Sliding into the taxi, Adam Blaine told the cabbie where to drop him, and resumed his moody contemplation of his father.

The driver, a woman in her fifties, stole a glance at him in the rearview mirror. Though it was his practice in such proximity to be pleasant, Adam remained quiet. The past consumed him: he had returned to Martha’s Vineyard, the home he had once loved, for the first time in a decade. Benjamin Blaine had made this possible by dying.

Leaving the airport, they took the road to Edgartown, passing woods and fields on both sides. At length, the driver said, “Forgive me, but aren’t you related to Benjamin Blaine, the novelist?”

For a moment, Adam wished that he could lie. “I’m Adam. His son.”

The woman nodded. “I saw you play basketball in high school. Even then you looked just like him.”

It was inescapable, Adam knew: for the rest of his life, he would look in the mirror and see a man he loathed. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” the woman continued quietly. “I drove him to the airport several times. Such a vigorous, handsome man, so full of life. To die like that is tragic.”

Was it tragic for his mother, Adam wondered, or would release from Ben Blaine’s dark vortex be an unspoken mercy? “It was certainly a shock,” he responded. But not as much of a shock, he thought to himself, as the last time I saw him.

Understanding none of this, the driver said sympathetically, “I guess you came back for the funeral-I can’t remember seeing you in years. Where do you make your home now?”

“Everywhere and nowhere.” Adam paused, then deployed his usual cover story. “I’m an agricultural consultant in the third world, helping farmers improve their growing practices. Right now I’m in Afghanistan, on contract with the government.”