“How come? You’ve never met Søren. He’s a very good person. Best man I’ve ever known.”

“You told me about him. Good men don’t hit women.”

“Good men only hit the women who want to be hit.”

“Women shouldn’t want to be hit.”

“Then it’s her problem, not his, right?” She batted her eyelashes up at him.

“Nora, you’re nuts. Come inside. My face is about to freeze off.”

“Can’t have that. Too handsome a face. Just a sec. I need one more.”

At that she paused and inhaled deeply through her nose again. She held the breath for a long time before releasing it almost reluctantly.

“Sorry,” she said. “I love that smell. A winter’s night… Does anything in the world smell better than a winter’s night?”

Wesley closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of winter—so crisp and clean and cold. In the distance someone’s fireplace burned and a trace of the heady wood smoke spiced the air. He could smell the memory of Christmas and the stark freshness of the New Year.

“It does smell amazing,” he’d agreed.

“This…” Nora inhaled again and her eyes narrowed. “This is what Søren’s skin smells like. Just like this. Even in summer this is what I breathe in when I’m near him. At night before I’d fall asleep, I would lay my face on his back between his shoulder blades and breathe in and in until I’d almost pass out. And he would laugh at me. Amazing, isn’t it? That someone’s natural smell could be like this?”

“If he bottled it and sold it, he’d make a fortune.” Wesley glanced at Nora’s small backyard. He wondered what she would say if she saw his backyard at home in Kentucky—all one thousand acres of it.

“God, I miss that smell. I love winter. It’s the only time I can smell him again without having to be around him.”

Wesley turned his eyes from the snow-shrouded lawn and back at Nora. A tear had formed in the corner of her eye and crystallized like a tiny diamond.

“You were crazy about this guy, weren’t you?” he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

Nora nodded. “Crazy would be a good word for it.”

“Why did you leave him?”

The sigh that was Nora’s first answer billowed out in front of her in a cloud of white.

“Winter,” she finally said, “can be so beautiful and so cruel. Cruel and cold. And if you live in the presence of winter you never have summer.” Nora stepped close to him and put her nose at his cheek. “You smell like summer. Like clean laundry hanging out in the sun. That’s an amazing smell too.”

Wesley blushed at her nearness. Her hair brushed his lips. He never dreamed someone smelling his skin could feel so intimate.

“We should go inside,” Wesley whispered. If he stayed out here with her another second, he’d warm them both up by kissing her. And that would be bad. “It’s too cold out here.”

Nora had reached up and laid her hands on his face, warming his skin with hers.

“It’s okay. It’ll be summer soon.”

Wesley walked in from the back porch and into the kitchen. He’d cooked a thousand meals for Nora in here. For food alone he could get her away from her computer during her writing binges. He walked up the stairs to the second floor and stood in the doorway to his old bedroom.

“Nora…” Wesley breathed as he stepped into his room. When he’d moved in, this had been a rather decadent-looking guest bedroom done up in, as Nora called it, “French bordello style.” He’d quickly made it his own in what he’d called “Not a French bordello anymore style.” And now it remained the same. He’d stripped the walls of his posters, taken his things out…but the same sheets covered the bed, the same pillows. The furniture still remained in the order he’d arranged it.

Had someone been staying in his room? Was that why Nora hadn’t bothered to revert it back to her taste? The bed definitely looked rumpled and recently slept in. A current of anger surged through him. He’d had the most beautiful, erotic, intimate moment of his life in that bed with Nora that night she couldn’t sleep, crawled into bed with him and touched him with her hand. He hated the thought of anyone but him or Nora on those sheets.

Backing out before the conflicting emotions of loneliness, anger and desire overwhelmed him, Wesley walked to Nora’s room. Maybe he could find some clue in there about where she’d gone and for how long.

Inside Nora’s bedroom, Wesley forced all memories back and out of the way. The last thing he needed was to recall the day he and Nora had nearly made love on her bed. He’d wanted to give her his virginity so much…and yet she hadn’t been able to take it. To this day he still didn’t understand why. But it was for the best now, he supposed. She hadn’t really wanted him. If she’d loved him, why had she sent him away?

Wesley stared at the bed and noticed something strange about the covers. Light streamed in through the window and revealed a thick layer of dust on the coverlet of her perfectly made bed.

And the truth shocked Wesley like snow falling in the middle of summer. The bitter, beautiful truth.

“Oh, my God…” Wesley breathed out loud, hope welling high and hard in his chest. His rumpled sheets. Nora’s dusty covers. “Nora’s been sleeping in my bed.”

“Actually, Wesley,” came a voice from behind him, a voice as cold and cruel as winter, “she’s been sleeping in mine.”

* * *

Michael woke up at midmorning to the sound of hooting. Actually, not quite hooting but his mind couldn’t think of a better word for it. This hooting seemed to originate from a Griffin and not an owl. And this Griffin apparently was perched on the roof above Michael’s room. Michael had crawled from Nora’s bed and back into his own at about five that morning. After their threesome last night, after Griffin had actually watched him having sex with Nora, Michael worried he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye for a few days. But Griffin didn’t seem to be nearly so concerned with morning-after awkwardness. He also didn’t seem particularly concerned with gravity.

