“It’s okay. Yes, it’s definitely okay, she’s well behaved.” She took in the living room. “Stylish. You’re into contemporary.”

After a psychopath burns down your first house simplicity can be a tonic.

I smiled.

She said, “Have you been here long?”

“A while.”

“This neighborhood. Must’ve cost a fortune.”

“Let’s go to my office.”

Seated on the battered leather couch, she said, “Sorry. That crack about a fortune. No business of mine. I guess I’m just hyper about how much things cost. Especially real estate.”

“The decorating’s at a standstill?”

“Still in the talking stages.”

“You and Matt.”

She knitted her hands, gazed down. “Mostly me and me.”

“Kind of a monologue.”

She stroked her belly. She’d put on some girth and her face had grown fuller. Her hair was tied back functionally, tiny pimples paralleled her hairline. “I guess that’s part of why I’m here. He’s not available. Physically or emotionally. They go together, I guess. He works all the time.”

“Is that something new?”

Her lower lip curled. Tears seeped from under her lower lids and trickled onto her cheeks.

“I guess not,” she finally said. “I guess that’s the real problem. Nothing’s changed.”

I handed her a tissue. Kleenex should pay me a commission. “Matt’s always been work-oriented.”

“I respect that, Dr. Delaware. He’s super-responsible, that’s a big deal, right? He could be a slacker.”

“Sure.”

“He thinks it’s manly. Taking care of business. I guess it is. I know it is.”

I said, “It’s part of why you were attracted to him.”

“Yes—how’d you know that?”

“Educated guess.”

“Well, you’re right, that was a big part of it. It’s just—I guess you need to know more about my father. Like the fact that I didn’t have one.”

I waited.

She said, “I never knew him. I’m not sure my mother knew him.” Her fingers closed over the tissue. “This is hard to talk about … but I need to be honest, right? I mean this is the place for that.”

Her fingers relaxed. She dropped the tissue in a wastebasket. “Being pregnant has made me think about all sorts of things I told myself I’d never have to think about.”

“Your own family.”

“If you can call it that.”

“There wasn’t much in the way of family.”

“Just me and my mother and she was …”

She sat for a while. “There’s no two ways about it, Mom was loose. Morally, I mean. Not to me, to me she was just Mom, but looking back … she was a cocktail waitress—I’m not saying that was bad, she worked incredibly hard, she took care of me, put food on the table. But she also … supplemented her income. By bringing men home, when I was little I thought it was normal. Locking me in my room with cookies and candies.”