“You want to go in the planetarium?”

Mimi doesn’t break stride. “Not really.”

She picks up speed through a large meadow with an old-time trolley off to one side, parked in the grass. I’m thinking that she’s trying to leave Eugene and the Other Demons in the dust, but even though he’s not as young as he used to be, Eugene manages to keep up.

This could also be her version of a death march.

When we come to a lake, Mimi slows down. There’s a small dock that extends into the water. On either end is a large duck’s head carved out of wood.

I take out my camera. “How about I get a photograph of you and the duck dock?”

I think that “duck dock” is mildly funny, but I don’t even get a smile.

“How about we sit on the bench and talk?”

Eugene puts his hands in his pockets and takes four steps back. Kitty herds the twins to the edge of the lake to search for bugs. Chip goes for a jog.

“Sure.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“Talking’s fine.”

Mimi settles herself on the bench, and we sit there for what feels like hours, but isn’t.

A mother comes by with her three children. The older girl skips along the path, playing an imaginary game. The younger boy shuffles behind, kicking at the gravel, making little puffs of dust with his feet. The woman pushes a stroller, her shoulders hunched, her eyes set on something in the distance that isn’t there.

“You remember those years?”

I nod. “Hard to forget.”

“And we only had two.”

“After one,” I say, “I don’t think it matters.”

“But you’re not the expert.”

The girl is suddenly twirling around, her arms flung away from her sides, her head thrown back to the sky.

“She’s having a good time.” Mimi pats my hand. “Do you think our kids had a good time?”

“The time Nathan chased that goose?”

“And then the goose chased him.”

“And you came to the rescue with your umbrella.”

The woman comes to the front of the stroller and lifts a baby out. The child looks to be about a year old, and she’s determined to walk. She stands upright, measuring her new-found balance, then staggers forward for a few steps and sits down on the path with a thump. The mother turns to say something to her son, and the baby picks up pieces of gravel and begins putting them in her mouth.

“Remember when Tally found that piece of cat shit in the sandbox?”

“That’s what you remember from your children’s childhood?” Mimi hits me on the shoulder. “Angry geese and cat shit?”

“We still managed to raise two pretty good kids, didn’t we?”

“And yet here we sit on a bench in a park in Prague, feeling sorry for ourselves. Why is that?”