In the morning Ada and Clover and Ada's car were gone. Owen took inventory. Clothes, baby book, diapers, and money were missing. He didn't notice that the passports (including his) and the title to her car were gone as well. He thought for a while, and picked up the phone and dialed.

"Mother, it's me. I'd like to speak to Ada."

"She's not here."

"Have you seen her?"

"Yes. I have."

"Where is she? I need to talk to her."

"You need to talk to her? That's all you've ever thought about. Yourself and your so-called needs. She's in a place where she's safe from you. You should be ashamed. I'm ashamed to be your mother."

"Mother, please. I just want to talk to her."

"She doesn't want to talk to you."

"Let her decide that."

"She did. She made it very clear. She doesn't want to hear from you."

"Mother, please. She's my wife."

"She was your wife. I don't think she will be much longer."

"I'm coming over."

"No. If you set foot on this property I will shoot you with your father's shotgun. You will be in the emergency room and the doctors will be pulling birdshot out of you."

"Mother -- "

"I'm not as naive as you think. I know what happened. That poor girl can scarcely sit down. She looks like she's in shock. I gave her some money and she went somewhere safe, somewhere away from you."

"Moth -- "

She hung up.

He called back but there was no answer after thirty rings. Despite her threat, he drove to the house, but his mother's car wasn't in the garage, no one answered the door bell, and there were no signs of life through the windows.

Ada was driving south. When she reached Wichita she sold the car at a dealership near the airport. She accepted their price without haggling. The title was in her name alone. She wondered whether she'd insisted on this in case she needed to escape. She called a cab and went to the airport. American Airlines had a flight for Dallas in two hours. She paid cash, using a false name.

In Dallas the next flight to Costa Rica wasn't until the following day. On being assured that there were plenty of seats, she decided not to reserve one, to minimize the chance of being found. She checked herself and the baby into the airport hotel, again with cash, again using a false name.

In the morning she was at the counter an hour before departure and bought a ticket with her credit card. When Owen opened the bill he would know where she'd gone, if he hadn't figured it out already, but she didn't care. By then she would be out of reach.

The flight was long, the baby cranky, and Ada was tired and couldn't sit comfortably. She had forgotten to bring a pacifier, and Clover cried every time the cabin pressure changed. Ada wanted to nurse the baby in the seat, but there were other people in the seats adjoing hers; she took her to the bathroom and nursed her there until the child fell asleep.

By the time Ada staggered off the airplane, she needed sleep herself. She took a cab into town, to the Santo Tomas, and checked in. The hotel was too expensive, a former home of aristocracy, tiled, charming, but it was the only one she could remember, and she was too tired to make the effort to find something cheaper. She passed out without turning down the bedcovers. Clover slept without bothering her.

In the morning she wired her father to come get her. She spent the day walking the city, carrying Clover. She stopped to play in parks and watch the people, looked at the buildings, the vegetation, the children in their school uniforms, ate the uninspired cooking, browsed in bookstores, smelled the diesel exhaust from the trucks, and thought how foreign everything seemed. The day after that, as she stepped out the door for another walk, her brother pulled up in the Land Rover, more battered and ancient than ever, with her father in the passenger seat. The sight of their faces filled her with joy: she was finally home. She kissed them both and handed Clover to Thomas.

"This is your granddaughter," she said. Clover pulled his beard and squealed with delight.

"Where's Owen?" he asked.

"I left him." At the look on his face she said, "I'll explain on the way. Let's get my things. I can't wait to get home."

"You haven't been here in, how many years?"

"I know, but it's where I belong. Not that castle I was living in."

The roads were bad, though probably better than before, but now that she had something to compare them to she knew how awful they actually were. The drive was much longer than she remembered -- not farther, but slower. They had just turned off the Pan American Highway and were driving between two dusty fields when she shouted, "Stop the car!"

She got out and watched two blue motmots in a tree. She had forgotten their racquet tails and she watched the way they swung like pendulums, the tails of the two birds going back and forth in perfect unison.

