“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you remember to invite your father to Megan’s graduation?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Well she is his oldest grandchild.”

Lina raised her eyebrows at the sheer ludicrousness of her mother’s comment. “You know he’s never met her, right? And that I haven’t spoken to him in over twenty years?”

“Well then all the more reason to invite him.”

“No. It would never have crossed my mind to invite him.”

Lina was still gardening when Phil and Logan returned home from the lacrosse game. “How was the game?” she called out.

“Good,” Logan answered before disappearing into the house.

“Torture,” Phil answered after greeting her with a kiss. “Next time you can take him.”

“Okay.” He always threatened not to go when he didn’t feel Logan played well.

“I don’t get him—he backs off when he should be going forward. And when he gets the ball, he acts like it’s a grenade. He just wants to get rid of it.”

“You’re expecting too much of him. He’s only fourteen.”

“When I was fourteen, I was being recruited by colleges.”

“He isn’t you, Phil,” Lina said, not for the first time. “I hope you weren’t hard on him.”

“No, I wasn’t hard on your precious boy.”

“He is precious and sensitive, unlike you, so you have to be careful with him.”

“I’m trying to raise him to be a man, Lina, not a woman.”

“Religion is a decisive force in this world,” Katie fumed the following morning from the back seat, glaring at the back of Phil’s head as they drove to church. “I shouldn’t have to be a Catholic just because you are.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘divisive,’” Phil said. “Not ‘decisive.’”

“Whatever.”

They had been going back and forth since Katie announced at breakfast she didn’t want to go to church anymore. Lina stared out the window only half listening, her head aching from too little sleep, her thoughts, like they had been most of the night, still preoccupied with Friday night’s phone calls.

“I’ll tell you what,” Phil said. “When you’re supporting yourself and living on your own, you can choose whatever religion you want, but until then you’re a Catholic.”

“Just like that? I have no say in it?”

“That’s correct. Whether you like it or not, you’re a member of this family, and this family is Catholic.”

Katie folded her arms over her chest, staring out the window. “You can make me go to church, but you can’t make me listen to what they’re saying.”

The sanctity of marriage and family was the subject of the homily, and as the priest espoused the importance of fidelity, Lina stole a sideways glance at Phil, searching without success for a discernible reaction to the words. Halfway through, he reached for her hand, bringing it to rest on his thigh, his thumb moving in a circular motion over the sensitive skin along the inside of her wrist. As she focused on their hands, an image of his hand touching the skin of another woman flashed in her mind.