“I understand,” Dev said.

How could he understand? Meredith thought. Dev wasn’t married. He hadn’t slept beside someone for thirty years only to discover they were somebody else.

“This could help you, Meredith,” Dev said. “This could save you. It could keep you out of prison. In a year or two, when all this is in the past, you could resume normal life.”

Resume normal life? What did that even mean? Meredith was tempted to tell Dev about Connie’s slashed tires, but she refrained. She was afraid it would sound like a cry for pity, and the image Meredith needed to convey now was one of strength. She would come up with the answer. She would save herself.

“I can’t think of anything now,” Meredith said. “You’ve caught me unprepared. But I’ll try. I’ll… make a list.”

“Please,” Dev said.


That night, Meredith was too afraid to sleep. She kept picturing a man with a hunting knife hiding in the eelgrass. Meredith rose from bed, crept into the hallway, and peered out one of the windows that faced the front yard and the road. The yard was empty, quiet. The eelgrass swayed. There was a waxing gibbous moon that disappeared behind puffy nighttime clouds, then reemerged. At three fifteen, a pair of headlights appeared on the road. Meredith tensed. The headlights slowed down at the start of Connie’s driveway, paused, then rolled on. It was the police. The squad car parked in the public lot for a few minutes, then backed up and drove away.

She would make a list of words, the way Dev had asked. Resume normal life meant life with Leo and Carver. Leo would be safe and free, and the three of them-including Anais, and whatever young woman Carver fancied at the moment-would have dinner together at the sturdy oak table in Carver’s imaginary house.

Meredith would come up with the answer.

Atkinson: the name of the professor who taught the anthropology class that brought her and Freddy together.

Meredith had given Freddy the used textbook. With that bond between them, they gravitated toward each other on the first day of class. Meredith and her roommate, a girl from backwater Alabama named Gwen Marbury, sat with Freddy and his roommate, a boy from Shaker Heights, Ohio, named Richard Cassel. The four of them became something of a merry band, though they hung out together only in that one class. When Meredith saw Freddy elsewhere on campus, he was usually in the presence of a stunning, dark-haired girl. His girlfriend, Meredith assumed, another upperclassman. It figured. Freddy was too funny and smart, and too beautiful himself, to be available. Through Gwen Marbury, who was far more interested in the social politics of Princeton than in her studies, Meredith learned that the girl’s name was Trina Didem, and that she was from Istanbul, Turkey. Trina was a dual major in economics and political science. Again, it figured: ravishing, exotic, and brilliant, someone destined to be a far-flung correspondent on CNN or the head of the Brookings Institution or secretary of state. Meredith’s crush on Freddy intensified the more she learned about Trina, although Meredith realized that what she was experiencing was nothing more than a freshman crush on a particularly cool upperclassman. It was also a way to stop thinking about Toby at the College of Charleston drinking yards of beer with all the sweet, blond southern girls. But Meredith cherished her time in class with Freddy and Richard and Gwen-the three of them cracked jokes about the clicking language of the Khoisan tribe, and they speculated on the advantages of a matriarchal society-and when class was over, Meredith continued her anthropological study of Trina Didem. Trina waited for Freddy outside on the stone steps of the building so she could smoke her clove cigarettes. She, Trina, wore a black suede choker at all times, as well as dangly earrings made from multicolored stones. She wore tight, faded jeans, and she carried a buttery soft Italian leather bag. Really, Meredith thought, she probably had a crush on Trina as well as Freddy. Trina was a woman, whereas Meredith was a girl trying to become a woman.

At the beginning of December, a knock came on the door of the anthropology classroom. Professor Atkinson stopped lecturing and swooped over to answer the door with a perplexed look on her face, as though this were her home and these were unexpected guests. Standing at the door was Trina Didem. Professor Atkinson looked first to Freddy, perhaps thinking there was going to be some kind of lovers’ spat right in the middle of their discussion of Dunbar’s number. But Trina, it seemed, was there on official business. She read off a slip of paper, in her lilting English. She was looking for Meredith Martin.

Meredith stood up, confused. She thought perhaps Trina had learned of her crush on Freddy and had come to call her out. But a second later, Trina explained that Meredith was needed in the Student Life Office. Meredith collected her books. Freddy reached for her hand as she left. It was the first time he’d ever touched her.

