“How can you even ask? Your family history, my family history. You could have told me about your sister. I would’ve understood!”

“Why?” he asked again. “For me to presume to know what you’re feeling, for you to presume to know what I’m feeling …” He shrugged. “Isn’t there some quote: ‘All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’?”

“Anna Karenina. Only line of the book I read. But still …” I sat back, hands tucked in my front pockets, still scowling. “Most people know who their families were, or what their families were. But we don’t. Our family history remains a question mark. Was your father that bad or was your sister that ill? Was my father that bad or did the drinking make him that ill? We don’t know. We’ll never know. And that kind of not knowing really sucks.”

“I miss my parents,” Greg said after a moment. “My dad was a good dad to me. My mom was a good mom. I wish they could see me now. I wish they could know that at least one of their kids got it right.”

I nodded. I thought that, too, the few times I allowed myself to think of my family. Would my mom be proud of me? Would Natalie and Johnny appreciate my work with troubled kids? Maybe, when I’d graduated from the nursing program, they would’ve cheered for me. And maybe, when I saw success with my first disturbed child, they would’ve liked to hear my stories from work.

I should’ve gone to dinner with Greg. He was a good person. The decent guy who didn’t get the girl, because most girls, including me, were stupid about things like that.

“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me,” he was saying now, voice grim. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Not what I was thinking.”

“I mean, look at the kids here. Most of them don’t have fathers. Most of them don’t have involved caretakers of any kind. That’s life. If we expect them to get over it, we can, too.”

“You should come to my place,” I said. “In two weeks. I’ll be saner then. The dust will have settled on this mess. I’ll fix you dinner.”

Greg blinked. Paused. Blinked again. “Your place?”

“I don’t have roommates. And we have unfinished business.”

His mouth formed a soundless Oh. It made me feel better about things. But then Greg narrowed his gaze, studying me intently.

“Think you’ll really be saner?” he asked. “Think the dust really will have settled?”

“Hope so.”

“Why don’t you let go, Danielle? It’s been decades for you and, speaking strictly as a friend, each anniversary you get worse, not better. Is it that you ask too many questions, or not enough?”