"What are you looking at?" Henry asked.

"Those birds. I'd forgotten about them."

At every turn in the road she saw something familiar -- a cecropia in flower, a scarlet-rumped tanager, a house she recognized, a bridge, a road sign in Spanish. She spent much of the ride comforting Clover, who was upset at the jolting of the ride.

The same houses, the same trees, the same holes in the road, outside Santa Elena, then the muddy lane, and her brother turned right between the fences and half a mile further was the house. Her family's house, and her own treehouse still standing in back.

"Welcome home," her brother said. After he'd unloaded her bags, he got in a Land Cruiser parked beside the house.

"Aren't you coming in?" Ada asked.

"No. I have my own house. I need to check on a few things. I'll be around soon," he said. "I'm a little busy right now." He drove off.

"You never told me he moved," she said to her father.

"I thought I had."

"Mi amor," came a voice from behind her.

Ada turned. "Maria."

"Si. Como estas?"

"Muy bien. Y tu?"

"Pura vida."

They embraced.

"Your father teaches me English now," Maria said in a heavy accent.

"We can speak Spanish. I don't mind."

"No. No. I try to speak English. This is your baby? She is very beautiful. Very pretty hair. Such beautiful color. What is it called?"

"Auburn."

Maria held out her arms, and Clover turned and held out her arms and leaned toward her in response, and Ada handed her over.

They went inside. The house was cluttered now, though still clean, and the kitchen was different, more like the kitchen she remembered in Maria's house, the house she had always passed on the way to and from school. The house where Maria had sometimes fed her. Food was on the stove. The air had the smell of forgotten spices. Maria had set the table. Ada wasn't hungry, but Maria insisted that she eat.

"You are, how you say?" She gestured at Ada.

"Thin? I've always been thin, Maria."

"I change that. Sit." She brought the food and set it on the table.

After dinner Ada changed Clover's diaper and put her to bed in a wooden crate padded with blankets, upstairs in her old bedroom. The child was sleeping solidly. When Ada returned, Maria was whispering to Thomas and he was smiling. They were holding hands. Ada had never seen her father hold anyone's hand before, not even her mother's, when her mother had been alive. She stood outside the doorway, in the dark hall, watching, and trying to sort out her feelings -- happiness, envy, regret, surprise. She stepped back and then Maria noticed her and gestured her in.

They stayed late at the table. She told them about her life since she had left, and they told her who had married, who had divorced, who had been born, and who had died. Some of it she knew, most she did not. Some of the Quakers had moved away, or split off from the original group. Some had ceased to be Quakers. The farms had reorganized and were working better, and the dairy was a success. The cloudforest preserve had been enlarged, and was becoming famous. She was eager to see it and to study it. Her father promised to introduce her to the director.

"That reminds me of something," he said, rising from his chair. He returned moments later with a book. "I thought you would like this. I bought a copy the last time I was in San Jose, but I hadn't sent it to you yet. I wanted to look at it first."

It was a copy of Stiles and Skutch, A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. "Thank you," she said. She looked at the plates, the gorgeous birds, and wondered where she could borrow a pair of binoculars.

She asked about her egg collection and the contents of the tree house, and her father said that no one had been in the room for years, almost since she had left, then shamefacedly admitted that the last time he had peered through one of the windows, everything had looked like it was in very bad shape. He had meant to collect her things, but had kept putting it off, not wanting to add to the clutter in the house, and had eventually forgotten. Ada saw his embarrassment and changed the subject. Eventually he started to fall asleep in his chair, as he had done when she was young, and Maria sent them off to their rooms while she cleaned up.

In the morning Ada woke and looked out the window and saw clouds descending on the house. Moments later, she could not see the other side of the road that ran past the doorstep. She sat on the front stoop and played with Clover until the clouds broke up and the sun emerged. She wanted to work, and asked Maria for a scrub brush and bucket and lye. Maria said she would care for the baby.

