The office had always been Jack’s father’s domain; only on very serious occasions had Jack or any of his siblings been called into it. One time in particular stuck in Jack’s mind: At the age of eighteen, just done with high school, he had told his father he didn’t want to work at the bank. John, who argued that Jack needed to be groomed as John’s successor, for the good of the town, had kept him in that office until Jack had relented, though Jack had said at the time only that he’d try it out. Of course, look where that had gotten him: Almost thirty years later, he was still there, still the so-called vice president, since his father refused to retire.

The office walls were the same brownish-green now that they had been then, the heavy drapes the same velvet-gold. John crossed to his rolltop desk, took out a cigar and lit it, turning toward Jack with the same steely blue gaze he’d had all those years before. In the dimness of the room—a green-shaded lamp on the desk emitted the only light—Jack could almost believe that nothing had changed at all. Just some pounds added on his father now, the hair silver instead of light blond.

Jack stayed near the door, folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know, Dad,” he said. “You saw the way they look at each other. I don’t know what I can do about that.”

“This is war, Jack,” John said. He puffed his cigar, paced from desk to bookshelf and back again. “You know how it is.”

Was that pleading in his father’s eyes?

“Look, Dad, I know Lissa’s always been your girl, and you don’t like the idea of getting replaced by this kid.”

John shook his head. “Your mother,” he sputtered, gesturing with his cigar toward the dining room. “Wilma seems to think he’s the best thing since shoe leather, for God’s sake. I can’t have her getting attached to him. What if something happened to him?”