CHAPTER 3It had started to snow again as I drove slowly back home along the Memorial Highway. Across the dark stretches of the Potomac, Washington lay like a star-spangled city in fairyland. The white dome of the Capitol and the tall shaft of the Monument with its red cyclops eye shone through the flurrying snow, fabulous beacons of light. I crossed the river under the shadow of Arlington, drove around the Lincoln Memorial with the dim heroic figure of the great emancipator seated in the lighted sanctuary, and turned down the river again toward Georgetown.
I was too troubled to notice the dirty sidings and belching smokestacks that always strike me after I leave the parkway and turn up 30th Street toward home. I couldn’t get Karen’s smile, and that victorious so-that’s-that gesture with h
