“It's the
wine.”
 “There you go
again.”
 “Well, what
do you expect me to say?” The fact was, she didn't know exactly how to behave.
But don't stop, she said in her heart. He seemed to have heard her.
 “I'm telling
you how I feel. You don't have to say anything.”
 “Just sit
here and say nothing.” I've done that most of my life, she thought.
 “I don't
think of anything but you. I think I've already told you that.”
 “What about
computers?”
 “A far
second.”
 It was
strange to hear these things. But it was refreshing, like a glass of water
after a long thirst. Was he really talking about her?
 Despite
Chuck's death, she still could not shake the discipline of marriage. Hadn't she
been a true and faithful wife? Had she ever known another man in an intimate
physical way? Chuck, she was sure, had felt some macho sense of pride in being
the first, even though it had happened before they were married. Whether or not
she had felt the pleasure that sex was supposed to bring was another story. The
fact was that she had felt nothing. Nothing.
 “I'm courting
you, Frances,” he whispered. “I'm so in love with you, I can't stand it.”
 She looked at
him and bit her lip. Her gaze drifted about the room.
 “I know you
must think that it's happening too fast. I mean so soon afterâ” He cleared his
throat. “I just can't keep it in anymore, Frances. If I'm out of line, forgive
me. It's a fact, and I'm acknowledging it. I know I'm taking an awful chance.”
 “I don't
understand.”
 “You know.
Going all out. Baring what's in my heart.” He paused. “And the other.”
 “The other?”
 “My
first
marriage.” The mention of marriage pounded home the message. His candor stunned
her. But he continued relentlessly. “It crippled me, Frances. I can still see
them both looking at me as if I was the mad one. Eight years and it's still
with me.” His voice broke with emotion.
 “People make
mistakes,” she said foolishly, wondering in what other way she was expected to
respond. She knew that she was speaking for herself as well. We've both been
crippled, she wanted to say, but didn't. She did sense that she was beginning
to look at him in a new way.
 “I'm dead
serious, Frances,” he said. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes seemed
moist and glowing.
 “I'm not
questioning that, Peter,” she said gently.
 He smiled
boyishly and showed her his palms. They were damp with perspiration.
 “I feel like
an adolescent. Dammit, I'm thirty-eight years old and I want to write you love
notes and carve our initials in trees.” He paused for a moment, and she felt
pressured to respond in some way.
 “It's just
that I'm not prepared . . .” she stammered. Prepared for what?
Had she ever been prepared for anything? “I'm a widow with a small child,
Peter.” She looked around the room. “And my real life is far, far away from
here. Really it is. You've never been to Dundalk.” It was a working-class
section of Baltimore, actually a bit of a joke in some circles, which triggered
in Frances a pride in it that it didn't deserve.
 “Actually, I
did go once. After you told me where you lived. I found your place, and I
wanted to come up and visit you, but I didn't have the courage.”
 “Courage? You
needed courage?”
 “Cross my
heart.”
 “So now you
know.”
 “Know what?”
 “That Dundalk
is different. In two words, the pits.”
 “I didn't
think so. I thought it had character. An honest place.” He hesitated. “It
doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. Besides, you live there, and that made it
important to me.”
 “Really,
Peter. There is a difference. I don't mean age. Thirteen years is no big deal.
But how about mental distance? Here you are with I don't know how many college
degrees, and I just barely got out of high school. You know very little about
me. Very little.”
 “I know what
my heart tells me.”
 “How do you
know you can trust it? Engineers don't think like that. Do they?”
 “All right
then. Let me explain the way an engineer thinks. I know I have this
need . . . to be with someone . . . to love
someone . . . to share with someone . . . to love
and protect and support . . . to make me live at optimum
potential. I know that's my missing link. So, subconsciously, I surely have
been looking around. Ever since . . . well, I won't go into that
again. Then you cross my path. Aha, something in my engineer's mind reacts.
Even engineers have instincts. That's it, I acknowledge to myself after giving
the matter a great deal of thought. . . . I have found the bit
of machinery, the device, that eliminates the missing link.”
 Yes, she
thought with a sudden burst of emotion, that's it exactly. The missing link.
Was it possible for her to find it as well? In Peter? Yet she had been deprived
of love and sharing and friendship for so long, she distrusted her own sense of
need. She did not, however, distrust her growing feeling of confidence. She
had, after all, seriously engaged this man's full attention. Considering her
long history of disappointments, that was no small achievement.
 “How can you
be so sure?”
 “I've been
programmed to know.”
 “People
aren't computers.”
 “Thank God.”
He reached out and took her hand. “So there. I've declared myself and my
intentions. So that's my half of the equation. What's yours?”
 “Mine?” She
rolled the question around in her mind, watching him as he waited eagerly for
her answer.
 “I want the
best for my son.” She had expected some sign of discouragement. None came.
 “Granted. But
what about you?”
 Whatever was
happening, it was going too fast for her to comprehend. She felt slightly
disoriented by the speed. So far, except for Tray, life had been a maze of dead
ends. Nothing had turned out in even the remotest proximity to her dreams.
 “Let's
postpone me, Peter,” she sighed. “For the time being.”
 “When you're
looking at forty, things go much faster,” he said. “Time gets more precious.
I've just stood up to be counted. Could you at least tell me where you stand?”
 “I'm not
sure,” she said honestly. With Chuck it had all seemed so simple. There had
seemed to be less at risk. She had been living with Uncle Walter and his
family, hating the sense of obligation and charity with which she had had to
contend. He had a bakery in Timonium, and she had worked long hours there all
through high school for room and board and spending money. She had felt like an
indentured servant, and the job at the radio station had meant freedom and
independence. Then Chuck had come along, offering more promise, a home of her
own, a family. That disappointment dulled the promise of Peter's words. Still,
she had to think beyond the lessons of bitter experience. She felt like a cork
on a wave. Go with the tide, she begged herself, wondering if she could muster
the courage.
