“He was looking for his daughter. She and Jack are in some huge fight—breaking up.” Amy walked to the bar stool, sat down. “Jack said she was needy. I heard him talking to his sister about it, too. Said she was real demanding, clingy.”

“Wonder where she got that from?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. But it’s probably a very good thing that they’re breaking up.”

Amy gazed off at a lone chickadee staring through the window at her, accusing her of not filling the bird feeder when food was scarce in the cold weather.

“Yeah, but there’s no real reason for them to break up. I don’t know why they’d break up when no one’s leaving or cheating or dating someone else or . . . whatever.”

“Or going to Costa Rica?” Carol Anne punched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Exactly.”

“This is Jack and Lisbeth, not you and Nick.”

“I know that.”

“You think that if Nick hadn’t gone to Costa Rica you would’ve never broken up, that you would’ve married him, had little Nickies, lived happily ever after?”

Amy looked at her best friend, then around her own kitchen. “I don’t know.” She leaned against the counter and lowered her voice. “Don’t you think some things were, or are, just meant to be—that there’s nothing you can do about it? If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, no matter who tries to stop it or even start it?”

“No, I don’t think that and neither do you. You didn’t get him arrested, you didn’t hide the telegrams and you didn’t start any of this.”

“I know, I know. That’s my point. There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing.”

“I don’t understand, Ame. I don’t know what you’re saying. Since when have you been so fatalistic? What about choice?”

“There are some things we have no choice about.” Amy sighed. There was a relief in just saying this, in knowing it.

“But there are some things we do have a choice about,” Carol Anne said.

“Doesn’t seem to me like there are very many of those these days.”

Carol Anne groaned. “Amy, you don’t need to know what would’ve happened. It didn’t happen.”

“Do you have to be so God blessed perfect? Don’t you ever, even a little, wonder what would have happened if you’d married Bill or Zach? Or what was his name, Darwin?”

“Of course I wonder, only wonder. For about two and a half seconds max.”

“But you broke up with every single one of them. You chose to . . . move on.”

“So did you.”

“No . . . I was . . .”

“When you fell in love with Phil, you chose. Yes, you did.”