The key to her treehouse was lost, and she had to jimmy the lock with a screwdriver. The room was full of cobwebs and a musty smell, and the litter of rodent droppings. Something had eaten half her collection of bird's eggs and knocked the rest to the floor. Her journals were spotted with mold. She took one from the shelf and opened it. The pages were brittle and yellow, and the dust made her sneeze. She looked at the childish writing. The first entry was about a horse she had loved particularly well, at a time when it been bitten on the leg by a poisonous snake and had gone lame. She had forgotten the horse, and her worry for it. There were other entries about her brother's Capuchin monkey and the trouble it caused, the coffee bushes, her mother's illness, and synopses of what she was reading in the latest shipment of books from the United States.

She spent several hours reading, and thinking that she shouldn't have dropped the habit of writing when she started college; those days were unrecorded, except for her memory. Maybe she would resume now; it was a good way to understand things, getting them down on the page. She would be sure to use better paper. Her old journals were almost unsalvageable, the pages sometimes breaking when turned, but she was unwilling to throw them out. She dusted them, careful not to break them, and dusted the shelves, and returned the journals to the shelves. She knew she would never read and copy them; she made a mental note to find some plastic covers, to prevent further deterioration. The bird log had survived with only a few spots of mold, she was pleased to see, and the quetzal feather was perfectly intact. She wove it into her hair before she started scrubbing. Except for breaks to nurse Clover, Ada worked most of the day, and by evening the room was immaculate. She sat on the front stoop with Clover again and watched the light fade. The sunset was abrupt, and early.

She had forgotten much, above all the quiet. No traffic, no background noise, no sirens or helicopters or airplanes, no neighbors talking in their yards, no lawnmowers, no music. The silence was calm, like the silence in Meeting. There was nothing missing in it. She sat for hours, listening.

She had forgotten, too, the darkness. No street lights, no background light from a city, only the rare headlights of a car on the road a kilometer away.

And she had forgotten how little there was to do -- no movies, the library was tiny, no bicycle to ride, poor radio reception. Here, with so little to spend time on, she might have watched television; she was glad there was none. She was bored, as she had expected to be, but she wouldn't let it be a problem. She took care of her daughter, and she did everything she could to help Maria, but Maria had the house well-organized, and there wasn't enough to keep them both busy all day. Instead she worked on the vegetable garden, which was large, weedy and overgrown. Neither her father nor Maria spent much time on it.

She gave away her two dresses, and her shoes, and wore jeans and sandals. She would buy a pair of boots soon. In the meantime, she didn't mind mud between her toes.

Her life became very plain, very simple, very repetitive, and all this was a great comfort. She was bored, but the boredom didn't bother her. There would be time in the future to think about the future. For now, now was all she wanted. She refused to think about anything else.

The first Sunday after she arrived she attended Meeting, and was surprised at the joy her people showed at seeing her, and surprised at how much they knew: they had been following her, through her family, all these years. They set food on tables outside the Meeting house and then sat down, and every one of them talked to her and made her feel welcome and asked what had happened to her during her time away, and asked what was happening at home in the United States. She wondered why she had wanted so badly to leave, even though she knew the reasons. But they were so kind, so calm, so gentle compared to the people she had been living with. To leave had been necessary, but the sophistication she had acquired had made her a fake. She had been like them, once. She felt ungrateful and selfish, ever to have abandoned them and this place.

She had been in Monteverde little more than a week when the letters started to arrive. He pleaded for her to take him back. He made promises, he apologized, he told her that he loved and needed her. She knew this, he said, and she knew how hard they had worked at their marriage. The letters continued for six weeks, almost daily. She did not reply. She did not know what to say. She could not begin. Then there was a pause of a few days, followed by a letter that said he would be flying down within the next week. His replacement passport was due any day. She was forced to reply.

He arrived four days later. Ada was alone with the child when she heard a knock at the front door. The sound was unfamiliar, because no one in Monteverde knocked -- they opened the door and identified themselves, and waited for someone to tell them to come in. It was probably a tourist in need of directions, and unfamiliar with the local custom.

