I had stepped into the kitchen when I heard someone moving about in the front hall. Thinking it might be Oswald, I went there and saw AG by the open door with a suitcase.

“Hi,” I said. “Are you leaving?”

“Nettie is picking me up,” he said, his mouth twisted in a frown. “I can’t be expected to stay here while Edna’s got her gigolo here. She never could be trusted around other men.”

Without thinking, I grabbed AG’s shoulders and gripped hard enough to make him wince. “That is a very disrespectful way to talk about the mother of your children. If you ever say another unkind word about Edna, I’ll …”

“You’ll what? Kill me, like you did Spiggott?”

I dropped my hands and took a step away from him.

He rubbed his shoulders. “You would defend her. You’re two of a kind. Maybe you didn’t kill Spiggott, but I know how you betrayed my grandson.”

“I never betrayed Oswald,” I said, but I had a strange queasy sensation.

“Everyone knows but you,” AG said with an ugly laugh. “Ask Oswald how you broke up his first engagement.”

I knew what the sick feeling was: bitter, indigestible truth. “I thought you liked me.”

“What I think about you personally is irrelevant so long as you are capable of having healthy children.”

A gray Honda came down the drive and AG said, “If you say anything to Oswald about this, I’ll tell him you’re lying. It’s only his sense of responsibility that keeps him from throwing you out in the gutter where you belong.”

AG went to the car, put his suitcase in the backseat, and got in. As the car turned around in the drive, I saw Nettie, who smiled apologetically as she passed.

My curiosity, quiescent for so long, now replayed AG’s comments and I tried to make sense of them. I’d broken up Oswald’s first engagement. I’d betrayed him. He had asked me to marry him because he felt responsible for me.

As I walked out to the pool compound, I broke into a cold sweat. Perhaps I could just peek in somewhere to make sure Oswald was okay. I was circling the redwood structure when I spotted a knot in one of the boards.

I thought I’d have to pry the knot out, but it slid out smoothly. I was relieved to hear Oswald’s voice faintly, and then I put my eye to the opening.

My fiancé, wearing swim trunks, sat at the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. He took a drink from a half-empty bottle of vodka and passed it to Lily, who sat beside him wearing a modest one-piece suit.

My psychiatrist said, “You’re not really going to marry her, are you?” She was sozzled and said “reeely.”