Travis has a peculiar sweetness about him, a quality Molly finds irresistible. She loves him, and her love is as real as her grade point average. She trusts that love to endure, no matter what.

Molly expects so much of herself and wants so much from the world. At the moment, she is tender and lonely, missing him, her heart sore as it can only be for one’s first love.

I have to wonder: Did I teach my daughter to love this hard and feel this deeply? Was I wrong to do so? On the other hand, maybe I shielded her too much from pain, and she never learned to deal with it. As more men loom in the future, a whole campus full of them, it makes me wonder if I’ve done enough to equip her to deal with love and heartache. My own mother never seemed comfortable discussing matters of the heart with me. That’s what I used to think, anyway. Now I wonder if she simply knew I’d discover it all for myself.

“Hungry?” I ask Molly, after she’s lain on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a while. “The coffee shop’s still open.”

“No,” she says softly. “You?”

“No.” This is a lie. The dinner salad was a disappointment. But I don’t need to eat. I don’t need that big, messy cheeseburger I’ve been fantasizing about since spotting it on the coffee-shop menu. I don’t need the coconut cream pie I noticed in the revolving refrigerated case. Something my mother never told me—when you hit forty, not only does your vision start to go. Your body changes. Nowadays if I eat things like cheeseburgers and cream pie, the calories magically transform themselves into saddlebags on my hips. I don’t feel any different than I did ten years ago, but boy, do my jeans fit differently.

My mind drifts. Maybe when I get home, I’ll join the local gym, start a regular fitness routine. Running around with Molly has kept me reasonably fit all these years. Thanks to her, I’ve hiked miles with Brownie and Girl Scout troops, led field-trip expeditions to museums or nature preserves, ridden for hours on family bike trips. I suppose I could still hike and bike without Molly around, but why would I? Motivating myself is not going to be as easy as it used to be.

A quiet sniff brings me back to the present. I look over at Molly to see that she is still staring at the ceiling. Tears track sideways down her temples.

I don’t say anything, because I know everything will come out sounding like empty platitudes. Instead, I find another quarter, drop it in the slot and start up the Magic Fingers once again.

Five

The roadside is littered with last night’s carnage, a raccoon here, a possum there, occasionally someone’s household pet reduced to an unrecognizable smear. Neither Molly nor I say a word. I hate the idea of creatures suffering while people sleep, oblivious.