Thank heavens for small favors, I thought. “How. Late. Do. You. Ride?”

“Until there’s snow. But enough of us have fat-tire bikes now that we might do weekend rides all winter.”

She sounded excited about the possibility, but I gave her a look of doubt. I liked snow and all, but winter was for skiing and sledding and skating, not more bicycling.

“You should try it,” she said. “Doing fat tire is super fun!”

We crested the hill and I made a noise that wasn’t agreement, but wasn’t exactly disagreement, either.

Rosalind grinned. “You sound just like I used to. When it snows, come on out and I’ll show you how much fun it is. We can . . . oh, wow, we’re at the halfway point already,” she said, nodding at a small roadside park now populated with bikes and brightly dressed people. “You want to stop? We don’t have to.”

Of course I wanted to. Rosalind and I braked near everyone else, and Terry, the dentist, promptly offered us water and protein bars.

“How did that go for you?” he asked.

I gulped down half a bottle of water, then said, “Ask me in a couple of days and I’ll give you a better answer.”

He laughed. “Like they say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?”

I half smiled but didn’t have the heart to do any more than that.

The laughter fell off his face. “Sorry, that was in poor taste. With Brown dead, and now Emily, too.”

And there was the opportunity I’d been hoping to find. “Emily rode with you folks, too?”

Terry nodded. “Most of the summer, I’d say. Not every week, because like I said we’re not one of those die-hard groups that goes out no matter what.”

“She was funny,” Rosalind said. “Ms. Acosta. She had lots of stories about how dumb . . . um . . .” The young woman darted a glance at Terry.

“About how dumb men can be,” he said affably. “Emily had been in a business dominated by males. She had stories about stupid men that would knock your socks off.”

Rosalind quirked a smile at me. “This one time? She drove all the way to Chicago to look at a fixture that wasn’t lighting. And you know what the problem was? It wasn’t plugged in.”

I laughed. “Let me guess. She found the problem in five minutes, and they weren’t happy about it.”

“Not at all.” Rosalind shook her head. “Ms. Acosta said that had happened a long time ago, and now she would have known to take a little longer to tell them what was wrong.”

“Ten minutes?” I suggested, which made Terry laugh out loud.

“Something funny?” asked a thirtyish man with a soft middle and a receding hairline. He’d been standing with another small group and had turned at the laughter.