Minnesota lay green and vibrant, freshened by a night's rain that rinsed the late August sky to a watercolor blue. East of St. Paul, where the suburbs nudged the Washington County line, fingers of new streets flexed into the expanses of ripe grain, new houses sprouting where only fields and forests had lain before.

There, where the city met the farmland, a modern brick school building spread its U-shaped wings, bordered by blacktop parking lots on the north and east, and an athletic field on the south. Beyond the spectator stands, a stretch of whispering cornfield still held its own against the urban sprawl that threatened it, but its plight was clear: more development could be seen on the distant hills.

Across the highway, a small section of older homes, built in the fifties and sixties, straggled within shouting distance of the county road, where the speed limit had been lowered when the school went up five years earlier. Sidewalks had been installed then, too, though some taxpayers said they led to nowhere, petering out into sectors where tractors still worked the land. The school district was growing at an alarming rate, however, and had been for years.

That Wednesday morning, six days before the start of school, a vibrant aquamarine Lexus pulled into the visitors' parking lot on the north side of Hubert H. Humphrey High. A woman and a boy emerged and approached the building along a lengthy stretch of sidewalk. Already the eleven A.M. sun had heated the concrete, but the janitors had propped open the double front doors to let the breeze blow through.

The woman was dressed in a gray no-nonsense suit, paler gray silk blouse, matching pumps -- simple, but expensive -- and a subdued scarf in shades of burgundy. Her streaked blond hair was cut in a conservative ear-length bob, blown back from a side part. Her only jewelry, a pair of tiny gold stud earrings, seemed a mere concession to femininity, which her style downplayed in every other way.

The boy was taller than she by a head and a half, wide-topped, skinny-hipped, athletic, erect in stature, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt lauding the Texas Aggies. He had dark hair and stunning brown eyes in a face that would -- his entire life long -- make females turn for a second look. Two generations earlier teenage girls would have called him a heartthrob; his mother's generation would have said he was a fox. Today, a pair of sixteen-year-old girls came out of the school building just as he entered; one gazed back over her shoulder and exclaimed to her friend, "Wow, he's hot!"

The office of Humphrey High sat in the dead center of the building, sandwiched between walls of glass. The front looked out across the main hall at the visitors' parking lot and the huge brick planter showcasing the school colors -- red and white -- in a bed of petunias. The rear of the office overlooked a lovely arboretum cared for by Mr. Dorffmeier's horticulture students.

Kent Arens held open the office door.

"Smile," Monica Arens said pleasantly as she swung past him into the cool billow of air-conditioning.

"At what?" the boy replied, following her.

"You know how important first impressions are."

"Yes, Mother," he replied dryly as the door closed behind them.

Unlike the grounds, the office was in chaos: people were moving everywhere, dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, collating papers, answering phones, using computers, clattering typewriters. Two janitors were painting the walls, while another wheeled in a dolly stacked with cardboard cartons. The blue carpet scarcely showed beneath the stacks of books, piles of stapled materials, and the general flotsam of maintenance work.

Monica and Kent picked their way through the commotion to a twelve-foot crescent-shaped counter that prevented all visitors from advancing further. From one of the numerous desks behind it, a secretary rose and came forward. She had a pudgy face, plump breasts, and short brown hair just beginning to gray.

"Hello. May I help you?"

"I'm Monica Arens, and this is my son, Kent. We've come to register him for school."

"Sorry about the mess in here, but it's always like this the last week before school. I'm Dora Mae Hudak. I answer to 'Dora Mae,' and I'm just the one to see." She smiled at the boy. "You're new here this year."

"Yes, ma'am. We just moved from Austin, Texas."

She assessed his height. "A senior, I'd guess."

"Yes, ma'am."

Dora Mae Hudak momentarily stalled in her tracks: she was unaccustomed to being called "ma'am" by high school seniors. Most called her Dora Mae. Some addressed her "Hey, lady," and occasionally one would break forth with "Yo! You . . . secretary!"

"Love those Southern manners," she remarked as she reached for an admissions form and a student introductory booklet. "Do you know what classes you want to take?"

"Pretty much. If you have them all."

"So you haven't seen our list of electives yet?"

"No, ma'am."

She placed a pamphlet and a sheet of blue paper on the counter. "Classes are listed in here, and this is the admissions form, but we like all new students to talk to a counselor before registering. Our seniors are counseled by Mrs. Berlatsky. Hang on a second while I see if she's in."

