'He's a disgusting little prick,' she said.
I nodded.
'He makes me . . .' She shook her head.
'If you have sex with him,' I said, 'he won't tell.'
She inhaled audibly. I waited. She exhaled even more audibly, as if she'd been running.
'Yes,' she said.
'How long has this been going on?'
'Two years.'
'Which makes the photograph more than two years old,' I said.
'Yes.
'So Jared was how old when it was taken.'
She was silent.
'Fifteen?' I said.
She shook her head.
'How old?' I said.
'Fourteen.'
'So tell me about that,' I said.
She was silent again, framing her thoughts, no doubt.
'Take your time,' I said.
She did. But finally, she raised her face and looked at me. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. The bright sunlight penetrated her makeup, and underneath it she looked haggard and older than she was.
'It's not what you think,' she said.
'It rarely is,' I said.
'Do you believe in love, Mr. Spenser?'
'I do.'
She had full eye contact with me, and she leaned a little toward me when she spoke.
'Jared and I love each other,' she said.
'How nice,' I said.
'Do you find that so hard to believe that someone like me would love a boy such as he?'
'I do,' I said.
She smiled sadly. She was regrouping swiftly.
'I do too,' she said. 'And yet ... and yet it's true.'
'Are you aware that he is retarded?' I said.
'He absolutely is not,' she said. 'You think I wouldn't know?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I think you wouldn't know.'
'He's reticent perhaps, a kind of dreamy poetic reticence.'
'The best kind,' I said.
'It began,' Beth Ann said, 'when he was sent to me by one of his teachers. They felt he was withdrawn. He was so quiet in class.'
'To what did you attribute that?'
'Do you understand psychology, Mr. Spenser?'
'I've been in love for a long time with one of the great shrinks in America,' I said. 'I've absorbed a little.'
'So you do believe in love.'
'Yes.'
'There's a medical condition,' Beth Ann said, 'called failure to flourish. Have you heard of that?'
'Yes.'
'Jared has the emotional and psychological equivalent of that disease,' she said.
'Caused by?' I said.
'A lack of mattering. A lack of centrality. No one thought he was important. He lacked self-esteem. He wasn't loved sufficiently.'
I had been listening with my hands pressed together and my fingertips against my chin. I pointed at her with my pressed hands.
