then-

"Excuse me."

On the other side of her table stood an American, somewhere in his fifties, bald on top, grinning down at her. He pointed at the free chair. "May I?"

When the waiter came, he ordered a vodka tonic, then watched another vaporetto glide past. Perhaps bored with the water, he started watching her face as she read. He finally spoke: "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Oh," she said. "No, thanks." She gave him a smile, just enough to be polite. Then she took off her sunglasses.

"Sorry," he stuttered. "Just that I'm here alone, and it looks like you are, too. You'd get a free drink out of it."

Maybe he was all right. "Why not? Thanks…" She raised her brows.

"Frank."

"Thanks, Frank. I'm Tina."

She stuck out her hand, and they shook with stiff formality. "Champagne?"

"You didn't see." She grabbed the arms of her chair and scooted it back a foot. She touched her large, rounded belly "Eight months now."

Frank gaped.

"Never seen one of these before?"

"I just…" He scratched his hairless scalp. "That explains it. Your glow."

Not again, she wanted to say but cut herself short. She could at least be pleasant.

When the waiter arrived with his vodka tonic, he ordered her another orange juice, and she pointed out that a simple orange juice was outrageously expensive here. "And look how much they give you," she said, holding up her tiny glass. "Outrageous."

She wondered if she was being too negative again, but Frank pushed it further (complaining about the Vuitton knockoffs she'd seen before) until they were both complaining pleasantly about the idiocies of tourism.

In answer to his questions, she told him she was a librarian at MIT's art and architecture library in Boston, and she let out just enough casual, sarcastic asides to make it clear that the father of her baby had left in a particularly poor fashion. "You've got my whole life already. What are you, a journalist?"

"Real estate. I work out of Vienna, but we've got properties all over the place. I'm settling a deal on a palazzo not far away."

"Really?"

"Sold it to a Russian bigwig. So much money, you wouldn't believe."

"I probably wouldn't."

"The papers have to be signed in the next forty-eight hours, but in the meantime I'm entirely free." He considered his next words carefully. "Can I take you out to the theater?"

Tina slipped on the sunglasses again. Despite herself, she remembered Margaret's most insistent advice five months ago when Patrick first walked out: He's a boy, Tina. A child. What you need is an older man. Someone with a sense of responsibility. Tina wasn't seriously considering anything like that, but there was always a certain logic to Margaret's unasked-for wisdom.

Frank turned out to be a pleasant surprise. He left her alone until five, when he arrived in a tailored suit, carrying a pair of Teatro Malibran tickets and a single orange lily that smelled hallucinogenic.

She knew little about opera and had never considered herself a fan. Frank, despite having feigned ignorance, turned out to be something of an expert. He'd somehow gotten seats in the platea, the stalls on the floor of the opera, so they had an unencumbered view of the Prince, the King of Clubs, and Truffaldino in The Love for Three Oranges. He sometimes leaned in to whisper a plot point she might have missed-it was performed in French-but the plot hardly mattered. It was an absurdist opera about a cursed prince forced to go on a quest for three oranges, in each of which slept a princess. The audience laughed more often than Tina did, but the jokes she got she enjoyed.

Afterward, Frank treated her to dinner at a marginal trattoria and told her stories about his long years living in Europe. She found his description of the expatriate lifestyle particularly enticing. Then he insisted on buying her breakfast, which she first took as a rudely hopeful suggestion. She'd misjudged, though, and all he did was walk her back to the hotel, kiss her cheeks in the European manner, and wish her a good night. A real gentleman, unlike those Italian men lurking on every corner.

She woke early on Tuesday and, after a quick wash, began to pack her things for the next morning's flight home. It was a shame- now that she had finally recovered from her jet lag and met an interesting, cultured man, it was time to leave. She thought her last day might best be used taking a boat trip out to Murano to see the glassblowers.

She brought it up to Frank after he picked her up and they had reached the huge, pigeon-infested glory of St. Mark's Square. "This time it's my treat," she told him. "There's a boat leaving in an hour."