Jenna laughed. “You’ve caught me. I admit it. It’s my only vice. Or my worst one.”

Carolyn sat down. She was wearing a black skirt and gray silk blouse that gave her a businesslike look. “I sneak a read myself now and then,” she con- fessed. “Did you see the one last week? ‘Aliens Kidnap Cows for Love’?”

“No. God, those aliens. You’d think I’d get one or two of them as patients, with the problems they have.”

“Or at least the occasional traumatized cow,” said Carolyn. She looked around. “It really is a small world. I’ve never been in this place—just popped in on impulse. Do you live nearby?”

“Walking distance. But my office is just down the block.”

“So you’re really a practicing psychiatrist, besides being an author.” “Psychologist.”

A waitress appeared. Carolyn ordered a cappuccino.

“Have you noticed,” she asked when the girl was gone, “that our sons have become inseparable?”

Jenna smiled. “I have heard quite a bit of ‘me and Josh’ lately.”

They were at a window table, and the late-afternoon light warmed Carolyn’s tennis tan, accentuating her hazel eyes. She seemed so much friendlier than at their last meeting, thought Jenna. Of course, she had been on the defensive then, about Josh.

“Isn’t it amazing,” Carolyn said, as if reading Jenna’s thought, “how little boys can try to beat each other’s brains out one minute and be Damon and Pythias the next? Grown men, too. I swear they’re a different species—maybe the notorious aliens. In middle school, a girl named Sarah Stubble- field slapped me once. I’ve hated her ever since. And, of course, when a man hits a woman, it’s never forgiven, is it?”

“No,” said Jenna, although it wasn’t that simple. “But even between men, it’s not the same everywhere, you know. Where I grew up, if one man struck another, they were enemies for life—and one of them might not live very long.” As soon as she said it, she remembered Malik flattening Ali in her father’s garden, and Amira Badir twisted Jenna Sorrel’s fingers into a sign against the evil eye under the table at the Village Greenery.

Carolyn shook her head. “I still say they’re aliens. How did we get on this depressing subject?” She took a pack of Virginia Slims from her purse, but her cappuccino arrived before she could light one.

Jenna checked her watch. “I hate to do it, but I need to run. There’s a stew in the Crock-Pot that may have turned into a brick by now, and Karim will be home any minute. He’s like a locust after soccer.”

“Josh, too,” said Carolyn. “Wait till they hit puberty. We’ll be setting out shovels and pitchforks instead of flatware.”

“It was good to see you. I’m glad you had that impulse.”