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head a little, and then looked at me again and all of a sudden seemed to decide I was all right. “It’s a relief, frankly.”
    “How could it be a relief?” I said, without thinking. I realized I wasn’t sure what color her eyes were—dark, but I couldn’t tell if they were brown or gray; I wanted to know, but I would have had to say Come close , so of course I didn’t.
    “I don’t like lies,” she said.
    I was uncomfortable. “There’s a funny southern expression,” I said. Blue? Were her eyes actually blue? “When they tell you not to lie they say, ‘Don’t tell stories.’ ”
    She nodded. She didn’t smile. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve heard that before.”
    I’D SEEN PRESTON just days before at the Labor Day tea, an annual event in the headmaster’s garden, the day before classes started. I hadn’t known yet about Florence—I’d just returned from Atlanta, and Divya hadn’t gotten me up to speed. I did notice an odd aura around Preston. People approached him warily, as if he’d recently been quarantined; if they came close, they’d lay a hand on his arm; I also saw he was alone, but I assumed Florence was somewhere at the other end of the garden, probably with Louise Hueffer, the headmaster’s wife. I was surprised when Preston planted himself near me and said, without preamble, “I’ve had enough goddamn vacation . Enough of the picayune demands of women and children .” Then he downed half his Tom Collins in one gulp.
    In spite of those cold eyes, I knew I was supposed to act like what Preston had said was a joke. I went for halfway in between. “May’s a senior,” I said. “I don’t think she’d be happy, being called a child.”
    He gave me a sidelong look of measured disappointment and finished the rest of his drink in two long swallows. I thought about Preston enduring all the long summer, his family immune to him, a prophet without honor, missing his sea of captive faces in Grey Chapel. I realized he was a man without reserves. Still, May seemed to need defending. “She’s in my seminar,” I said. “She’s so … bright. Looking forward to it.”
    Preston moved his shoulders around loosely in his coat. He looked down into the ice cubes in his highball and rattled them a little and then smiled at me again, transformed: he was suddenly warm, complete with a fatherly twinkle, confidant instead of confider. “Win Lowell tells me you’re a chess player,” he said.
    “Not really,” I said, startled into honesty. “I mean, Win’s a lot better. And my brother. In Atlanta. He’s kind of a genius at it.” I’d just come back from Atlanta the week before, where I had, in fact, played with Nicky, who could now demolish me in a handful of moves, although he tried to string it along for my sake. I had been the one who taught him, as Hugh had taught me.
    “Come by the house,” Preston said. “After supper.” Was his voice suddenly more southern than it had been just moments before? Suppah . His voice caressed the little absence of the r , which was entirely different from the Yankee way of chopping it off with no mercy. “What about Thursday?” Thuhsday . When I hesitated he said, giving every impression of indulging me for my own sake, “Or another time. Name a day.”
    “No,” I said, “Thursday’s fine.”
    Which was how I became, for a time, Preston’s chess partner. I went over every couple of weeks. Preston would have had me more often but I begged off, saying I had grading or lesson planning, and it was often true, because I was teaching new courses, with syllabi I’d designed just that summer. I wasn’t fed at the Bankheads’, but I was given as much alcohol as I wanted. Preston was a silent player; afterward we sometimes sat and had one more drink.
    I knew all about southern manners, but he was exceptionally good at graceful obfuscation. Sometimes I worked up the nerve to push him. “How old did you say you were when your father left?”
    “Ten.