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said.
    Coltrane wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Do a project with . . .”
    “He says he knows your work and thinks it’s impressive.”
    “You’re making this up.”
    “Not at all. But he says
you’ll
be putting in most of the effort.
He’ll
supply the advice and the original photographs for a photo essay in
Southern California
.”
    “What are we talking about?”
    “His famous series of L.A. houses in the twenties and thirties.”
    Coltrane straightened. That series of twenty photographs was a masterpiece. Packard’s depiction of various styles of houses in widely separated areas of the not-yet-overgrown city not only had been hauntingly beautiful but had seemed to mourn the impending loss of the innocence it celebrated.
    “Packard thinks they ought to be done again,” Jennifer said. “Go back to the same neighborhoods. Find the same spots where he set up his camera. Choose the same angles. Shoot what’s there now. He says he’s been thinking about a continuation of the series for a long time, but now he isn’t well enough to do it.”
    “All he’s asking me to be is his assistant?”
    “More. Even if he
could
take the photographs, he says he
wouldn’t
. He agrees with your opinion of his recent work — he can’t see beauty anymore. He’s hoping, if
you
take the photographs, the same places all these years later, maybe you’ll find the beauty he can’t find.”
    “I’ll be damned.”
     
8
     
    SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, Coltrane woke to find himself reaching for her. His lips touched hers, but as he continued to roll onto his injured side, he winced from pain. “Lie still,” she whispered. “Let me do the work.” He felt her warmth when she leaned over him, kissing his neck. She trembled from the brush of his hands against her breasts. Floating. Flowing. Pain stopped. So did time.
     
9
     
    “WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE SPLIT UP,” he said.
    The bedside lamp was on. They had just returned from the bathroom. Naked, Jennifer sat next to him on the bed, her legs curled under her.
    “I didn’t give you a choice,” she said.
    His emerald eyes studied her. “I didn’t pay enough attention to you.”
    She shook her head. “We both know the truth. I crowded you until you had to back off.” She looked at her hands. “There’s something I never told you.”
    Coltrane frowned, wondering what she was getting at.
    “This is hard for me to . . . I was married once.”
    He turned his head in surprise.
    “Ten years ago. I found out later he’d screwed my best friend the night before the wedding. That was after I found out he’d been screwing every woman he could all the time he was married to me, which wasn’t long, just under a year.”
    “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”
    “It’s not something I’m comfortable talking about. All the story proves is that I’m a fool.”
    “But why did he marry you if he didn’t intend to be faithful?”
    “He said he loved me.” Jennifer’s tone was filled with self-mocking. “Lord knows, I loved
him
. I think being married to me gave him the chance to play the field and have an excuse why he couldn’t marry those other women. I was compliant enough to give him a home and make his meals and not pester him when he said he had to work late and wouldn’t be home.”
    “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
    “Not as much as
I
was. The point is, I had a hard time trusting men after that. I kept suspecting that anybody who showed an interest in me was really trying to take advantage of me.” Jennifer bit her lip. “I guess that’s another way of saying I didn’t believe I could be special enough to any man that he’d never look at another woman. So . . .” She shrugged fatalistically. “I overcompensate. I wanted you to love me on an impossible level. But I swear that won’t happen again. Word of honor. I won’t make demands.”
    “You should have told me about this before. It helps me understand a lot of