“Luke!” Sana called up the stairs. She and Shawn had just arrived home. When she heard Luke answer in the distance, she assumed he was saying his afternoon prayers. “We are home!” She then followed Shawn into the kitchen, where she unpacked the groceries they had just bought. While she was busy doing that, Shawn poured himself some scotch as his first cocktail of the evening. Just a few days previously, Sana had gotten disturbed at Shawn’s progressive drinking, but not that night. In fact, she wanted him to drink as much as he pleased, as it caused him to retire early. As had been the case the two previous evenings, she was looking forward to spending time with Luke without Shawn’s interference or Luke’s attempt to bring up the progressively incendiary Virgin Mary issue, which he’d been unflaggingly continuing to do, despite Shawn’s increasingly negative response.

It had been two good days for Jack as well, and mainly because it had been good for JJ and Laurie. When Jack had returned home Monday evening, Laurie had reported that JJ had had the best day he’d had in months, with no crying whatsoever. Jack expected a similar story that evening, because Laurie had called him about three p.m. to say things had been going similarly all day.

Taking the stairs by two or three steps at a time, Jack poked his head into the kitchen. As he assumed would be the case, Laurie was involved with dinner preparations, and JJ was contentedly playing in his playpen. Jack quickly went over to Laurie, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and looked in on JJ. To Jack’s delight, the boy smiled.

“I believe he’s going to allow us to have a real dinner tonight,” Laurie said.

“Fabulous,” Jack replied. “Are you going to feed him and put him to bed beforehand?”

“That’s the plan.”

“With him as content as he is, I’d like to play basketball for an hour or so.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Laurie said. Then with a wink she added, “Just don’t get yourself too tired.”