LAURA COULD STILL HEAR EMMA SPEAKING TO SARAH. EVEN as she spread the drop cloths around the living room, the irritated little voice ran through her head. “I’m not Janie!” Remembering it made her grin.

At the therapy appointment that morning, Heather had suggested Sarah join Emma for her next session. Laura recoiled from the thought: it would confuse Sarah. Even Laura’s proposal that they start their walk in a different direction threw her into a tizzy. Sarah needed the familiar. Yet, maybe it would work. And maybe it would help Emma.

Emma was sitting smack in the middle of the living room floor with her finger paints spread out around her, and she was already engrossed in her work. Laura hadn’t yet told her that Dylan was coming over to help her paint, but she had to tell her now; he was due in a few minutes.

“Emma?” she said as she pried the lid off one of the cans of cream-colored paint.

Emma looked up from her own painting. Her fingers were blue, and the smell of finger paint filled the air.

“Dylan is coming over soon. He’s going to help with the painting.”

Emma instantly returned her attention to her painting. She was not pleased.

“I know you think he was mean to you when we were at his house,” Laura said. “But I hope you understand that he was just concerned you might hurt yourself with the guns. He cares about you.”

Emma smeared blue paint across the top of her paper, as if she hadn’t heard, and Laura began painting the wall nearest the kitchen.

The crunch of gravel in the driveway announced Dylan’s arrival. Wiping her hands on the rag tucked into the pocket of her shorts, Laura met him at the front door. Emma didn’t budge from her seat on the floor.

“You’ve already started,” he said, eying the wall near the kitchen. “Nice color. And I see Emma’s doing some painting of her own.”

Emma didn’t even bother to raise her head at the sound of her name.

“I was hoping Emma could help us,” Dylan said, pulling a brush from his back pocket and crouching down next to her. “Do you think you can help us paint the walls?” he asked.

“She’s really too young, I think.” Laura didn’t want to step on Dylan’s toes, but she knew Emma could not do what he was asking. To her surprise, though, Emma took the brush from his hand and stood up.

“How about over here? “ Dylan guided her to the far wall with a light hand on her shoulder. “You can be the first-coat girl. “Your mom and I will paint the second coat on top of what you do.”

Laura bit her lip as she watched her daughter slowly spread paint on the wall. Although Emma painted with great attention and care, it would have to be done again, but that hardly mattered. She watched as Dylan helped Emma remove excess paint from the brush by pulling it across the rim of the roller tray, and she was filled with warmth for both of them.

The three of them worked the entire afternoon, although Emma ended early to play with Cory in her bedroom.

“Exactly how many Barbies do they have?” Dylan asked, after seeing Cory arrive with her boxful of dolls.

Laura laughed. “You don’t want to know,” she said. She felt awkward keeping him there when Emma had gone off to play. He was supposed to be there for Emma, not simply to help her paint. “Please feel free to take off whenever you like,” she said. “This goes beyond the call of parental duty.”

“We don’t have much more to do,” he said, standing back to examine their work. “And then, if you and Emma don’t have any plans for tonight, I thought we could go ice-skating.”

“Ice-skating! In August?”

“At the rink in Upperville. You haven’t been there?”

“I didn’t even know it existed.”

“It’s a bit off the beaten track. The serious skaters from all over the area go there to practice,” he said. “But the best part is the pizza. We can do dinner there. That is, if you think Emma would like to go.”

Laura hesitated, unsure what Emma’s reaction would be. “She’s never been skating.” There was a chicken thawing in the refrigerator, and her back ached. Still, she loved the spontaneity of the idea—and the fact that Dylan would be around all evening. He would not be with the woman at his house. The relief she felt at that realization was irrational.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

“She loves this.” Laura watched her daughter glide across the ice ahead of them. She’d expected Emma to be wobbly her first time on skates, but the little girl took off as though she’d been skating all her short life. She came back to take Laura’s hand from time to time, whenever she needed a taste of security, but she seemed quite happy to be off on her own, and it overjoyed Laura to see that independence in her.

“She hasn’t had the opportunity to do this sort of thing very much,” she said. “Ray would read to her, maybe take her to a museum.” Or the streets of D.C. “But he wasn’t a very…physical person.”

