As if reading his thoughts, she lifted her sunglasses—which she’d been holding casually in the hand braced against one hip—and fitted them to her face, where they gave back his own reflection for all of five seconds before the monkey snatched them away, bit down on them inquisitively and flung them into the bushes. “Craziest thing, he likes to see my eyes, can you imagine?” She blinked rapidly. “I must go through five pairs a week.”

He was about to say he didn’t blame the monkey or some such, to compliment her, flirt with her, when out of nowhere she asked, “Where’s Joanie?”

“Home,” he said. “With Corey—our son?”

“No,” she said, “I mean now.”

He was puzzled. He looked to Charlie, then back to her again. The monkey was no longer grinning, but it was still perched on her shoulder, toying with a strand of her hair, its legs dangling and its testicles on display. “Home,” he repeated.

Flora Lu let out a laugh. “Then she must have sprouted wings, because I was just talking with her and Fanchon not five minutes ago—in the house?”

“Really?” he said, trying to cover his surprise. “I thought, well, I didn’t realize—would you excuse me a minute?”

He crossed the patio to the back door and eased in past a scrum of divinity students with sodas in their hands—and Dick, with a beer, who was chatting them up—and went on into the deserted living room, which now featured mandalas on all four walls and even one on the ceiling. There were the familiar chairs and sofas, a scatter of pillows and blankets in the corners. Dirty glasses, dirty dishes, ashtrays crammed with butts, apple cores and walnut shells. If Joanie was here, where was she? And who was watching Corey? He had an impulse to call out her name, but resisted it, feeling foolish.

Just then the front door flung open and Jackie came hurtling in, a perpetual motion machine, and he saw with a jolt that Corey was with him, right on his heels, both of them already charging up the stairs, Jackie ignoring him and Corey throwing a quick greeting over one shoulder—“Hi, Dad!”—before vanishing round the corner on the second floor. He felt something then he couldn’t have described, the faintest drawing-down of the exhilaration that had guided him back from the service, back from what Tim was already dubbing “the Miracle at Marsh Chapel,” and he didn’t know why exactly. It was just the surprise, that was all. Joanie was here. And Corey.