Dora Mae poked her head into one of the side offices and returned with a fortyish woman dressed in a thigh-length blue knit pullover and stirrup pants.

"Hi. I'm Joan Berlatsky." She extended her hand. "Kent, welcome to Minnesota. Ms. Arens, hello. Want to come into my office where we can talk?"

They followed Joan Berlatsky into her office while she apologized for the mess. "It's like this every year, the custodians trying to finish up everything after the summer-school people finally clear out. It never seems like the building will be ready in time, but somehow, as if by magic, it always is. Please . . . sit down."

They had a friendly talk, during which the counselor learned that Kent had a 3.8 grade-point average and was college-bound, and that he was concentrating on science and math and wanted to take as many honors classes as possible. His mother had already made arrangements for his records to be forwarded from his former high school, but they hadn't arrived yet. Joan pulled up class lists on a green computer screen, and within thirty minutes they had settled on Kent's senior class schedule.

Everything went smoothly until Monica Arens said, "Oh, and who should we see about signing Kent up for football?"

Joan turned from her computer screen and said, "There might be a problem with that. The team has already been working out for two weeks, and it's possible Coach Gorman has the team roster all set."

Kent's eyebrows beetled. He leaned forward anxiously. "But I've already lettered in both my sophomore and junior years. I was counting on playing my senior year, too."

"As I said, the team has been working out since mid-August, but . . ." Joan frowned thoughtfully before reaching for her phone. "Just a minute. Let me call down there and see if Coach Gorman is in." While the phone rang in the locker room, she said, "You probably already know that sports are really big here. Our football team took second at state last year, and our basketball team was the double-A state champion. Shoot, it doesn't sound like he's going to answer." She hung up. "Just a minute. Let me go ask Mr. Gardner, our principal. He likes to meet all the new kids personally anyway. Be right back." She had barely whisked around the corner before her head reappeared. "Want to ask Dora Mae for the computer printout of your schedule while I'm gone? It'll come up on the printer out here."

The pair followed her to the outer office, where they stood before the crescent-shaped counter while a printer clacked and spewed forth Kent's class schedule. Tom Gardner sat at his desk, facing his open office doorway with a phone at his ear, trying to reason with a textbook sales rep: only three business days to go before school started, and his new tenth-grade English textbooks were nowhere to be found.

At Joan's appearance, he gestured for her to stay, holding up one index finger while continuing his conversation. "Our purchasing agent ordered them in January of last year. . . . Are you sure? . . . When? . . . In July! But how could that many textbooks just disappear? . . . Mr. Travis, my problem is that next Tuesday I'm going to have five hundred and ninety tenth-grade students coming through these doors, and English is a required course for every one of them." After a lengthy pause he wrote down a bill-of-lading number. "To the loading dock? How big were the cartons?" He dropped the pencil, rubbed his forehead, and said, "I see. Yes, thank you, I'll check at my end. If they can't be located, do you have more in stock? . . . Yes, I will, thank you. Goodbye."

Tom hung up and expelled a breath that puffed out his cheeks. "Missing textbooks. What can I do for you, Joan?"

"I've got a new transfer student out here you'll want to meet. He's a senior and he wants to play football. Will you handle it?"

"Sure," he said, rolling back his chair and rising. As much as he loved his job as principal of HHH, Tom hated this last week before school. During these crazy days he became primarily a problem solver, working in the chaos left behind by the summer-school staff, who moved things they weren't supposed to move, hid equipment that was in their way, and stuffed incoming supplies into the most unlikely of places. Electricians were installing a new overhead lighting system, and some snafu had held up a batch of the fixtures, so there were no lights in the home economics department. A physics teacher he'd hired way back last May had called the day before and said she'd accepted a better offer from another district and wouldn't be coming to work here after all. And now the textbook people claimed a trucking company had delivered thirty cartons of books onto a loading dock at the district warehouse on July 15, but nobody at this end had ever seen them.

Tom Gardner stuffed it all behind a calm exterior and focused on the facet of his job that he considered most important: the students.

This new one was waiting with his mother on the opposite side of the counter -- a tall, dark, good-looking kid with an athlete's build who wanted to play football.

Joan led the way and made introductions.

"This is Kent Arens. He'll be a senior with us this year. Kent, our principal, Mr. Gardner."

Tom shook hands with the boy and felt a hard paw with plenty of muscle behind it.

"And this is Kent's mother, Monica."

The two began shaking hands as automatically as any strangers, but midway through the introduction a sixth sense buzzed through Tom.

"Monica?" he said, peering at her more closely. "Monica Arens?"

