Nimec felt an embarrassed flush in his cheeks. “Well, no . . .”

“Because if they did, we were having a very serious miscommunication.”

“No, no. Your, uh, our, communication was fine. Great, actually—”

“So when, and why, do you believe I would have gotten offended?”

“Angry,” he clarified.

“Whatever,” she said.

Nimec looked at her a moment, then sighed.

“When you got so quiet afterward,” he said, “I wondered if it could have anything to do with my asking you to take Chris and Jonathan to see the Mariners next weekend. Which I wouldn’t have done, except that I promised to take them myself, and got Gord to swing those lower box tickets for me.”

A moment passed. Annie chin-nodded at the pancake cooking on the skillet. Nimec tossed it.

“Pete,” she said. “Why in the world would I mind going to a ball game with my own son?”

“Well, Jon’s my son . . .”

“Our respective sons, then,” she said, and suddenly hesitated. “Jon doesn’t have a problem with me, does he?”

“Annie, you know Jon’s wild about you.”

“I thought I knew . . .”

“He is. Crazy wild, in fact. Don’t ever worry about that.”

“So what exactly do you feel would be the problem?”

Nimec shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Though I figured you might not appreciate having to fly all the way to the West Coast with me gone. Or maybe just having to sit through nine innings of baseball, not really being that familiar with the game . . .”

“The boys are always happy to explain its ins and outs to me,” she said. “Last time I got the lecture on the cutoff man, backup cutoff man, and the superduper Zimmer-Jeter rover play for when they both miss a throw. And I’ll be sure to use lingo like ‘lights-out’ and ‘good stuff’ and yell like a maniac whenever Ichiro’s at bat.”

That produced a faint grin on Nimec’s face.

“Guess you are pretty good,” he said.

“Guess I am.” She smiled a little, too, and gestured at the range. “We’d better get the next pancake on.”

They did. Nimec watched Annie go through the simple routine of dipping the ladle into her mixing bowl, and pouring the batter into the center of the pan, and rotating the ladle to spread the batter evenly. He watched her and noticed the golden highlights in her hair from the flood of morning sun through the window, and recalled all at once how those accents had seemed a deeper burnished color when he’d held her against him in the flicker of a bedside oil lamp the night before.

“Annie . . .” he said softly.

“Yes?”

“Please help me understand what’s bothering you.”