“Did he teach her to ride a bike?” Dylan asked. “Or swim? Or hit a softball?”

“None of the above.” Laura remembered the softness of Ray’s body and the sharpness of his mind, and she felt a twinge of guilt for belittling him in front of Dylan. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “He was already fifty-six when she was born, and he was more of an intellectual than an athlete. He couldn’t do things with her like this. Take her skating. I taught her to ride her bike with the training wheels. And last summer I taught her how to swim. Although she seems to have forgotten how. She’s afraid of the water now.”

“Maybe I could help with that,” Dylan offered. “We could all go swimming sometime. Is there a beach at the lake?”

“A small one, yes.”

“I get antsy when I’m holding still,” Dylan said. “I have to be doing something physical or I’ll go out of my mind.” He did a spin on the ice as if to back up his words, and she laughed.

They skated in silence for a moment, Laura’s gaze fixed on Emma as the little girl tried to emulate an older child who was skating backward. Emma did a fair job of it, pursing her lips with the effort. Laura thought of what Dylan had said about teaching her to swim.

“I hope you don’t feel as though I’m using you,” she said to him.

“Using me?” he asked. “You mean, helping out with Emma?”

She nodded.

“Impossible,” he said. “I don’t do things I don’t want to do.”

“I have this sense of you as a very committed bachelor who has his life just the way he wants it and who’s going to keep it that way, no matter what.”

“That’s me,” he said.

“Except that you’ve taken on my daughter, for some reason.”

He slowed his skating to a near standstill and looked at her soberly. “Because she’s my daughter, too,” he said.

“But still. You didn’t have to. And she definitely has the ability to interfere with this lifestyle you’ve carved out for yourself.”

He started skating again, motioning her to fall in beside him. They skated side by side for a moment before he spoke again.

“My father left when I was seven,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “He left? You mean…”

“He deserted the family. My mother, myself and my nine-year-old sister. He’d actually been a fairly good father, which made it worse. He was very involved with us, my sister and me. I worshiped him. And then one morning, he was gone. Just like that.” Dylan snapped his fingers. “My mother was stunned.”

He suddenly grinned, interrupting himself. “Look at her,” he said, pointing toward Emma, who was now trying to do a pirouette on the ice. She fell down with a splat, but a young boy helped her up again, and she doggedly skated on.

“I think she’s a natural,” Dylan said. “We’re gonna turn this girl into an athlete yet.” He looked at Laura, taming his enthusiasm. “With your permission, of course.”

Laura laughed. “If you can get her permission, you’ve certainly got mine.” She let a moment of silence pass between them. “So,” she said, “why did your father leave?”

“Well, it took a while for the pieces to fall into place,” Dylan said. “Turns out he had a woman and a couple of kids in another state. He traveled a lot for his work, and he’d been living a double life. The other woman knew about us, and she finally got sick of the situation and told him he had to make a choice. So he did. We lost.”

Laura flinched, imagining that pain. “Didn’t he keep in touch at all?” she asked. “Didn’t you see him on holidays or—”

“He quit us cold turkey,” Dylan said. “We never saw him again. We found out the truth from his cousin. He’s dead now, my father. Had a heart attack when he was fifty, and I hope I haven’t inherited his genes for heart disease or for dishonesty and duplicity and deceit.” His voice was bitter. “Anyhow, do you see now why I can’t let a child of mine go without a father? Not if I can help it?”

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“I hate the guy, yet I keep his stupid gun collection because it’s all I have of him. I hate guns, too.” He laughed, but she heard the pain behind the sound.

“It must have been very hard for you, growing up.”

“Oh, you know.” He shrugged away her sympathy. “It made me strong, and all that. But I would have preferred getting strong some other way. Not having a father left an…emptiness in me.”

She thought about her own life. She’d lost her mother at the same age Dylan had lost his father, yet that loss had been no one’s fault. Her father had poured his love of science into her, and she’d never for a moment felt empty. Challenged, pushed, inspired and, at times, controlled, but never empty.

“Does Emma understand what happened to Ray?” Dylan asked suddenly. “I mean, does she know what death is?”

