Lisbeth opened her mouth, shut it and turned. Jack grasped her hand and they walked to the French doors to the backyard, obviously to continue their discussion without Amy. Then Lisbeth stopped, turned again. “Why did you ever break up with anyone you said you loved?”

“What?” Amy asked.

“You . . . Why did you ever break up with anyone?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“You broke up with my daddy.”

“No . . . no, I didn’t.”

Lisbeth came toward her. “Yes, you did. Mother told me you did. Now you want Jack to do the same to me. But Jack loves me.”

“Stop. Now.” Jack headed toward both of them.

“I did not break up with your daddy. He went . . . away.”

“Stop!” Jack yelled and Amy saw the word in capital letters, slanted, lopsided.

She hadn’t heard her son shout at her since he stood in his crib, shaking the bars and wailing for a bottle.

Amy backed away from Jack into the kitchen. What had she just said, done? The kitchen door shut and she sat down on a bar stool and dropped her face in her hands as she listened to the opening and shutting of the back door, then the swish of the swinging kitchen door.

She looked up. Jack stared at her.

“I’m sorry I shouted at you, Mom.”

“That was completely disrespectful.”

“I’m sorry. But what were you talking about?”

“I was just answering her.”

“Mom.” He hesitated, looked out the kitchen window. “Did you really used to date her dad . . . seriously date?”

“Yes.”

“Have you talked to him? Kept up with him all these years?”

So that was what her son was worried about—whether she’d kept in contact with an old boyfriend for twenty-five years.

“No. If you wanted to know, you should’ve asked.”

“Lisbeth thinks that you—”

“I said goodbye to him twenty-five years ago and didn’t see him again until the day you brought Lisbeth to meet us.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay.” Jack turned to leave the room.

“Where is she?”

“Waiting for me in the car. Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t ever do that again. That was so embarrassing.”

“I just wanted—”

Jack walked toward her, hugged her. “You just don’t seem like yourself lately.”

“I know.”

Her son walked out the side door to the driveway, where his car waited with the sobbing Lisbeth. Amy ambled aimlessly through the house, then finally to her sunroom, where she sank onto her desk chair. She still waited, not knowing what she waited for; she was impatient, frustrated. She opened the top-left drawer, as she had a thousand times since the Christmas party, and lifted the scrap of pink paper from below the phone bills. Surely she needed to talk to Nick after reading the unsent telegrams; he must also want and need to talk to her.