1) Don’t do anything that would get you arrested. Jail would not be fun, and there might not be book club.

2) Driving his jointly owned midlife crisis car into the ocean while cackling would be okay.

3) Cutting out the crotches of all his pants was also acceptable.

4) Going to visit the mistress at work and announcing yourself like this in a loud voice to the receptionist would also be acceptable: “I am the wife of Dave Miller and I want to talk to his girlfriend, Marni Smith, about why she is banging my husband.”

5) Stalking him, taking incriminating photos, and then mailing them to his mother and grandmother was a smart idea.

6) Going to Hawaii after the breakup and having a brief vacation affair would be a splendid postdivorce event as long as one had the affair-ee take a blood test to check for all STDs and one used condoms, just in case.

Always interesting to listen to the Book Babes.

“I still miss Dad every day.”

My mother’s hands stilled. We were in our garden, snipping flowers here and there for her shop, the sun high, the wind soft. We were both in garden boots and hats. Mine was a baseball hat, hers was straw, wobbly, with a white ribbon tied below her neck.

“I do, too.”

“He’s been gone for so long, but that pain still hits me when I think of him.” Sundance bent down with me as I snipped a bundle of purple tulips. Butch and Cassidy wrestled nearby.

“Me too, honey.”

Often my father, during his career in the military/government, would return to us pale and tired. A couple of times he came home with an arm wrapped or a bandage on his head, or he would be limping. He would take calls privately, so we couldn’t hear, and sometimes, as we were stationed in various locations, cars would come and get him and whisk him off in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t talk much about what he was doing.

I would climb on his lap, his green eyes smiling at me, his brown hair cut short, and say, “What did you do on your trip, Daddy?” And he would say, “I missed you and your sister and your mother.”

And I would giggle and say, “No, Daddy. What did you do? Tell me!”

And he would say, “I thought about coming home and reading you stories and chasing Jules on her bike and holding your mom’s hand.”

And I would giggle again and say, “Daddy! When you were gone, what happened?”

And he would say, “Let’s ask your mom to bake us a cake. You know I love cake and tea. Then we’ll read books together.”