The booth provided for NPS employees was built of pecky cedar, but after years of use it smelled like a dirty ashtray. Set off in a small clearing in the spruce trees, windows on all four sides, it had the look of the bridge on a tugboat. Several yards away, next to a sixty-watt bulb on a metal post, was a bench for people waiting to use the phone.

Line forms to the right, Anna thought, but she was in luck. There was no one in the booth and she slipped inside. She shooed a spider off the counter and dragged the phone over. Crackling and whispers grated in the darkness of her inner ear-then finally, faintly, the burr of a phone ringing on the fourteenth floor above Park Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street.

“ParkView Clinic,” came a toneless voice. But for twelve years of experience, Anna would have waited for the machine’s beep.

“Is Dr. Pigeon in?” Anna asked formally. “It’s her sister.”

“One moment please.” Never a spark of recognition, never an “Oh, hello, Anna” in all the years. Hazel-a name Anna found at odds with the cold telephone persona-was the ideal receptionist, Molly said. A woman with an imagination wouldn’t have lasted a week in the position.

“Will you hold?” pierced through the static.

“I’ll hold.” Music, Yo Yo Ma on cello, drifted down the wires through the white noise.

A young man came and sat down on the waiting bench. He had dark thick hair that seemed both wild and well coiffured, the envy of any girl. His eyes were wide-set above chiseled cheekbones. Anna prepared herself to ignore him. Her rare phone calls were too precious to be spoiled by the pressuring eyes of a too pretty boy. Before she had time to edit him out of her world, he flashed her a smile and she recognized him: Tinker’s husband, sans cape.

“Can’t talk long. Give me the news.”

Molly’s voice, sudden and startling, seemed to speak from inside Anna’s head. It sounded so faint, so rushed, her isolation felt more complete. A heaviness grew in her chest. She had no news. She was just making contact, drilling a long-distance hole in her loneliness. “You’re at the office late,” she said.