Kitty shook her head. Behind her, the merry-go-round started up again. There were maybe twenty children on board. Some parents joined them. They stood by the horse, making sure that the offspring were secure. Most watched from the sidelines, their heads moving in small circles so they could watch their child and only theirs. Each time the child circled around, the parent’s face would light up anew.

“Please,” Myron said.

“Brad doesn’t want to see you.”

Her tone was that of a petulant teenager, but the words still stung. “He said that?”

She nodded. He tried to meet her eye, but her gaze was everywhere but on him. Myron had to take a step back and put his emotions on hold. Forget the past. Forget the history. Try to connect.

“I wish I could take it back,” Myron said. “You have no idea how much I regret what happened.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. I have to go.”

Connect, he thought. You have to connect. “Do you ever think about regrets, Kitty? I mean, do you ever wish you could go back and do one little thing differently and then everything, your whole world, would be something else? Like if I made a right turn instead of a left at a stoplight. If you hadn’t picked up that tennis racket when you were, what, three years old? If I didn’t hurt my knee and then I wouldn’t have been an agent and then you would have never met Brad? You ever wonder about stuff like that?”

It may have been a ploy or line on his part, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. He felt drained now. For a moment they both just stood there, their world gone quiet while the mall rush raged about them.

When Kitty finally spoke, her voice was soft. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Everyone has regrets,” she said, looking off. “But you don’t want to go back. If I made a right instead of a left or if I never picked up a racket, well, I wouldn’t have met Brad. And we would have never had Mickey.” At the mention of her son, her eyes welled up. “Whatever else happened, I could never go back and risk that. If I changed one thing—even if I got an A in sixth-grade math instead of a B—maybe that chain reaction would have changed one sperm or one egg and then there would be no Mickey. Do you see?”

Hearing about the nephew he never met worked like a lasso around Myron’s heart. He tried to keep his voice even. “What’s Mickey like?”