Wilma looked at him. “I was not a good mother, Jack. I won’t pretend any different. You children deserved better. But I’m through apologizing. Haven’t I told you? You can take me or leave me, now, but this is what I am. And you can’t deny that that house chewed us up and spit us out—one by one. Each in our own way.”

“I don’t—” Jack started.

“Look,” interrupted Harry, standing, gesturing toward the yard. JJ’s hands went clammy when he looked and saw Anne. She had just reached the top of the stairs coming up from the dock, and was guiding two toddling girls with matching bright blond ponytails. Behind the three emerged a dark-headed boy, running circles around his mother and sisters on the lawn, making his arms into airplane wings. His name was Tommy, JJ remembered, from the Christmas letters that had come to his mom and dad from Harry and Anne.

“For their sake, we’re not going to argue anymore,” Harry said, with a severe look. Taken aback, they all quieted. Then Harry bounded down the porch steps and across the lawn, approaching the boy with a roar, picking him up and swinging him in a circle until the boy squealed. Everyone’s eyes softened, watching them; it did seem foolish to argue. And JJ saw there was no sense thinking about Anne, or Dolly, any longer. He hoped they would both someday forgive him, but that was out of his hands. He couldn’t ask for more than what they had already given him: They had proven to him that true romantic love really did exist, by turning from him in favor of the ones they were meant for, despite his best misguided, selfish efforts to bedevil them. And if he could not quite believe that he deserved such a love, was it not enough, for the time being, to know that it existed? That it was something he could, at least, hope for?

Maybe he was a romantic, like his mother thought, after all.