“Heather says kids don’t really understand the concept of death—the irreversibility of it—until they’re about seven. So I don’t…” She felt the weight of her frustration. “Frankly, I have no idea what she understands and what she doesn’t, Dylan, or what scares her, or what she’s thinking, because she won’t talk to me.”

Dylan rested his hand under her elbow as they skated. “She will,” he said with an assurance she didn’t feel. “She’s spoken to Sarah. It’s just a matter of time now.”

They skated in silence for a moment, Laura relishing the warmth of his hand on her arm.

“I’m going to bring Sarah to Emma’s next session with Heather,” she said finally. “Though I worry it’s not fair to Sarah. I’m afraid it will confuse her. Upset her somehow.”

“You worry a lot about other people, you know?” he said softly. “You worry about sullying Ray’s memory. You’re worried you might be using me. You’re worried you might be using Sarah. Sarah and I can take responsibility for what we do or don’t do.”

She was struck by his words, having never thought of herself as someone who worried excessively about others. But he didn’t understand. “You, okay,” she said. “But Sarah is like a child in many ways. She doesn’t have the ability to say ’No, I don’t want to go with you.’ She won’t even understand what I’m talking about when I ask her to go.” Her voice threatened to break.

Dylan squeezed her elbow. “You are a very sweet person,” he said.

No one had ever used the word sweet to describe her before. She thought about the articles that had been written about her, describing her as a “brilliant astronomer,” a “dedicated scientist,” a “mulishly devoted surveyor of the skies.” No one had ever said she was sweet. Dylan did not know her very well.

“I was thinking about your father and Sarah,” Dylan said. “Maybe they did meet on a cruise, but maybe they weren’t lovers. Maybe they were nurse and patient.”

Laura stopped skating. “That’s it! Maybe Sarah treated my father for something. Maybe she saved his life. It didn’t have to be on a cruise, necessarily, but maybe that’s the connection.”

“So he felt he owed her.”

“I’ll never know for sure, though,” Laura said with resignation as she started skating again. “Sarah won’t remember.”

She glanced at Emma, who seemed to be slowing down. Soon they would have to leave.

“I’m sorry if I interrupted you with my phone call the other night,” she said, after another minute of silence.

“You didn’t.”

“I thought you said there was no woman in your life.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t attached. No serious relationship. No one particular woman.”

“Oh. So, you go out with a lot of different women?”

“‘A lot’ might be pushing it.” He laughed. “But a few.”

“Don’t they mind that you’re seeing other people?” she asked. “Or don’t they know?”

“Oh, they know,” he said with certainty. “Remember what I said about not wanting to inherit my father’s genes for deceit? That’s one thing I can’t handle, and won’t indulge in, no matter what the cost to me.”

Honesty was his driving value. She could trust him.

“And yes,” he continued, “it’s bothered some women I’ve gone out with, so they just say no the next time I ask them out.”

“I can’t imagine any woman tolerating that sort of arrangement.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “There are plenty of women who don’t want a serious attachment any more than I do.”

He perplexed her. She supposed his own experience with his parents’ marriage had discouraged him from ever attempting marriage himself. And then there was that “long and miserable story” he’d alluded to a couple of weeks ago.

“She’s getting tired.” Dylan pointed to Emma.

“I know.”

“Think we should pack it in?”

“It’s time,” she said, hoping she had not annoyed him by probing into his love life. She watched as he skated toward Emma. Reaching the little girl, he crouched down on his skates and spoke to her for a moment, then stood up straight and skated back to Laura.

“She’s ready to go,” he said. “At least I think she is. She didn’t nod yes, but she didn’t shake her head no, either.” He laughed.

Emma turned to wave to them as she skated toward the side of the rink.

“You’re good with children,” Laura said, wondering if that comment sounded as alien to him as when he’d told her she was sweet.

Indeed, he laughed. “No one’s ever said that to me before,” he said.

“Well, maybe you never really cared before.” It seemed a bold thing to say, but he gave a small smile and a nod as he glided over the ice.

“Maybe that’s it,” he said, and he followed Emma toward the side of the rink.