“No, everything's fine. I just wanted to see the news.” He looked away from her, aiming the remote control at the TV with a vague expression.

“Why don't you come outside and swim?” she said, smiling. She was always happy there. It was a pleasant place, and their house there was easy to maintain. And she enjoyed being surrounded by her children and their friends. It had always been a good place for her and Peter too. Although this summer everything seemed slightly different. There was a lot of pressure on him, with the research being conducted on Vicotec, and all she could do was hope that it would go well and they'd get the results Peter and her father wanted. But for the moment, Peter seemed unhappy and distant.

It was two full weeks later before he was able to find out the truth at the laboratory, and Peter sat and stared into space after he hung up. He couldn't believe what he'd heard, and he drove all the way to Martha's Vineyard to discuss it in person with Katie's father.

“You fired him? Why? How could you do that?” Frank Donovan had shot the messenger that had brought them the bad news. He still didn't understand that in the long run Paul-Louis had saved them.

“He's a fool. He's a nervous old woman seeing demons in the dark. There was no reason to keep him.” For the first time in eighteen years, Peter was beginning to think that his father-in-law was crazy.

“He's one of the foremost scientists in France, Frank, and he's forty-nine years old. What are you doing? We could have used him here to help us speed up our research.”

“Our research is going fine. I discussed it with them yesterday. They tell me they'll be ready to roll by Labor Day. There will be no kinks left in Vicotec by then, no 'flaws,' no ghosts, no danger.” But Peter didn't believe him.

“Can you prove that? Are you sure? Paul-Louis said it might take a year.”

“That's my point. He didn't know what he was saying.” But Peter was frightened by what Frank had done, and he used company records to locate Paul-Louis, and he called him his first night back in New York to tell him how sorry he was, and talk to him about Vicotec, and their progress.

“You're going to kill someone,” Paul-Louis said in heavily accented English. But he had been touched by the call, and he had always had a great deal of respect for Peter. At first he'd been told that his dismissal had been Peter's idea, but later he had learned that the order actually came all the way from the chairman. “You cannot take a chance on it yet,” Paul-Louis reiterated. “You must go through all the tests, and it will take months, even with double teams working around the clock. You must not let them do this.”

“I won't. I promise you that. I appreciate Everything you've done. I'm just sorry about the way it happened.” And he genuinely meant it.

“It's all right,” the Frenchman shrugged, smiling philosophically. He had already had another offer from an important German pharmaceutical company with a large factory in France, but he wanted to take some time off to ponder his decision. And he had gone to Brittany to do that. “I understand. I wish you good luck with this. It could be a wonderful product.”

The two men chatted for a little while, and Paul-Louis promised to keep in touch, and the following week Peter followed their research results even more closely. If Paul-Louis was right, they still had a lot of work to do before they could “greenlight” the product in good conscience.

But by the end of July, they seemed to be making good progress. And Peter was encouraged when he left for his vacation in Martha's Vineyard. The research department had promised to fax him daily reports from the office. But as a result, he found it harder to relax than usual. He seemed constantly tied by the umbilical cord of his fax machine to both the research on Vicotec, and his office.

“You're not having any fun this year,” his wife complained, but she didn't pay much attention to him either. She had lots of friends to see, gardening to do, and she was spending a lot of time at her father's place, helping him renovate, and deciding whether or not to remodel his summer kitchen. She helped him entertain his friends, and organized several dinner parties for him, which she and Peter attended. But Peter complained about that too. He said she was never around, and every time he saw her, she was rushing off to meet her father.

”What's happening to you? You were never jealous of Daddy before. I feel like I'm being pulled by both of you,” she said, looking annoyed. Peter had always been so good about the things she did with her father, and now he complained constantly. And her father wasn't any better, he was still angry at Peter for his position about Vicotec.

