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asked.
    â€œHe’s gone.”
    â€œHome?” Kate asked.
    â€œGone,” Melissa said. “He dropped me.”
    Kate felt a rush of guilt. She wanted to go to her daughter, but Melissa made no gesture or sign of wanting her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
    â€œI scared him off,” Melissa said. “I was too intense for him, or something.”
    â€œI don’t think it was you,” Kate said. “I think it was the circumstances.Sixteen-year-old boys don’t particularly want to be around a house where the mother keeps taking to her sickbed.”
    Melissa shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
    â€œOK,” Kate said. “There are other boys.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” Melissa said, beginning to cry again. “I was just using him. That’s what he said, and maybe he was right. He was my protector.” She looked up at Kate. “From you.” She stopped crying then and sat up straight and made an effort, Kate could tell, to be brave. “I’m going to try to be around more.”
    This news caught Kate off guard. She didn’t know what to say, and was just as surprised when she felt the tears come. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    â€œI can’t be here all the time,” Melissa said cautiously. “But I’ll be here after school, and I’ll be here for dinners.”
    â€œI know what to expect this time,” Kate said. “I’m going to be better. I’m not going to …”
    â€œYou went hunting the other weekend,” Melissa interrupted.
    Kate nodded. “I actually shot a bird.”
    Melissa laughed. “I can’t picture it.”
    â€œI did. I shot it and Charles roasted it and I ate it.” Kate and Melissa both laughed at the thought of it.
    It took Charles three weeks to call. He left a message on the machine asking Kate to coffee at the café where they’d first met. That afternoon, the temperature fell below freezing, though the sun was out, and people hurried over the sidewalks, bundled in heavy coats. Wanting to look her best, Kate went without a hat and suffered for it, her ears numb by the time she entered the warm, mostly empty café. She found him seated in the same sunny corner where they had met, though he looked different now. After three weeks of not seeing him, he looked paler, thinner, slighter than she’d remembered him. He sat clinging to his coffee cup as if for warmth. His mustache was back, for which she was glad. In truth, she preferred him with his mustache. “Thank you for coming,” he said after she’d sat down.
    She could hear the fear in his voice and was at first reassured by it. “I’ve missed you,” Kate said. It was a great relief to have said this, to have let it out.
    He smiled, but his smile didn’t last. “I’m not good at this.”
    â€œGood at what?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I want to say.”
    Kate already knew from his tone what he wanted to say. “Sure you do. I don’t know why you had to make me come out in the cold to hear it.”
    He shook his head as if he were trying to rid himself of a thought. “I’m very sorry about your … about your being sick. I wanted you to know that.”
    â€œThank you,” Kate said. “I’m sorry, too. About not telling you.” But she couldn’t make herself sound sorry. And once again, she was surprised by her anger. She wanted to strike out at him now. Instead, she sat back in her chair and waited for him to speak.
    â€œIt’s nice to see you. I’ve missed you. That’s true for me, too. But I don’t think I know you well enough to …”
    He was going to make her finish his thought. He didn’t know her well enough to watch her die. “I suppose not,” she said. And then she added, with more anger in her