 They finished
their dinner in silence. Then he led her back into the den. He poured two
brandies in snifters, and they sat on the floor and took off their shoes. He
reached out and caressed her arm, and she felt the rise of goose bumps on her
flesh.
 “I've been
very empty for a long time,” he said. He bent over, brought her free hand to
his lips and kissed it. So she was not the only one in the world in desperate
need, she thought.
 “I'm very
frightened, Peter,” she said finally, after she had let him kiss her deeply.
 “You're not
alone in that regard.”
 Again she let
him kiss her, responding. Was it wrong? Suddenly, she stiffened and turned
away. She had felt the tangible presence of her in-laws, Molly and Charlie,
cursing her descent into infidelity. Leave me alone, she cried within herself.
 “What is it?”
Peter asked.
 “Nothing.”
 “You won't
tell me?”
 “Not now.”
 He kissed her
eyes, the tip of her nose, her cheeks. He found her lips, and she felt his
hands caressing her everywhere.
 “Stay the
night,” he whispered.
 Her mind
whirled with objections. She had promised her in-laws that she would come over
early enough the next morning so that they could all go to the Boat Show in
Annapolis, and they were sure to call her apartment at an ungodly hour to
remind her.
 “I'm totally
unprepared for this,” she said hesitantly.
 “I want to
love you. That's all.”
 She felt
surrounded by him. Not that she offered any calculated resistance. It had been
so long since she had been in a man's armsâChuck's arms. And there had been no
feeling in that, no sense of protection. No pleasure at all.
 She was
surprised to feel Peter's hard, corded muscles. His hands were gentle and
knowing. She felt alive, wanted. Someone was loving her, someone was caring,
someone was pleasing her. Her alone.
 When she
awoke, she did not feel as if she was a stranger. There were no where-am-I's or
lapses of memory, nor did she feel that what she had done, what she was doing,
required a rebuke, from herself, from anybody. She lay in his arms, and it was,
she felt, her natural place. In their haste they had not drawn the blinds, and
the sun streamed into the room, a perfect lighting counterpoint to her
feelings.
 For the first
time in years, burdens had been lifted. In her mind, she felt a calm serenity.
Her body felt light, replaced, as if she had been transformed. A miracle had
occurred, she decided.
 She felt him
stir. His voice surprised her.
 “Up?”
 She nodded,
nuzzling his chest.
 “I know what
it means now,” he said.
 “What what
means?”
 “To find that
lost piece of yourself. The missing link. I found it.” He kissed her earlobe.
“You.”
 She put a
finger on his lips, stopping his words. What she feared most was that it would
go awayâthe way it had with Chuck. Comparisons had intruded all night, and she
had fought them away like someone chasing bats in an attic. Finally, she had
won. In the light of morning the fear had less power, but it was no less
annoying. After last night, Chuck would always seem nothing more than a boy, a
beautiful boy. His body had been tight and wonderful, without blemish, wrapped
in a down of golden hair, a statue, equally as cold to the touch.
 But Peter was
fire. Behind the scholarly facade, the nervous beginning, were feeling and a
mind that gave depth to his passion. Peter had made her rise from the dead.
 Then she
remembered, noting from the face of the digital clock on the dresser that it
was nearly ten. She reached for the phone beside the bed and dialed her
in-laws' number. Molly answered.
 “We were
worried,” she said. “No one answered at your place.”
 “I slept
out.” Brave words, Frances thought. Had she found her courage?
 The
hesitation was palpable.
 “At your
girlfriend's?”
 She looked
toward Peter and caressed his face. No more, she thought. It's my life. But she
did not answer the question.
 “You take
Tray to the boat show. I'll pick him up later. Is that okay?”
 “Of course,
dear.” There was another long hesitation, an awkward moment. “Are you all
right?”
 “I'm fine.”
She felt Peter's breath on her hair. “Wonderful, in fact.”
 “You sound
strange.”
 “Strange or
different?” she said playfully.
 Actually, she
wanted Molly to know and was bursting to tell her. Molly surely would
understand. Not Charlie. Suddenly, a dark cloud seemed to roll over her
thoughts. She felt a tug of guilt.
 “Here's Tray,
dear,” Molly said. She heard fumbling with the phone, then Tray's high-pitched
voice.
 “Grampa
painted the wagon. Daddy's wagon.”
 She felt the
gloom deepen.
 “It's really
pretty. All red and shiny. And guess what we named it?”
 “I give up.”
 “Three
Charlies.
Me, Daddy, and Grampa. That's us. Three
Charlies.”
 “That's
terrific,” she said without conviction.
 “And next
year, Grampa promised we're going to get a boat, a sailboat, like he got for
Daddy. And you know what we're going to name it?” He didn't wait for her answer
this time.
“Three Charlies.”
 “Well, you
have a good time today. Mommy will pick you up tonight.”
 “Wanna speak
to Gramma?”
 “That's all
right. I'll see you tonight.” She hung up. Her stomach felt knotted, and she
closed her eyes as if in pain.
 “What is it?”
Peter asked.
 “Nothing.
Just kid stuff.”
 “More than
that,” he said.
 “I suppose
you can't blame him,” she sighed.
 “Blame who?”
 “Charlie. My
father-in-law. Chuck was a junior. And he insisted on naming our son Charles,
the third. That's why we call him Tray.”
 “Tray?”
 “Uno, dos,
tres.
Spanish. It was Charlie's idea. He had a
Hispanic marine buddy who was also a third. He was killed.”
 “Certainly
less confusing than three generations with the same name.”
 “I wasn't too
happy with the idea. But then I had no real choice.”