Again he was razzing her, but she wheeled instantly to face him. She put both hands on his chest, and then she shoved him. Hard. It rocked him back a step.

Marshall wasn’t sure what shocked him more, the underlying unkindness of the jokes he’d made or that she’d laid such furious hands on him. He rubbed at his mouth, as if his words had galloped out without permission and now he didn’t want to let out more.

“That was offsides,” he said. And stupid, because he hadn’t minded driving her girls at all.

Bree glared at him like she wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. “Yes, it was.” He started to apologize, but angry words came pouring out of her, unstoppable. “Why are you being such a shit to me?” Her voice was raw, a forced, furious whisper. “For weeks now you’ve cold-shouldered me, and you have no idea the unending hell this day has been. When I called you this afternoon, I treated you badly, I know, but God . . . I’m . . . I . . . I feel so fucking terrible.” He felt the curse words like more shoves. Betsy had had a filthy mouth and a wonderfully filthy mind to match, but even in high school Bree only cussed in extremis. She stepped in so close that her earthy rose smell enveloped him again. “I’m a person, Marshall. Full of blood and organs and feelings, and I don’t live my whole life trying to make yours suck more. You think I want to be here? I want to be home, with my kids. All three of them. That’s all I want. That’s all I want.”

She stopped abruptly and turned away, shoving open the exit door. There was a moment of discordance, the cello moaning behind them and the torchy singer crooning along with the piano on the lawn ahead. The warm spring air felt cold as he followed her out of the humid orchid house.

He was thinking about Cara now, at the start of third grade. She’d been cute as a Muppet, all snappy brown eyes and skinny legs and corkscrew hair. A boy who sat behind her kept pinching her arm when she wouldn’t talk to him in class.

“He probably likes you,” Marshall said, and Bets had surreptitiously pinched the back of his arm, her face gone fierce.