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I’m going to be stuck for three weeks?”
    â€œIt looks like it,” said Eva. “I’m sorry, honey. I offered to put you up, but Vera thought this visit was important. If you get desperate, give me a ring and I’ll come bail you out. And besides, look on the bright side, you wouldn’t want to be stuck for three weeks with Vera and Ian in his villa in the south of France.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s a villa,” said Clare. “I think it’s just a house.”
    â€œHouse, schmouse,” said Eva.
    She turned her attention back to the road, and Clare tilted her seat back and closed her eyes. She didn’t think she’d fall asleep, but she must have, because when she opened them again it was early evening, and they were pulling off the roadway into a rest area.
    The parking area was long and narrow, and ran parallel to the road along the water. There were cars and campers parked in slots along the length of it, but it wasn’t full. Eva drove slowly towards the end. Inthe last space Clare saw an old Volvo station wagon. There was a man outside the car, leaning back against the car door. He was waiting for someone. He was waiting for her.

3
    Eva pulled in next to the waiting car, but she didn’t turn off the engine right away. There was a bike path along the Cape Cod Canal, and a family of five came riding past them, on the sidewalk by the parking area. The youngest kid was straggling in the back, weaving along on a bike that was too big for him. “Wait for me!” he cried out to the bikers in front of him. “Wait for me!”
    Eva sat in the car until they had all biked passed. She flicked at the key chain that dangled from the key in the ignition, let it swing back and forth a few times, then she shut off the engine. The man next tothe station wagon stood up straight, but he didn’t move any closer to them.
    Eva took in her breath. “Well here we go,” she said, and she opened her car door and stepped outside. Clare waited for a second, then she stepped outside, too. It was breezy outside. Inside the car she’d had no awareness of the wind, and the smell of the canal—a dense aroma of seaweed and salt water—was as much a surprise as if she had stepped out into a foreign country. She walked around the front of the car, towards Eva. And towards this man who was her father.
    She knew him from photographs. But they were all photographs of someone much younger. This man was grey haired, with a small beard, and he was older—not as old as Tertio, perhaps, but old enough so the man in the photographs might have been his son. He was taller than Tertio, but probably not as tall as Peter. He was wearing shorts and a work shirt with a pocket that held several pencils and pens. He looked as if he had been called away in the middle of some project. He certainly had not gotten dressed up to meet her.
    â€œHello, Clare,” he said. He began to hold out his hand, but seemed to think better of it and let it drop byhis side. His voice sounded like the voice she recognized from their phone calls, but he didn’t look like anything she had expected. She realized she’d never really tried to picture him. He’d always been just a voice.
    â€œHello,” she said. What did he think, now, seeing her?
    The three of them stood awkwardly for a moment until Eva recovered her usual gregariousness. Like an actress who had momentarily forgotten her lines she brightened and spoke in a voice that was unnecessarily loud.
    â€œIt’s been a long time, Richard,” she said. “You’re looking good. You’re looking really good.”
    â€œYou’re looking good, too,” said Richard, and he allowed Eva to seize his hand and shake it vigorously. It didn’t seem as if he was a shy man, so much as a man who wasn’t inclined to acquiesce to expected formalities. Clare feared there would be another long