Meredith followed Trina out of the building. She was so starstruck in Trina’s presence that she was unable to ask the obvious questions: Why did you pull me out of class? Where are we going? It looked, from the path they were taking, like they were headed for the office of the dean of students, which differed slightly from the Student Life Office that she’d been promised. Or maybe they were one and the same-Meredith was still too new to campus to know. Trina took the occasion of being outside in the cold, crystalline air to light a clove cigarette. Because she was a step or two ahead of Meredith, the smoke blew in Meredith’s face. Somehow, this snapped Meredith back to her senses. She said, “You’re Freddy’s girlfriend, right?”

Trina barked once, then blew out her smoke. “Not girlfriend. Freddy is my English tutor.” She blew out more smoke. “And my economics tutor. I pay him.”

Meredith felt her own lungs fill up with the cloying, noxious smoke-it tasted to Meredith like burning molasses, and her grandmother’s gingerbread cookies, which she detested-but she didn’t care because she was so excited. Freddy was Trina’s tutor! She paid him! Meredith couldn’t wait to tell Gwen.

Meredith’s elation was short-lived. Once they were in the plush office belonging to the dean of students, which was empty but for the two of them, Trina closed the door. Meredith remembered an Oriental rug under her feet; she remembered the brassy song of a grandfather clock. She noted that Trina had extinguished her cigarette, but an aura of smoke still clung to her. Up close, she could see that Trina had speckles of mascara on her upper eyelids.

What’s going on? Meredith wondered. But she wasn’t brave enough to ask. It was definitely something bad. She fleetingly thought of how ironic it would be if she got kicked out of school right at the moment that she had learned Freddy was unattached.

Trina said, “The dean is in a meeting across campus. I’m an intern here, so they sent me to tell you.”

Tell me what? Meredith thought. But her voice didn’t work.

“Your mother called,” Trina said. “Your father had a brain aneurysm. He died.”

Meredith screamed. Trina moved to touch her, but Meredith swatted her away. She could remember being embarrassed about her screaming. She was screaming in front of Trina, whom she had considered a paragon of Ivy League womanhood. And what news had Trina, of all people, just delivered her? Her father was dead. Chick Martin, of the eggplant parm subs and the monthly poker games; Chick Martin, the partner at Saul, Ewing who specialized in the laws of arbitrage; Chick Martin, who had believed his daughter to be brilliant and talented. He had suffered a brain aneurysm at work. So arbitrage had killed him. Arbitrage was tricky; it had a million rules and loopholes, and while trying to decipher the code that would bring him to his answer, Chick Martin’s brain had short-circuited. He was dead.

But no, that wasn’t possible. Meredith had just been home for Thanksgiving break. Her father had been waiting for her at the Villanova train station. He had wanted to come get her at the university, but Meredith had insisted on taking the train-New Jersey Transit to 30th Street Station, SEPTA to Villanova. That’s what college kids do, Daddy! Meredith had said. They take the train!

Both of her parents had coddled her over break. Her mother brought her poached eggs in bed; her father gave her forty dollars for the informal class reunion that was taking place on Wednesday night at the Barleycorn Inn. Her parents brought her along to the annual cocktail party at the Donovers’ house on Friday night, and as a concession to her new adult status, her father handed her a glass of Chablis. He introduced her to couples she had known her whole life as though she were a brand-new person: My daughter, Meredith, a freshman at Princeton!

Chick Martin, Meredith’s first and best champion, the only champion she’d ever needed, was gone.

Meredith stopped screaming long enough to look at Trina, thinking how she hated her, hated the smell of clove cigarettes, hated the city of Istanbul, hated the beauty and sophistication that was masking the sadism required to deliver this kind of news. Meredith said, “No, you’re wrong.”

Trina said, “I’ll walk you back to your suite so you can pack your things. We’ve called for a car to take you home.”


The world had stopped being safe on that day. As happy as Meredith had ever been in her life, she had never been truly happy again. Her father was gone; her father’s love for her was gone. She thought back to the driving lessons in the university parking lot, her father saying, I can’t stand to see you hurt like this. The pain Toby had caused Meredith was one thing. This pain, now, was quite another.