Disbelief widened her eyes.

"Tom?" she said. "Tom Gardner?"

"Well, for heaven's sake, this is a surprise."

"That's you? Mr. Gardner . . . the principal here?" Her gaze shot to the brass nameplate beside his office door.

"That's me. I've been here for eighteen years, first as a teacher, then as principal." He dropped her hand, for it was awkward holding it above the elbow-high counter. "Obviously you live in this school district."

"I . . . yes . . . we . . ." She had grown flustered and her face began flushing. "I've just been transferred here. I'm an engineer for 3M. I never would have . . . I mean, I had no idea you lived anywhere near here. I didn't even know what the principal's name was until Mrs. Berlatsky said it a minute ago."

"Well, that's how it goes," he said with an easygoing grin. "Paths cross, don't they?" He hooked his hands on his hips, letting his gaze linger on her affectionately. She remained flustered and offered no smile, only the impression that she was struggling to overcome some gross embarrassment. "And you have a family now . . ." He turned his attention back to the boy.

"Just one. Just Kent."

He was truly a handsome young man, as tall as Tom himself.

"You know my mother?" Kent asked, surprised by the discovery.

"Way back when," Tom replied. "In nineteen seventy-five."

"But we haven't seen each other since," Monica hastened to add.

"Well, enough about us. We've sort of left you out of the conversation here, haven't we, Kent? Listen, why don't the two of you come into my office, where there's less confusion and noise. We can talk in there."

In his office, with its view of the arboretum and the football field beyond, they sat facing each other across his desk. The late-morning sun angled above the east wing of the school building and spread across the south windowsill, where a gallery of Gardner family photographs faced Tom's desk.

Tom Gardner tipped back in his swivel chair, loosely steepled his hands, and said to the boy, "So you want to play football, I'm told."

"Yes, sir."

The kid looked familiar. "You've played before? In your last school?"

"Yes, sir. I lettered in both my sophomore and junior years, and last year I was all-conference."

"What position did you play?"

"Running back."

Tom had been a coach himself; he knew what questions to ask to determine if the kid was a team man or a me man.

"What was your team like?"

"Just great. I had some really good blockers who were smart, and they really understood the game. It made it easy to play, because we sort of . . . well, you know, we understood what each other was doing."

Tom liked the kid's answer. "How about your coach?"

Kent answered simply, "I'm going to miss him," impressing Tom further. Once again, he had the strong impression he knew the boy from somewhere. Not only his facial features but his expressions looked awfully familiar.

"So tell me about your goals," Tom said, feeling the boy out further.

"Short-term or long-term?"

"Both."

"Well . . ." Kent rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, joined his hands, and cleared his throat, thinking over his answer. "Short term. . . I'd like to bench-press three hundred pounds." He sent Tom a mini-grin, half shy, half proud. "I'm up to two-seventy now."

Tom said, "Wow," returning a pleased grin. "And your long-term goals?"

"I want to be an engineer like my mom." Kent glanced at his mother, throwing the front of his face momentarily into direct sunlight. Something caught Tom's eye, something he hadn't paid any attention to before, something that clicked in his brain and sent a sizzle of warning through him: a tiny cowlick right at the center front of Kent Arens's black crew-cut hair, the smallest wedge, which made it look as if no hair grew at the very tip of his widow's peak.

Just like his own.

The recognition came and kicked Tom Gardner in the gut while the boy went on speaking.

"I'd like to go to Stanford because they've got a great engineering program and a super football team, too. I think I'm good enough to maybe go on a football scholarship . . . that is, if I can play again this year so the scouts can see me."

The boy looked back at Tom, full-face. The similarity was uncanny. Startling!

Tom glanced away to disabuse himself of the preposterous notion. He reached across the desk. "Mind if I take a look at your class schedule?"

Concentrating on the blue paper, he hoped that when he looked back up he'd believe he was mistaken. The boy had chosen a very heavy load: calculus, advanced chemistry, advanced physics, social studies, weight training, and honors English.

Honors English . . . taught by Tom's wife, Claire.

His gaze remained lowered longer than necessary. It can't be, it can't be. But raising his eyes once again, he saw features too much like those he encountered in the mirror every morning -- a long swarthy face wearing a deep summer tan, brown eyes with dark brows curving much like his own, an aquiline nose, a good, solid chin -- faintly dimpled -- and that tiny wedge of a cowlick he'd hated his whole life long.