When she opened the door, she saw that it was her husband. "I would have called, but I couldn't find a phone number," he said.

"We don't have one. Didn't you get my letter?"

"No. What letter?"

There was no point in explaining. It had probably crossed paths with him. "I'm feeding Clover," she said. "Come in." He followed her to the kitchen.

"My girl," he crooned. Clover ignored him, babbling to her mother. "She doesn't recognize me, does she?"

"Of course she does. She's hungry, that's all. She wants to eat right now." Ada picked up the spoon and dipped it in the mashed peas and pushed it against Clover's mouth. When the spoon was empty, she scraped some of the food from the baby's chin.

"Let me," Owen said.

Ada handed him the spoon and the bowl and yielded the chair. "I wish you hadn't come," she said. She took the one he had been sitting in, and moved it to face his and Clover's at a right angle.

Clover turned her head and refused the food. "Come on," he said, and moved the spoon around, so it was in front of her mouth. She turned her head the other direction. "I guess you'd better do it."

"It's not you," Ada said. "Maria can't feed her when I'm here, either. She wants her momma."

They switched chairs again, and he watched her feed the baby for a while. When she was done, and cleaning up the mess, he said, "Are you going to talk to me?"

She continued wiping the baby's face with the cloth. "I don't have anything to say yet. If you'd been a little more patient, I would have had time to get ready."

"I think I've been patient. It's been almost two months."

"That isn't long enough. I'm not prepared." She sat back, the washrag still in her hand.

"Ada, it won't hurt you to talk."

She sniffed. Two tears leaked out, one from each eye. She wiped them with the cloth, leaving a green streak on one cheek. "It hurts just to see you," she said, "much less to talk. It's a, it's a reminder."

"There must be something I can do." He waited. "Isn't there?"

"Sometimes it's too late. Sometimes saying you're sorry isn't enough to fix it. I needed time. Now you've come, and I remember. I needed to forget."

"Here." He reached for the washcloth, and she gave it to him. "You have something on your cheek," he said. He inspected the cloth until he found a clean spot, and wiped the mashed peas off her face and handed the cloth back.

"Thank you," she said.

"We have to talk sometime."

"I said I'm not ready."

"Well, what am I supposed to do? I've waited and waited, and you never answered any of my letters. I was desperate. I had to come. Now am I supposed to get in the car and go back to San Jose and catch a flight home and wait some more? How long is this going to go on? When are you going to be ready?"

"I don't know!" she shouted. The baby started to cry. "Oh, here, precious girl." She picked her up and said, "No, no, don't worry. Momma's not angry. There there," until Clover quieted.

She tipped her head, and Owen followed her to the back room, where they sat in the two armchairs. Ada held a finger to her lips, to silence Owen, and continued to talk to Clover until the child fell asleep. Then she rose and walked out of the room and up the stairs, cradling the girl. She returned a minute later. "We'll have to be quiet," she said. "I don't want to wake her."

"Maybe we should sit outside."

"No. I couldn't hear her if she cries."

"Can Maria take care of her for a few days? Could we go away somewhere, just by ourselves, to talk this out?"

"And what? Sleep in the same bed? I don't want to be alone with you. I'll talk to you, but I won't go off alone with you."

"That's -- all the years we've been married, I only made one mistake -- "

She held up her hand. "No. There were other mistakes, but we're not getting into that. And it doesn't matter any more if you think I'm not being fair. You raped me. You raped me." She leaned forward. "You -- are -- a -- rapist. The worst kind of rapist. How does it feel? However it makes you feel, it's nothing compared to what I felt. The man I married, the man who fathered my child, the man I loved..." She stood and walked to the back window and looked out at the garden and the coffee bushes beyond for a while.

"Ada -- "

"No. Don't say anything." She left, returning a few minutes later with a tray; on it, a plate of fruit and a pitcher of water, and a glass. "I shouldn't have said those things. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was so angry. Please ignore what I said." She poured water in the glass and handed it to him, and indicated the plate. "Are you hungry? You've come a long way. If this isn't enough, I can cook something." She smiled. "We even have a refrigerator now. I can re-heat leftovers. Much better than the old days."

