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Perhaps it was the wrong moment, coming so soon after the funeral. She could mail it, but wouldn’t that look weird? No, she would have to phone. She started to dial when a knock sounded on the door.
    “Who is it?”
    “Daniel. I’ve brought take-out Chinese and beer.”
    She smiled and, putting down the receiver, hurried to let him in.
    SHE SAW DANIEL EVERY DAY for rest of the summer. They slipped easily into one another’s lives, spending the night either at her place on Clinton or his on Baldwin. They went to old films at the Bloor, browsed in used bookshops on Harbord. One weekend they took the bus to a music festival in Guelph. She cared for him more than she had for anyone before, but was it enough, what she felt?
    Not enough, in the end, to keep her from going to New Jersey.
    AT PRINCETON, SHE HAD a miserable affair with a professor, failed to end it several times and worried that it was the guilt and terror rather than love that held her. Deciding that she had to get away, she applied to the Ph.D. program at Berkeley.
    What healed her was the beauty of northern California and an increasing passion for her work. For a time, that was enough; but in her second year she had two relationships in quick succession and then a third, all with fellow students and none of lasting significance. In her final two years, while writing her thesis, she became involved with an instructor on contract named Amjad Far. He was handsome and very sharp and with a solemn temperament that made her feel very safe, and, feeling that she might start to love him, she agreed to move in. She defended her thesis, and as she began to apply for jobs Amjad returned to Iran for two months. A tenure track position at the University of Toronto came up and she flew in to give a guest lecture. Amjad returned, but having a new beard wasn’t all that had changed about him. His eyes would turn hard if she spoke to another man at a party. He insisted that they both abstain from drinking. One day he grew angry over the skirt she wore, the first time he had ever raised his voice. She developed insomnia and became so thin that her former thesis advisor drew her aside and suggested that she seek help at the eating disorder clinic. What she finally did made her feel ashamed for its cowardliness: winning the job in Toronto, she waited until Amjad left for a weekend retreat with some friends, packed up her things, and took a taxi to the airport.
    HER MOTHER UNDERWENT HIP REPLACEMENT surgery and afterwards her father began to talk about moving to a place that was easier to look after. Her older sister had split from her husband and the two were in a custody fight over their adopted daughter. Her other sister, the most wild of the three, had quit her job to become a fitness instructor.
    Chloe reworked her thesis, which was accepted by Duke University Press, and began a new manuscript. At thirtytwo she had a few fine lines around her mouth, the first strands of silver in her hair, but her friends said that she was only growing more beautiful. She remained determinedly single, glad for the silence of the small house she had found on Major Street. In the afternoon she heard children coming home from school. Her days were full with teaching, research, new administrative duties, and more than her share of graduate students to advise.
    She met Lester at a small dinner party given by her department head. A friend of the host, he was a sous-chef at the Sutton Place Hotel and had offered to cook. Perhaps there was something irresistibly romantic about watching a young chef (he wasn’t yet thirty) hurrying from the kitchen, telling everyone to eat while the food was hot, laughing as he swept up his own glass of wine before heading back. Finally he sat down next to her. At the end of the evening, she was trying to work up the nerve to ask for his phone number when he asked for hers.
    He was half Jewish and half Irish-Catholic, one of six children. Six months later she knew