I PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY over at Maggie’s at a quarter past five. Her car was gone. I’d called her as soon as I left my house—or what had been my house until today—but she hadn’t answered.

I climbed out and walked towards the back door. I wasn’t wearing a coat, only a threadbare pair of Levi’s and an Ole Miss sweatshirt, and it had gotten really cold. Leaves crunched beneath my tennis shoes. She hadn’t raked the yard the whole time she’d lived there.

I looked in the kitchen window. All the lights were off, and darkness was falling, so I couldn’t see much: just a newspaper lying on the counter, a coffee cup beside it and next to that a yogurt container. Thinking maybe she’d gone shopping, I sat down on the steps to wait, hugging myself and calling her every few minutes.

Earlier, after Jennifer and I drank that bottle of champagne, she’d reached across the table and taken my hands in hers. “Luke,” she said, “I want us to go to bed and make love. Then I’ll ask you to get up, walk out of this house and drive away. Where you go’s up to you, though I’m sure your dad could use some company. And I want you to tell the girls—whatever version of the truth you like. One story’s about as good as another.”

So we went off to bed, and neither one of us said a word the whole time. She kept her eyes open, which was unusual for her, and at one point, I remember, she reached up and ran her fingers through my hair. Then she watched while I got dressed, and when I looked at her and started to tell her I loved her, she shook her head and turned towards the wall. I used my key to lock the front door.

I sat on the steps at Maggie’s until I was almost frozen. Then I went back to the car, started the engine, turned on the heater and sat there a little while longer, calling her a couple more times, with no answer still. Finally, I put the car in gear and drove out to the big new Wal-Mart on the highway but didn’t see her car in the lot. It wasn’t parked at Sunflower Food Store or at Piggly Wiggly. There was no Mercedes at the school, either, just an old VW that belonged to one of our janitors and the football coach’s pickup.

I ran by her house again, but the driveway was still empty. I thought about going to see Ellis, but it occurred to me that Jennifer might’ve hit on the same idea and I wouldn’t know it until he opened the door. Unless I called first, and I didn’t have that in me.

It was after six o’clock, and then I remembered promising my father that I’d drop by. I dreaded the conversation we’d need to have, though I already understood it would come as no surprise. For all I knew, the whole town was already talking, and while it was hard to imagine anybody calling to say his son was screwing around, he’d certainly found out somehow.

I backed out of Maggie’s driveway and headed for town. At Loring Avenue I almost took a left, to go to my house and beg Jennifer to forgive me and let me try to start over. But that argument, if I was going to make it, wasn’t likely to succeed tonight. And my sense of things was that the time to start over had come in August, when our daughters left home. Instead of doing it with her, I’d done it with someone else.

All the lights at my parents’ place were off. It seemed unlikely they’d gone to bed this early, so I called and the phone rang ten times before I gave up. So I got out of the car, walked over to the house and rang the bell. When nothing happened, I pounded on the door for a minute or two, again with no result. By that point I was concerned. Absurdly, I whipped out my cell phone and started to call Jennifer, to ask what she thought I should do, though I managed to press the red button and stop the call before the phone rang on her end. I know it didn’t go through because she told me so the next morning.

I fumbled with my key ring until I found the one for their front door and unlocked it, only to discover that the chain was still on. So I backed up about three feet and threw my shoulder against it, which accomplished nothing except giving me a stinger. When the pain eased off a little, I reared up again and this time performed my best approximation of a karate kick, and the door splintered and smashed into the Sheetrock.

“Dad?” I hollered. “Hey, Dad?”

But he never answered, and down the dark hallway I heard my mother groan.