“Ah.” Nell tried to imagine Lulu as a freewheeling, free-loving hippie, and found it wasn’t that much of a stretch. For the family dinner, she’d donned a sweatshirt that announced she was all out of estrogen and had a gun.

Fair warning, Nell decided.

“Um. Still, it’s nice that you sometimes get together like this.”

“She just comes out here, once every damn year, to lord it over me. According to the Gospel of Sylvia, a woman isn’t a woman unless she has a husband and children, chairs some crappy committee, and knows how to make an emergency centerpiece out of twine, spit, and an empty tuna can.”

“We’re going to do a hell of a lot better than that.” Nell busied herself by putting the roast in the oven, turning it to warm. “I made it au jus, so you just spoon that over, and serve it with the side dishes. The autumn salad goes first. Tell them to leave room for the pumpkin cheesecake.”

“That’ll totally amaze her.” Lulu poured another glass of the wine she was tippling to get through the event. “I had a husband.”

She said it so fiercely, so viciously that Nell turned to stare. “Oh?”

“Don’t know what made me do it legal. I wasn’t knocked up or anything. Stupid. I guess I did it to prove I could still rebel. He was no good, just as useless as he was handsome. It turned out his idea of marriage was having someplace to go after he’d finished boinking whatever floozie caught his fancy that particular night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. Live and learn. I kicked his ass out in nineteen-eighty-five. The only time it bothers me is when Syl comes around gloating about her husband, who’s no more than a paper pusher, and has a spare tire you could ride on to Cleveland, her kids, who are a couple of snotty teenagers in two-hundred dollar track shoes, and the joys of her life in the suburbs. I’d rather be shot dead than live in some cookie-cutter house in the ’burbs.”

Since either the wine or the situation with Syl was making Lulu loquacious, Nell took advantage. “So, you didn’t grow up here together?”

“Hell, no. We grew up in Baltimore. I took off when I was seventeen, went straight to Haight-Ashbury. I lived in a commune in Colorado for a while, traveled, experienced. When I came here, I wasn’t yet twenty. I’ve been here over thirty-two years now. God.”

The idea of that had her knocking back the wine and pouring more.

“Mia’s grandmother gave me a job doing this and that for her, then when Mia came along, her mother hired me to mind her when she needed minding. Carly Devlin’s a nice enough person, but the fact was she didn’t have much interest in raising a child.”