Glenna leaned over and stopped, as if hesitant to share an act of intimacy with me—however innocent. Then she ate the olive, and a spurt of affection for her warmed me to my toes, and I wondered whether the warmth had come from memory or this moment.

“Divorced,” I said. “For a while. My ex, Beth—she’s a nice woman. Talented. A graphic artist. Works in advertising. But she had no business being married to a man who always had a plane to catch.”

“Children?”

“A son. Alex.”

“After your dad. That’s wonderful. How old?”

“Twenty-five,” I said. “When he was in high school, I cut down on my traveling because Alex wanted to live with me. That was a good—a great time. Then he went off to Berkeley.”

“You mean the university or like Alex ran away from home?”

“The university.”

“How’d Alex do at school?” Glenna was grinning.

“You’re asking if he repeated my stellar academic career?”

“More or less.”

“Are you kidding? Not with what Berkeley cost me. Alex was Phi Beta Kappa. I was so proud of him. But I wasn’t surprised. He was always a terrific student and so responsible. After he came to live with me, I wasn’t sure if I was taking care of him or the other way around. He was a pleasure from the day he was born.”

“You’re lucky.”

I looked over at the gas flames in the fireplace, recalling the muggy gray morning that Alex had moved out of my town house. The moving men were carrying a couch to their truck, and Alex was standing on the sidewalk under a willow oak, holding the box with the iPod dock and speakers that I’d bought him for his new apartment in Baltimore. My son had seemed so happy then, standing in the shade, close enough for me to touch.

“Gordon?”

I moved my eyes from the fire. “Tell me about your husband.”

“David. David Aldrich.”

“Surprised to hear you were married,” I said, regretting the words as they came out of my mouth.

She flinched. “Don’t say that, Gordon.”

“Forgive me. That was out of line. Tell me about David.”

“Presbyterian brought David up from Philadelphia to become chief of ophthalmology. It was at the end of my internship. David was twenty years older. He’d been married before and had twin boys. He didn’t want more children and …”

I took a slug of my martini.

“I—I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was going into pediatrics, so I’d be around kids, and the twins were with us a couple weekends a month and for vacations. I must’ve been a decent stepmother. One lives in Seattle now; the other in San Diego; and they both still call and come to visit.”

Glenna was twirling her snifter again. “David was so easy for me to get along with. He was busy at the hospital and did committee work at the med school, and he was just glad I was young and pretty and around. Even after he was diagnosed—with bladder cancer—all he needed was for me to make sure he made it to radiation and chemo and to talk to him when I got home. He was sick for five years. The cancer had metastasized. ‘Olympic organ hopping,’ David called it. The last several months, he couldn’t work. I offered to take in an associate or scale back my practice. He said no, hire a nurse for him. All he wanted was for me to sit with him at night and tell him everything I’d done during the day. Funny thing is—as sad as those nights were—it was the only time I felt useful.”