He wrote about November. He wrote about his mother and Mrs. Halvorsen and the ring in the winter coat. He wrote that he had spent eight years learning to read people in half a second, and that he had been proud of it, and that he understood now that half a second was not reading anybody. It was just remembering what you had already decided. He wrote that he was not asking her to forgive him, because he did not think he had earned it, and because he did not think it was her job.
I don't expect you to answer this, the letter ended. I just didn't want the last thing you heard from me to be that I'd have to call security. You came into that store to let your husband give you something. I'm sorry I took that away from you. I'm sorry for the whole day. I'm sorry I looked straight through you to somebody I made up. My mother taught me that phrase when I was six. I should have remembered it. Grant Mercer.
Vivian read it twice at the kitchen table. Then she put it back in its envelope and set it on top of the refrigerator, next to the church bulletin and a birthday card from her youngest grandson, and left it there for nine days.
On the tenth day she called the number at the bottom of the third page.
They met at a diner on Forty-seventh Street, around the corner from the library where she tutored, on a Tuesday afternoon after her session. She chose the place. She chose the time. She chose the booth, in the back, where she could see the door. She was not afraid of him, exactly. But she had been a principal for nineteen years, and she knew the value of meeting a person on your own ground.
He was already there when she arrived, sitting very straight in the booth with a cup of coffee he had not touched. He was not wearing a suit. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, and he looked younger without the suit, and more tired. He stood up when she came in.
"Sit down, Mr. Mercer," she said.
He sat. She sat across from him. The waitress, a heavy woman in her sixties whom Vivian had known for twenty years, came over and looked at Grant and then at Vivian with one eyebrow raised.
"You all right, Vivian?"
"I'm fine, Loretta. Just coffee, please. And a slice of the peach pie."
Loretta looked at Grant one more time, long enough to make her point, and went away.
"Thank you for coming," Grant said. "I didn't think you would."
"Neither did I." Vivian folded her hands on the table. "I read your letter. It was a good letter. I've read a great many apology letters in my life, Mr. Mercer, and most of them are about the person writing them. Yours was mostly about you, too. But not all of it. Some of it was about me. That's why I called."
He nodded slowly. "What did I get wrong?"
She was surprised by the question, and it must have shown on her face.