She pushed a stray curl away from her nose and wondered at all that enormous feeling that remained within her, even after so many blows. It was now clear that she had deceived herself all those long months—and yet she still yearned for Henry. When she thought of him she thought of the breakers in Florida, which had swayed her back and forth during the day and then later on in bed, too, even when they were only a memory of sensation and the faintest sound in the distance. Henry was like that too—he still swayed her, even so long after the fact. She was tired of it. She closed her eyes. Her small body slumped against the window frame and she tried to imagine that all the pull she felt in Henry Schoonmaker’s direction could be formed into a tight ball of newspaper and casually dropped into one of those fires that tramps made on street corners in weather like this. It would smolder to ash, and then the soft snowflakes would fall on top, melting and disintegrating it to nothing. When Diana opened her eyes, she knew that her trick of the mind had failed.