He shifted his attention to Monica, but she was studying her knees, her mouth drawn tight. He remembered how flustered she'd acted when they were introduced in the outer office, how she'd blushed. Sweet Jesus, if it was true, why wouldn't she have told him seventeen, eighteen years ago?

"Well, this . . ." Tom began, but his voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. "This is an impressive schedule . . . tough courses. And football on top of that. Are you sure you can handle it all?"

"I think so. I've always taken a heavy class load, and I've always been in sports."

"What kind of grades do you get?"

"I have a three-point-eight average. Mom's already told my old school to send my records, but I guess they haven't gotten here yet."

Queer, zingy rivers were whizzing through Tom's bloodstream as he rocked forward in his chair and spoke, hoping nothing showed on his face.

"I like what I see, and I like what I hear, Kent. I think I want you to talk to Coach Gorman. The team has been practicing for two weeks already, but this should be the coach's decision."

Monica spoke up, meeting Tom's eyes directly for the first time since entering his office. She had regained her composure but her face remained impassive. If she had truly blushed before, she now exemplified a woman in control.

"He's college-bound, one way or another," she stated, "but if he doesn't get a chance to play his senior year, you know what happens to his chances of getting a scholarship."

"I understand, and I'll speak to Coach Gorman myself and ask that he get a tryout. Kent, do you think you could come down to the football field this afternoon at three? The team will be working out then and I can introduce you to the coach."

Kent glanced at his mother. She said, "I don't see why not. You can take me back home and use the car."

"Good," Tom said.

At that moment Joan Berlatsky interrupted, thrusting her head around the doorway. "Excuse me, Tom. I forgot to tell Kent . . . we have a newcomers' group that meets every week, Thursday morning before school. Nice way to get to know the kids, if you're interested in joining it."

"Thanks, I might."

When Joan disappeared, Tom rose, and the other two followed suit. "Well, Kent . . ." He extended his hand across the desk and Kent returned the handshake. At close range, appraising his dark good looks, touching him, Tom's suspicion seemed even more believable. "Welcome to HHH. If there's anything I can do to make your transition here easier, just let me know. I'm here for the students anytime. Even if you just need to talk . . . well, I'm available for that, too."

Tom went around the desk and shook Monica's hand. "Monica, it was nice to see you again." He searched her eyes for a clue, but she gave away nothing.

She fixed her gaze on something behind his left shoulder and remained coolly distant. "Nice to see you, too."

"Same goes for you. If you need any help getting him settled in here, just give a call. Mrs. Berlatsky or I will be glad to help however we can."

"Thank you."

They parted at his door, and he watched them walk away through the messy outer office, where someone had propped open the hall doors to dilute the strong paint smell. A radio was playing a Rod Stewart song. A copy machine set up a rhythmic shd-shd-shd while yellow papers flapped from it. Secretaries typed at their desks while a trio of teachers checked their mailboxes and chatted -- everybody going about their business and not one of them suspecting what a life-altering shock had just befallen the man who led them all. He watched as Monica Arens and her son walked out of the office, crossed the hall, and exited through the set of propped-open outer doors into the sunny August day. He could tell they were talking as they strode down the sidewalk, stepped off the curb, and continued toward a new Lexus of a piercing aquamarine blue. The boy got behind the wheel, the engine started, and the sun glinted off the car's clean, luminescent paint as it backed up, turned, and disappeared from his view.

Only then did Tom Gardner move.

"I don't want to be disturbed for a while," he told Dora Mae, as he entered his office. He closed the door, which was normally left open unless he was with a student. Alone, he flattened his vertebrae against the windowless door and let his head drop back against it. He felt all cinched up inside, as if a tree had fallen across his chest. His stomach quivered and held a knot of impending fear. He closed his eyes, trying to force the fear into submission.

It didn't work.

Pulling away from the door, opening his eyes, he actually felt dizzy.

He went to the window and stood in the slanting rays of late morning, one hand covering his mouth, the other wrapped across his ribs. Outside, in the arboretum, the sun striped the manicured grass, dappled the pruned trees, and faded the old-fashioned wooden picnic tables; in the distance it sketched a second, fallen chain-link fence at the foot of the one delineating the perimeter of the tennis courts; it whacked out large trapezoids of shadow from the visible half of the spectator stands; it lustered the cornfields behind them.

Tom Gardner's gaze registered none of it.

Instead, he saw the handsome face of Kent Arens and the stricken, blushing one of Kent's mother. Then later her closed expression and the air of detachment as she carefully avoided Tom's eyes.

God in heaven, could the boy be his?

The dates matched.