“When Maddy came home after having sex for the first time—”

“How did you know that?”

“I’m her mother! I knew.”

“But how?” He was genuinely puzzled.

“She was clingy, and extra-concerned. I had this primitive feeling something had been taken away from me.” I paused. “And she wanted to know why you left. She’d never asked me so directly before.”

“What did you say?”

“That I didn’t know. That you didn’t want to have a baby with me.”

Antonio was frowning. “That’s not exactly—”

“I said it was your loss.”

“She didn’t know the whole story,” he said resentfully.

“Maybe that’s why she wrote to you. Anyway, Maddy was lucky. Jack’s a genuinely nice boy. She gave him an out, but he stayed with her all the way.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Not like my first time. My first love left me for my best friend.”

“Mine was a complete disaster!” said Antonio. “I could do nothing! She laughed at me.”

We had exchanged these stories when we were courting, when everything that came before was recast as a warm-up for our own superior love. I sneaked a look at my watch. Ten minutes to seven.

“Robin,” began Antonio. “He is your—fiancé? Boyfriend?”

“Partner.”

“Partner,” he repeated, as though he didn’t think much of the word.

Robin seemed far away and incongruous, but I wanted nonetheless to sun myself in the idea of him. “He’s a master carpenter and a musician. Maddy was crazy about him.”

“Was she?”

“Robin took her to concerts.”

“I’m so glad.”

What else could he say? Robin at a Renwick concert, smiling tenderly at me over Maddy’s head. I forced the image away. “Maddy’s illness didn’t make me into a better person,” I said. “It made me into a tedious, monstrous person.”

Antonio leaned across the table and positioned his face very close to mine. Grains of gold swam in his Maddy-gray eyes. He took his time studying all the parts of my face while appearing to be on the brink of a smile.

“What?” I shrank away. “What are you looking at?”

To my relief, he withdrew and hung his hand off the chair back. “I loved the conversations we used to have! Into the night. Remember, Eve? I miss that. Seeing you is like someone put a lost piece of my life back into my hands.”

“I remember,” I said primly. My head felt weightless, full of light. I kept my eyes on him.

“Time is such a strange thing. The years pass by and you don’t even see them go. Family life swallows you up. No one tells you . . .”

“Tells you what?”

His eyes lingered on mine. “Sometimes I think I went to sleep and woke up old.”

“Well, I feel a hundred sometimes.”

“With good reason. What you’ve been through!” After a decent pause he smiled. “You don’t look a hundred.”

•  •  •