There was a definite tension between the two men that year, and by mid-August, Peter was ready to go back to town, and use work as an excuse. He had had it. He wasn't sure what it was, maybe it was just him, but he had had several arguments with the kids, he thought Katie was being unusually difficult, and he was sick to death of going to Frank's house for dinner. On top of it the weather had been miserable, and they had had a week of storms, and there was the threat of a hurricane coming up from Bermuda. By the third day, he sent everyone to the movies, and he had secured the shutters, and tied down the terrace furniture. Later he was eating lunch in front of the television, watching a ball game, when he switched to the news during a break just to hear about Hurricane Angus. But he was instantly startled when he saw a picture of an enormous sailboat followed by a still photograph of Senator Andy Thatcher. The coverage had already been on for a while, and the anchor was talking about “…the tragedy occurred late last night. And the bodies have not, as yet, been recovered. The senator has been unavailable for comment.”

“Oh my God,” Peter said it aloud to himself, and suddenly he was standing there, as he put his sandwich down on the table behind him. He had to know what had happened to her. Was she dead or alive, was it her body they were searching for? He was near tears as he stared at the tube and began frantically changing channels.

“Hi, Dad. What inning?” Mike asked as he drifted through the room, back from the movie. Peter hadn't heard them come in, and he looked like a ghost as he faced him.

“No inning … no score … I don't know …never mind …” He looked back at the TV again, as Mike left, but at first Peter couldn't find it. And then he found it on Channel Two, and this time he heard it almost from the beginning. They had been caught in a storm in treacherous waters just outside Gloucester, in Andy's hundred-and-ten-foot sailboat. And in spite of its size and alleged stability, they had hit some rocks in a storm, and the boat had sunk in barely more than ten minutes. There had been roughly a dozen people aboard. The boat was computerized and Thatcher had been sailing it himself with the help of only a single deckhand, and some friends. For the moment, several passengers were missing, but the senator himself had survived. His wife had been aboard, and her brother the junior congressman from Boston, Edwin Douglas. But tragically, the congressman's wife and both young children had been swept overboard. Her body had been found early that morning, but neither of the children had been found yet. And then, in a single breath, the anchor said that the senator's wife, Olivia Douglas Thatcher, had nearly drowned. She was still in critical condition in Addison Gilbert Hospital, and had been rescued late the night before by the Coast Guard. She had been found unconscious, but had been kept afloat in the storm by her life vest.

“Oh my God … oh my God …” Olivia. And she was so afraid of the ocean. He could only begin to imagine what had happened to her, as he thought frantically of going to her now. But how would he explain it? What would they say on the news? An anonymous businessman appeared at the hospital today, desperate to see Mrs. Thatcher, and was turned away. He was put in a straitjacket and sent home to his wife to regain his senses. … He had no idea how to get to her, or how to see her without causing problems for either of them. And as he sat down again, and stared at the television, he realized that for the moment, while she was still critically ill, there was probably no way to do it. Another channel said she hadn't regained consciousness yet, and was said to be in a deep coma, and they ran all the tabloid pictures of her and indexed every tragedy, just as they had in Paris. The reporters were camped outside her parents' house in Boston as well, and they showed a few minutes of coverage of her grief-stricken brother leaving the hospital, having just lost his wife and children. It was painful beyond words just seeing him, and Peter felt tears rolling down his cheeks as he watched him.

“Is something wrong, Dad?” Mike had come back in and he was worried when he saw his father.

“No, I'm …I'm fine …something just happened to some friends. It's terrible. A storm off Cape Cod last night, Senator Thatcher's boat went down. It sounds as though a number of people were lost, and several others were injured.”…And she was still in a coma. Why had this happened to her? What if she died? It was beyond thinking.

“Do you know them?” Katie seemed surprised as she walked through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “There was something about the accident in the paper this morning.”

“I met them in Paris,” he said, afraid to say more to her, as though she would know from the tone of his voice, or worse yet, see him crying.

“They say she's very strange. I hear he's going to run for president,” Katie said through the kitchen doorway, and Peter didn't answer. He had gone upstairs as quietly as he could, and was calling the hospital from their bedroom.