I read the texts from Chrissie while I’m in the bathroom, knowing I’ll feel like a fool if I start crying again. I don’t. But I ache. I’m sorry sorry sorry, she writes, you are the one person I never ever wanted to hurt. In a follow-up sent seconds after the first, she writes I can’t bear to lose both a sister and a friend. If we can’t be sisters, can we be friends? And a third text nearly on top of the second, I love you, Mal.

Not knowing what to say, I say nothing.

We’re back in the Tahoe when I open Margo’s texts. The first reads, You OK? I’m worried. The second reads, Anne told Bill. He wants wedding, she says no. And the third, Dan wants to stay to Sunday. Should we call Watch Hill or is crowded OK?

Jack squeezes my thigh, which his hand has not left since we both buckled in. “Anything good?”

I sigh. What the hell. My sister hates me anyway. And Jack doesn’t gossip. “Anne is pregnant. Only you don’t know that. She just told Bill, who wants to get married, and she’s resisting.”

“Why?” he asks halfway between curiosity and disbelief.

“Maybe,” I reply with no small amount of guilt, “because we thought Bill was a loser—well, until we got to know him. Face it. His past isn’t stellar.”

“Nor is mine.”

“You were never in prison. And okay, he got cleaned up and is on the other side of the bars, but there are those tattoos—and okay, I’m fine with them, too, but maybe Anne isn’t. Maybe she worries about the people he’s with all day long. Maybe she thinks Mom would be turning over in her grave.” With a jarring realization, I add a bleak, “Or Dad.”

Jack squeezes my hand to grant the sympathy of that. Despite what he knows now of Paul, he thinks the way I do. Tom Aldiss raised me. He is Dad.

But the subject is Anne. “Maybe she’s afraid of marriage,” he offers.

I’m startled. “Why?

“Same reason as you.”

Afraid of marriage? Me? Who has managed a good job, a great condo, and single motherhood without a husband, thank you? I remember the discussion we had, Jack and me, about power and control. I don’t want to think Jack is right.

“I’m not afraid. Uh-uh. Oh, no. Don’t turn this around on me, Jack. I told you why I haven’t married, and it has everything to do with not finding the right guy. That’s not scared; it’s smart. As for Anne, Bill is the right guy. He loves her.”

“I love you,” Jack says mildly, just part of the argument.