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editor and writer, married. Pauline remained a crucial collaborator. During his composition of
Lessons from My Daughter
, he read every new draft passage to her at the end of each working day, pausing often to ask: “Is that too sentimental?” or “Is that too private?” or “Is that how you remember it?” Her advice was indispensable, and it was only because of her strenuous refusal that he agreed to leave her name off the book as coauthor.
    “With this new Bannister, just to shake things up, I’d like to try something new,” he said. “I’m thinking of writing alternate chapters from the perspective of the bad guy.” Every previous Bannister had been written solely from the blind detective’s point of view.
    Pauline blinked, to signal that she liked the sound of this.
    “I’m thinking of making him
really
bad,” he continued. “A total sociopath. Let’s face it, the bad guys are always more interesting—at least in fiction. Give me Iago over Othello any day.”
    As he spoke, he absently dug around in the pile of mail in front of him, dislodging a lingerie catalog that slid into view on the tabletop. It featured, on its cover, a trio of nearly naked models, all bronzed, blemish-free skin and cascading locks. Demonstrating the latest in lacy bras and thongs, they looked boldly out at him with just a hint of a smile and an expression of dulcet invitation. He felt an involuntary jolt through hisnervous system, a reaction wholly divorced from his rational mind. Almost simultaneously, he felt a spasm of regretful frustration, of self-castigation, at this bodily reflex—a reminder of that one aspect of his marriage missing ever since the stroke. A reminder that, for all the love, fellow feeling, regard, respect and closeness that he still shared with Pauline, gone was that central element: the physical.
    He pushed the catalog under the pile, pushed it from his mind.
    “Dad!” Maddy’s voice reached him from her bedroom down the hall. “I’m ready! Bring Mom!”
    “Coming,” he called.
    When Jasper’s father built the house, forty years ago, he did so with the foresight typical of a man obsessed with long-range planning, instructing the architect to put all the rooms on a single story, in anticipation of the day (decades off, it was hoped and assumed) when he and Jasper’s mother would be too old to manage stairs. Thus Jasper had been able to bring Pauline home from the hospital to an already wheelchair-accessible house.
    He maneuvered Pauline’s wheelchair into the bedroom and parked it by the foot of the bed. Maddy was already under the covers. He kissed the child’s forehead and whispered, “See you in half an hour.” He turned off the bedside light, tiptoed over to Pauline and kissed her cheek. She blinked in response, and he slipped out.

3
    B ack in the kitchen, he stood over the pile of mail on the table and struggled with himself. Perhaps it would be best after all if he were simply to surrender to biology, grab the cursed catalog and slink off to the bathroom to deal with what was becoming an increasingly disruptive urge. He reached under the pile and in doing so uncovered the mystery envelope—the one he’d signed for. Perhaps it contained some information (an offer, an invitation) that would provide a distraction from the silly lust stirred in him by those Photoshopped models. Or at least briefly delay the inevitable.
    The return address read: “Department of Children andFamilies, Office of Child Support, Newport, Vermont.” An appeal for a donation, he assumed. He almost put it aside for later consideration, but the letter’s origin in Vermont sparked his curiosity. He had spent a summer teaching tennis there, in the lakeside town of New Halcyon, almost twenty years ago, after graduating with his BA from Columbia and before starting his master’s at Yale. That was four years before he met Pauline and six months before his parents’ deaths. He had felt an affinity for the state ever