“Oh, how nice . . . how very nice . . . that you and Nick are . . . home,” Amy said. Eight years ago. Nick Lowry had been living less than two hours away from her for eight years. As Carol Anne might have said if she were standing there, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

“Of course, Nick still doesn’t think of Garvey as home. But he will. He will. It does grow on one.” Eliza grabbed Nick’s hand.

“Like a bad fungus,” Nick joked.

They all laughed, too loudly. Obviously Nick still had the gift: to alleviate tense moments with sarcasm. The memories began with his scar, then his sarcasm and Amy fell toward a well-packed storehouse of images she’d never planned on looking at again. Ever.

She excused herself and, without feeling the solid ground, walked through the tailgating crowd over to Carol Anne.

Carol Anne was not only Amy’s childhood friend and college roommate, but often her source of sanity. She’d also married a hometown boy and they lived two blocks away from each other—more proof of the comfortable ease of Amy’s life. She didn’t want or need any change or surprise right now. She collapsed next to Carol Anne in a green canvas chair with a huge S.U. logo embroidered on its back.

She stared straight ahead and mumbled, “Oh, God.”

“No, it’s me, your dearest and best friend. Don’t get us confused.” Carol Anne touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Look over at my car.”

“Okay . . . I see your cute son, Jack, your adorable husband, Phil, and some cutesy girl with her parents.” She glanced at Amy. “Okay, so Jack has his first serious girlfriend. You will live through this.”

“Look! Look at the man. Look.”

Silence from Carol Anne was a rare event worthy of comment, but Amy had none. Carol Anne took a sharp breath. “Oh, God. No.”

“Yes.”

“I thought he . . . disappeared—you know, after Costa Rica—shit, twenty-five years ago.”

“So did I.”

“Who’s that? Who’s his wife?”

“I don’t know—Eliza. I’ve never met her. She didn’t go to school here. Says she’s from Garvey.”

Carol Anne snorted. “Okay . . .”

“My son—my son is dating his daughter.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“This cannot be good.”

“I want to go home.”

Carol Anne groaned. “Me, too.”

The afternoon became a slow dream sequence for Amy, no bridge between each scene—just snapshots of her son, her husband, her old lover. Everyone else seemed to move with comfort while she struggled to breathe without stops and starts, to function without twitches and flutters, to touch and kiss her husband of twenty-three years without feeling as though she were betraying her boyfriend when his back was turned.