“Griffin?” Michael called up to the roof, where Griffin stood shirtless in the sunlight hooting and hollering in some sort of celebration. “What are you doing?”

“Six years, Mick!” Griffin called back. “Tell me I’m awesome.”

“You’re awesome,” Michael said without reservation. Awesome and amazing and smart and funny and sexy. But he kept all those adjectives on the inside. “What’s six years?”

Griffin strolled forward on the roof casually, as if gravity didn’t apply to him. Bending over, Griffin grasped the edge of the roof and lowered himself through the window and into Michael’s bedroom.

“Six years today, Mick.” Griffin grinned so broadly his smile eclipsed the sun. “Six years today I have been clean and sober. Not a drop of alcohol. No drugs. Nothing.”

Michael couldn’t help but smile just as broadly back. He threw his arms around Griffin in a spontaneous hug but as soon as he felt Griffin’s warm body against his, his heart raced and blood started going places he didn’t want blood going. Michael pulled back immediately and took two big steps back.

“That’s incredible. I’m so happy for you. You should celebrate,” Michael said quickly, trying to cover his nervousness.

“I am. Always do.”

“How?”

Griffin grinned. “New tattoo. I add on to my ink every year.”

“Awesome. So you’re going into town?” Michael hoped Griffin would invite them into the city with him. Six years clean and sober—Griffin shouldn’t celebrate that alone.

Griffin shook his head. “Nah. Spike—she does my ink—she’s coming here tonight. Tattoo party. And guess who else is invited?” Michael shook his head. “You are, Mick.”

“That’s fantastic. I can’t wait to watch.” Michael knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Watch?” Griffin stepped past him and into the doorway of Michael’s room. He leaned against the door frame and gave Michael a long, meaningful look. Michael couldn’t quite make out what the meaning of the look was, but he sort of wished Griffin would look at him like that forever. “You’re not just watching, Mick. You’re getting one too.”

Griffin winked at him and left the room, still hooting in unabashed joy, a sound that lifted Michael’s heart so high that he almost didn’t hear what Griffin had said.

Once alone, he remembered.

Michael raced to the hallway. “Wait! Griffin? I’m what?”

20

On the subway, Suzanne found a safe spot on an empty seat and pulled Nora Sutherlin’s medical file out of her messenger bag. She’d read it last night outside Kingsley Edge’s house. She’d read it again at her apartment. After two readings she still didn’t know what to make of it.

The file began with Eleanor Schreiber’s results from a physical she’d taken before starting her freshman year at NYU. A basic physical for insurance purposes, all it revealed was a healthy eighteen-year-old girl with low cholesterol, low blood pressure and some mild hay fever. The only note of interest was that young Eleanor had refused a pelvic exam. The little scribbled note had raised Suzanne’s hackles. Why would she refuse a basic pelvic? Suzanne had immediately assumed the worst: STI…pregnancy. Maybe even evidence of an abortion. But a few pages later she’d found something that blew all her dark theories out of the water. At age nineteen, Eleanor Schreiber had apparently partied too hard one night and passed out drunk. She’d woken up with a frat boy on top of her. The file contained notes from a rape crisis counselor who’d been brought in to talk to Eleanor before, during and after the exam. Apparently the counselor hadn’t gotten to perform her duties that night, as a note on the chart testified:

Patient said she doubts the young man sexually assaulted her. Claims she vomited on him during the rape attempt. Dismissed by the patient once her priest, Father Marcus Stearns, arrived. Patient clearly suffering from severe denial.

But young Eleanor hadn’t been in denial. The doctor’s report not only showed no presence of trauma or fluids, but an intact hymen as well. At nineteen years old, Eleanor Schreiber was still a virgin. Suzanne knew she should have stopped reading there. To read another woman’s medical file seemed such a gross invasion of privacy it turned her stomach to even have it in her hands. And yet she couldn’t stop, even after learning that teenage Nora was not lover to Father Stearns, or anyone for that matter.

After Eleanor turned twenty, things got even more interesting. For some reason, instead of seeing a GP or an ob-gyn on a regular basis, Eleanor Schreiber went to a Dr. Jonas for all her all her medical issues. Dr. William Jonas, an internist at Central in Connecticut. And for a young woman who didn’t participate in organized sports, Eleanor seemed to acquire a shocking number of minor injuries—a sprained wrist, a bruised rib, even vaginal tearing. To Suzanne they seemed to be clear signs that Eleanor Schreiber had been in a physically abusive relationship in her twenties. And yet Dr. Jonas merely treated his patient, took the most perfunctory of notes and sent her on her way without ever calling the police or an abuse counselor. It seemed a shocking oversight on his part.

Suzanne turned another page in the file. Her hands shook as she read. To herself she whispered, “Nora Sutherlin…you bad Catholic…”

Age twenty-seven, Eleanor Schreiber had gotten pregnant. And Catholic or not, the pregnancy ended quickly with a prescription for RU-486. After that, the medical file ended. No more injuries, no more visits to Dr. Jonas. Nothing.