“Well, actually, I don’t—”

She nodded. “Good. You should. I think if anyone deserves it, you—”

Diana had already begun shaking her head. “No. Not a vacation. More like a sabbatical. A few months. Maybe a year.”

Lily paused with her teacup lifted halfway between her chin and the saucer. Her jaw slowly lowered toward the ground. “A . . . year?” Before Diana could answer, the gravity of the suggestion must have finally settled in Lily’s brain because she shouted, “Like 365 days? Are you kidding me?”

“No. This has been simmering for a while, and I think it’s time. Time for me to get away.”

“With who?”

“What do you mean with who?”

“Did you meet someone? Like on Tinder? Because half the time, they can be axe-murderers, and you wouldn’t even know based on their pro—”

“I don’t even know what a Tinder is. And no, I haven’t met anyone. I’m doing it alone. A solo trip. For myself.”

Lily’s face scrunched up in horror as if Diana had just announced her intention to shave her head and join a cult. “Alone? That’s like an invitation to every axe-murderer in every alley you come across!”

“How many axe-murderers do you think are out there?”

“A lot! It’s a dangerous world out there! Especially for a woman who’s alone. That’s what you told me—remember? Remember how you stuffed our stockings with mace and rape whistles every Christmas while we were at college?”

“Yes, but that’s—”

“And people really are sick. Most of them have screws loose. Even the normal looking ones. Maybe they don’t go around chopping people up with axes, but they do crazy things. Mick told me he had a case come across his desk—a guy kept his own dead mother in his house for twelve years. Twelve.”

“Your husband is a public defender in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world. He sees the worst of the worst. I work there, remember? So I’m no Naïve Nancy. And I’ve survived thus far. I’m fifty-two years old. I can handle myself, dear.”

“But . . . but . . .” Lily looked around helplessly. Then she dropped her teacup onto the saucer with a loud clink and grabbed her belly in both hands. “But this! Are you seriously going to miss your first grandchild’s birth? Aren’t you worried about what kind of grandmother that’s going to make you?”

That was another word that Diana had not been thrilled with. Evan was dating Miss Teen USA and living the life of a young, freewheeling bachelor, and here she was—eight months from being a knitting, cookie-baking grandma with gray hair and bifocals. It hadn’t seemed fair. “Of course not! I have plenty of money to fly back for the birth,” she said.

“But what if I can’t get in touch with you? What if you’re somewhere in Switzerland—I don’t know—yodeling on a mountainside, and there are no phones nearby?” She clapped her hands to her cheeks like the kid in Home Alone. “The baby’s due in December. I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this. Where would you go?”