He chose an apple and rubbed it between his hands. A long silence. "Did you take my passport so I couldn't follow you?"

"Yes. You would have done the same thing."

"No, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me. It was a good idea, though. Smart. I mean, it kept us apart, and we needed to be apart. You did, anyway."

"That was the reason I took it."

"You're still angry."

"I seem to be. I shouted at you in the kitchen, and then I called you something terrible. I'm sorry. My tongue ran away with me. I don't think you're -- like that. You're not. You're a loving man. Do you remember when I was so unhappy I couldn't get out of bed? You were so worried, and always trying to help. So kind to me. So patient. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"How can we get back to that? Oh, Owen, I want that back. I want to go back to the time when I was falling in love with you again, I want it back. You have to help me. I'm afraid. I can't forget what you did. I don't know how to get back. I can't forget."

"I don't know, either. I had a million things to say. I had it all planned out. It was all so clear on the plane, it was all I thought about, and now I can't remember. I see you, and this place, and it's all strange. I just think, you don't belong here. We should be back in our house, eating dinner, dancing with the baby." He shrugged. "I -- I liked coming home, and seeing you there, and Clover. It never occurred to me that it wouldn't last forever. Everything was going so well," he said. "Come home. We can work it out. All we need is some time."

"No. It isn't a matter of time. It's a matter of trust, the way it was after Gina, but this is worse. You have to understand the way I was raised." She stopped. "Never mind. I have to think. I have to be alone. You should go now. Come back in the morning. There's a little inn near the preserve. I'll draw you a map. They always keep a room free, in case someone needs a place. They know me, they'll let you have the room if you mention my name."

After he'd gone she went upstairs and looked at their child, asleep in a wooden box on the floor, and marvelled at the beauty of this little being they had made together. Then she lay down in her own bed, to rest for a while. She must have been tired. The next thing, Maria was waking her for dinner.

In the morning she put the child in Maria's arms and kissed them both, and her father dropped her off at the inn. The door to Owen's room was unlocked -- in fact, didn't have a lock -- and she let herself in. He was sleeping. She sat and watched him, in the dim light. His eyes were moving rapidly under their lids, and she was tempted to wake him and ask what he was dreaming. Instead she waited. When he did wake, and saw her, he shouted and sat up.

"It's only me," she said.

"Jesus, don't you knock?"

"Actually, no."

"I thought I was alone."

"You were dreaming and I didn't want to wake you. Do you remember what it was about?"

"No." He rubbed his eyes. "I never dream. You know that." He flipped the sheet, exposing his nakedness, and put his feet on the floor.

Ada averted her eyes. "I'll wait outside," she said, "while you get ready."

"What's up with this?" he asked. "You've seen me naked a million times."

"That was before," she said, and closed the door behind her.

There was nowhere to eat nearby, so they skipped breakfast. Ada took him to the preserve and they walked the trails. She explained some of the plants and insects, and the ecology. She'd hoped he would get a look at a male quetzal, or perhaps a three-wattled bellbird, but she didn't hear or see either species. In an hour she admitted to herself that there was nothing left to do. Owen's boredom was obvious. He was being patient because these things interested her. They walked back to the car, stopping at the hummingbird feeders. She had hoped to show him a violet sabrewing, but came up empty on that bird as well.

He stopped at the inn and talked her into coming upstairs. The room was warm and he took off his shirt and lay on the bed, reminiscing about the early days, her garden in his back yard, their first date at the Castle Tea Room, the fun they'd had. He was recalling the good memories. She listened, aghast. He seemed to be working through their entire history.

"You're trying to seduce me, aren't you?" she said. "Just like a frat boy with a smooth line."

"What? No! I just want you to remember how good it was. How much we have to save."

"No you're not. You're trying to get me into bed. You think if we have sex, you can show me how gentle you're being and everything will be okay and I'll come back."

"No. No I don't. Honest."

