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request that he leave,
now
, and save whatever it was until Cassie had gone. “It’s, like, urgent,” he said, pushing the hair—long, blond, springy, and so like his dead mother’s that it made Andy want to weep—out of his face. Andy wavered; he did not want Oliver to think it was okay to come barging in here whenever he felt like it. But he loved the kid and didn’t want him to feel ignored. Reluctantly, he got up from his plank, and excused himself to speak to his son.
    â€œAll right,” he said, “what’s the emergency? Does it have to do with your paper?”
    Oliver shook his head. “It’s Cunningham, Dad. He said that since I missed my third appointment with the school psychologist, I couldn’t go on the eleventh-grade retreat. And I
have
to go on that retreat, Dad. I just
have
to.”
    â€œWhen did you find this out?” Andy asked. It was only six thirty in the morning; school would not start for another hour and a half.
    â€œYesterday,” Oliver admitted.
    â€œAnd you waited until now to tell me?” Andy asked.
    â€œUh, well, yeah.” Oliver had the grace to look abashed.
    â€œAll right, Ollie,” he said. “As soon as I’m done with my workout, I’ll see if I can get Cunningham on the phone to discuss it. When does the retreat start?”
    â€œToday. We’re supposed to leave right after school. The bus will be waiting at three fifteen.”
    â€œPack your stuff and go to school now. I’ll text you later.”
    â€œThanks, Dad,” Oliver said. He fingered the hole in his faded gray T-shirt, stretching the dime-sized opening to that of a quarter. All the money Andy spent—and gladly!—on the kid’s clothes and still his son insisted on wearing stuff not even fit to donate.
    Andy returned to his workout, but his concentration was shot. It wasn’t just this thing with Cunningham. The kid was all over the place. Excelling in some courses, failing others. Took the PSAT last fall and scored a cool eight hundred on the math, yet this year he was getting a D in algebra. It was the loss of his mother, of course. Andy sympathized. Empathized. Hell, he wasn’t over Rachel’s death and he was a man; Oliver was still just a kid.
    A little more than an hour later, Andy was showered, dressed in a bespoke suit and crisp white pima cotton shirt from Brooks Brothers, and walking through the door of his Park Avenue office. It was still dark when he entered; as usual, he was the first to arrive. He had two C-sections scheduled later on, but he reserved these early-morning slots for meeting new patients. He flipped on the lights and walked through the reception area with its framed vintage movie posters, sleek black leather sofa, and wall-sized aquarium before reaching his sanctum.
    Today he was seeing Beth Klein, a woman who had gone through four first-trimester miscarriages in the last two years. Her fifth and last pregnancy had lasted six months, only to end when a raging bacterial infection had necessitated inducing her; she gave birth to a one-pound baby girl who’d lived for half an hour and died in her arms.
    He opened the file and began to read. Beth had an incompetent cervix as well as an abnormally shaped uterus—a cramped almond instead of a roomy triangle. Why the idiot doctor who’d treated her before had not ordered bed rest and had her surgically stitched was a total mystery to him. Letting her run around,
take Pilates and
play tennis even
, with all those miscarriages behind her? But it would do no good to dwell on this. He needed to help Beth bring a healthy baby to full term.
    There was a light tap on the door, followed by the appearance of his newish secretary, Joanne. “Here’s your breakfast, Dr. Stern.” She set the Morning Glory muffin and freshly squeezed carrot-apple-orange elixir from the juice bar on Lexington Avenue in front of him. He took a long swig