He stared a moment. As was often the case with him, the workings of his mind were transparently visible on his face as he took in my appalled expression. I could almost see the cogs turning as he realized what he’d said. He nodded apologetically.

“No, of course not. Sorry—I’m not thinking straight. I’m in shock I guess. You are, too, by the look of it.”

He put a hand commiseratingly on my arm. I found it difficult to look at him at that moment. To my relief, Eric appeared, wiping his plump fingers on his apron.

“Marco, they’re about to start the debate.”

“Ah, okay.” Marco resumed his normal tone. “Let’s get ­everyone in there, if we can. Otherwise we can bring another TV from upstairs. Turn off the music would you? And get that lazybones daughter of mine to top off people’s drinks.”

“Will do!”

The boy strode officiously back into the main living room. He appeared to have changed personality as well as gender. There was no trace of the old malcontent in his new role as Marco’s steward. His flourishing air seemed a rebuke to certain murky, residual prejudices lingering in me.

“We’ll talk more later, okay?” Marco said.

I nodded.

He moved away, but then stepped back, gripping my arm again and flashing a conspiratorial grin.

“Think she’ll stop persecuting me now?”

“Who?”

“Julia!”

His eyes scanned mine, searching for the smile of cynical humor we’d shared so often in the past. I could smell his cologne, and the bourbon on his breath.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said.

He gave a loud laugh, evidently taking my unamused tone as ironic, and disappeared into the other room.

I went down the corridor, and lifted my backpack off the coat hook, half-intending to keep going, out through the front door and back to my car. But aside from the fact that I could ill afford a hotel, I detected something artificial in the impulse, theatrical. I could sense already that it wasn’t going to work to cast myself as a figure of blameless rectitude affronted by Marco’s callousness. Whatever flaws I have in my moral makeup, the self-exculpatory urge has never been among them. All the same, I couldn’t face going into the living room just then. I turned back toward the staircase. Alicia was coming the other way, carrying a tray of glasses. I held my pack up, pointing to the landing.

“Just putting my things upstairs . . .”

She laughed, as if I’d meant to say something funny again. My daughter, two years younger, had the same habit of compliant laughter, and an urge to warn the girl against her own obligingness briefly seized me. Marco was probably right about me being in shock. I was certainly in a state of confusion.