"Then get up and put on your shirt. We're not staying here."

"Ada -- "

"Fine. I'll walk home."

"Okay, okay."

She was already in the car when he emerged from the room. "Touchy, touchy," he said.

"If you want to get me back, you won't do things like that."

"Do what? You misunderstood. You know you're driving me crazy, don't you?"

"Let me know when you get there. We'll be even."

"Well, I guess we agree, then... Is there anywhere to eat, or are we expected to starve?"

"Take me home. I'll cook something."

Home was worse, not better, because Maria was there, and even if she'd made herself invisible, which she didn't try to do, simply having her there meant that the two of them couldn't talk about their business, and there didn't seem to be anything else to talk about. When the baby woke, Ada was relieved, and suggested that they take her for a walk. She headed for the overlook, but she'd never carried Clover there, and the distance was too far. She was struggling before the halfway point.

"I'll take her," Owen said. "You're tired. Besides, she's my girl, too." Ada passed her over. Clover was delighted, and leaned back, looking at her father's face.

"Did you miss me?" he asked. He repeated the question, and Ada realized he was talking to her, not the baby.

"No. I've walled you out. I don't think about you."

"It must be nice to have that much mind control."

"Stop being sarcastic. I think walling you out is reasonable."

"Ada, what do I have to do? Why can't we talk? Everything goes wrong every time I open my mouth. I can't say anything without pissing you off."

"Maybe you're saying the wrong things. Maybe you should try -- oh, I don't know, maybe you could start with an apology."

"All right. I said it in the letters, over and over. I'm sorry. Does that help?"

"No. It doesn't. In fact, the opposite. It wasn't very gracious. It wasn't very sincere."

"I'm trying. I came all the way here, didn't I? Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Yes. I suppose I don't seem very gracious or sincere, either," she said. "I wonder what happened to my self-control. Those years living in the U.S., I suppose."

"Was it that bad?"

"Oh, no. It was wonderful. I never believed my good luck, to live there. I got to spend my time studying, and even when I didn't have any money, I was always comfortable." She put her arm through his, then took it back out; the baby was in the way. "Then you came along. You have your faults, but you are a good provider. No question of that. But you see, that's not the important thing. I can live on nothing, or next to nothing. I don't like to, but I can. What I want, Owen," she said, knowing it for the first time now, "what I want is never to live with you again." He stopped and stared at her. She stopped and faced him. "This is too important for you to feel hurt. Feeling hurt gets in the way. Listen to what I'm saying." She sighed. "This isn't coming out right. Give me a minute." She started toward the overlook again. "Come along. It's only a hundred meters."

They emerged from the trees. "Careful," she said. "Don't get any closer. I sit on these rocks." They looked at the view for a while. "Here," she said. "Let me start over." She turned to face him. "I married you with my eyes open. I wasn't as inexperienced as you thought. I knew there would be surprises, I knew I would have to adapt, and I was determined. And I think I succeeded, and so did you, although it took you longer to learn that the other person is more important than yourself. We built trust, we built a life, we built a family, and we did it together. I watched you grow. You have grown. But you broke something important. I'll never trust you again. I know you're a good man, and I know you truly regret what you did, and I know that you love me. I'm willing to come back, if you're sure that's what you want. But everything has a price, including me. It's not a price I can control. It's just who I am. I've never been able to change. I'll never be anyone else, no matter how much I want to. I'm not any better than anyone else, I'm just different, I can't accept certain things, and what you did to me is one of those things. I'll come back to you, but it won't be a real marriage. It will only be a pretense, because I'll never be able to forget. I'll never feel safe in bed with you. I wish it could be different, but it won't. No matter how long we live together, no matter how it fades with the years, it will always be there. I'll never trust you, and I won't respect myself. There," she said. "I'll come back, but that's what it will be like. I'd rather have my freedom, but if it's important enough, and you're willing to live a lie for the rest of our lives, I'll come back. It's up to you."

Ada knew that she risked being stranded in Monteverde after the divorce. She would want to return to the larger world, to places with more variety, more choices. That had not changed; that desire was only temporarily suspended.

