“If you had become pregnant by accident, would Tanner have stood by you?”

“Yes!” said Norma. Then: “It never came up.” Then, with the instinct women have to downplay difference: “Not that it couldn’t have.”

I could tell from the ironic tone she assumed when referring to Tanner that he was trying but decent, a lot like Robin, I suspected, though probably better-looking. He’d have just enough flaws to make him endearing and to furnish the self-mocking stories that shore up the sisterhood.

“Of course he would have. Especially coming from the South, as he undoubtedly does with a name like that.” Norma’s laugh told me I was right. “Antonio was just starting his career. He was a scientist. Very driven. He didn’t want a baby.”

“But you had her anyway.”

“I had her anyway.”

“Was that hard?”

“It’s impossible to think of not having had her.”

“Once they’re here, they’re here,” said Norma. “Have you been in contact?”

I stared. “With who?”

“Her father.”

I sat back. “No, never. Maddy always said she would hunt him down someday.”

“You think she will?”

I looked past Norma to the open water. “Genes aren’t everything. Though it’s true that when Maddy was born, I felt as if I already knew her.”

“Aw,” said Norma.

“In the mirror I would see her features mixed up with mine. Did you ever get that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got that.”

“What, exactly?” I didn’t want her to agree with me too readily.

“Well, once I felt around for a fontanel on my own head.”

In those early days, the soft triangle that allowed the baby’s skull to grow with the brain was a source of wonder and fear. I too remembered feeling my head for a fontanel, though I knew perfectly well they closed up by the age of two.

“So did I,” I said a little grudgingly. I wasn’t sure I wanted Norma to have had the same experience. That was the kind of thing you’d share with the baby’s father.

“You should have seen us driving Luke home from the hospital! Tanner was going five miles an hour. With Benjamin we were calmer about cars.”

After a moment, I said: “I would love to have had another child. Did your second son come between you and Luke?”

She considered this. “In a way, yes. The first year of Ben’s life was the hardest thing I ever did. I kept thinking—This is impossible! How is anyone supposed to do this? Give them both all my attention? Luke and I already had our thing together. I felt like I was cheating on him. Tanner had no idea what I went through.”

“That never happened to us,” I said. “Maddy was all mine and I was all hers.”