That, and well… It would be pointless to deny that I’ve been having a hard time since the death and the public humiliation of my District Attorney husband’s young mistress and son showed up at the funeral. I thought I would be done with this part of the grieving process by now, but I kept vacillating between anger and depression and back to anger again. With Jared in Chicago, it was easy to hide the worst of it from him. Or so I thought. I guess I couldn’t be more wrong because my usually self-absorbed son was so worried about me that he asked his best friend to take care of me, so I didn’t ruin his wedding.

And Lil’ Tommy was all too willing and eager to oblige.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t seen him in damn near ten years, but Tommy as a confident, self-assured man knocked me for a loop. There had been a hint of that in his eyes on the cover of Architectural Digest, but it was altogether different to witness in person.

When Jared brought bright-eyed, ambitious Tomás Martinez home the first time, I was instantly charmed by him. He had a gracious way about him that went beyond good manners. The smallest gift or invitation resulted in the kind of supplication that made me uncomfortable sometimes. If I invited him to dinner — I had a lot of dinner parties back then — he would linger after the other boys went out to the pool to help straighten up and take out the trash. If we invited him to hang out with us at the beach in the warmer months, he would make store runs, schlep all of the beach equipment to and from the car, and just generally made himself useful.