Money was the problem. She had none, and he had a great deal. But she didn't want his money. She knew it was practical to demand a settlement, but she couldn't bring herself to ask for anything from him. She would take back the things that belonged to her: certain books, her dissertations, a few clothes, photographs, her old teddy bear, a painting, her rocking chair and bicycle, her record albums. That was all. In addition, Owen would have to pay half the cost of Clover's support, and all of her education when she went to college. Clover was to stay with Ada. Owen could visit the child in Monteverde.

He agreed to everything, with the provision that he see Clover at least four times a year, for a total of eight weeks; if necessary, Ada and Clover could spend part of the year with Nina. Owen would pay the travel costs.

The legalities too much longer than Ada had expected. When everything was finally ready, she flew back. They met at Nina's house and Ada's lawyer, whom she had never met until now, explained the jargon. Ada signed after reading the agreement. Owen promised to stay away from his house the next day until she had removed the things she wanted, and he had already arranged for a small van, with a supply of cardboard boxes, and a driver to be at her disposal all day.

The driver arrived with the van in the morning and she rode with him. The door opened soundlessly on the silent house. She was relieved to think this was the last time she would be in this house. It was too big. She had never got used to it. There were things in the house she didn't recognize -- furniture, photographs, Wedgwood china, and some pots and pans, with Ada's hidden at the back of the kitchen cabinets. Another woman's clothes shared her closet. Owen hadn't wasted any time.

With Clover in a Snugli, Ada went from room to room, pointing out the things that belonged to her, the driver boxing them up. She was saying goodbye to the life she had led. From the window above her desk, she looked at the back yard. She had never cut back the honeysuckle, and it had taken over the stone wall at the back of the property. How had that escaped her? She took the teddy bear from the desk and handed it to Clover, who embraced it and rubbed her cheek against it.

The last thing she did was to write Owen a note and leave it on the hall table. He should start thinking about scheduling the visits, and making the arrangements. Unscheduled visits would be fine, too: he would be welcome in Costa Rica, or he could fly them up. She said that she had loved him, that he would be in her thoughts and prayers and that she wished him every happiness.

She set her house key on top of the letter. She took off her wedding ring -- after so many years, it was difficult to remove -- and set it next to the key. She called his office and left a message that she had finished. Then she pulled the door closed and checked to make sure it was locked. She leaned in at the window of the van and told the driver, "I think I'll walk back."

It was scarcely two miles. She admired the grand houses, especially her favorite. She would never attend that Christmas party now.

The next morning Nina drove her to the airport.

"When are you going to forgive him?" Ada asked.

"That's not for me to do," Nina replied. "That's for you, when you're ready."

"I already have. He needs you to forgive him, too."

"That boy always seems to disappoint me. I've never seen anyone try so hard, and then do something that ruins everything he's accomplished. He's always been that way."

"I know. I've seen that, too, but it doesn't matter any more. What happened was between me and him, and you don't have to take my side. He loves you and he needs you to love him."

"He makes me angry," Nina snapped. "My other children aren't like that. No matter what I did, he always stayed the same. He doesn't even know what a mess he makes of things."

"Oh, but he does. It tortures him. That's why he tries so hard. He wants to make up for his mistakes."

Nina took the airport turn from I-29. "You were the best thing that ever happened to him. I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too. I love you, Nina. You have always been so kind to me. I hope you can be that kind to your son."

She had left everything in Nina's basement, not knowing what else to do: there was no room for them in Monteverde. She checked her suitcase through. That left nothing but a bag of diapers and baby food, a book to read, and a carryon with a few other travel necessities. She carried Clover down the gangway and took her seat by the window and raised Clover's hand to wave goodbye to Gamma. Then she slid down the plastic cover of the airplane window and waited for the jets to start, remembering her first flight, a decade before, and the excitement. She reached into the carryon bag and pulled out a pacifier, and put it in Clover's mouth, to help the child when the air pressure changed.