Everything was perfect, people’s faces lit by the glow of the fire, the odd cat or dog lying there where you could reach out a hand and stroke an ear or pat a belly, the sacrament coming on and the monkey, for once, confined upstairs in his cage. It was the sort of scene Fitz had come to embrace, to love, really, all the mad rush of the world kept at bay and the people he most cared about gathered round him. This was what they were here for. This was what life was meant to be, and if the children were excluded this weekend and he and Joanie were all but broke and his thesis—Aspects of Operant Conditioning: A Statistical Analysis of Recent Maze-Based Experiments—stalled, so be it.

Joanie was right beside him, cradling her knees and smiling faintly, a smile that was more a genetic tilt of the muscles at the corners of her mouth than a sign of amusement or even engagement (what Tim liked to call her “mysterious smile,” as in, Joanie, light up that mysterious smile for us, will you?). She was parting her hair in the middle now and had let it grow out till it trailed over her shoulders in the style of a folk singer whose music Alice had introduced her to, a woman who sang in a churchy soprano about farmers and coal miners and such, and what was her name? He couldn’t remember. And it didn’t matter. Because that sort of music meant nothing more to him than Charlie’s Beatles, except that there was only one of her, which reduced the annoyance factor by 75 percent.

Tim waited till he was sure everyone was watching, then dipped his hand in the hat and with a flourish came up with the first slip of paper, which he carefully unfolded and smoothed flat in the palm of one hand. He made a show of squinting at the name written across the face of it as if he couldn’t quite make it out, but of course he was just toying with them. “Joanie,” he announced, glancing up at her and flashing his fluid grin. “Congratulations.”

Everyone looked to her—they all feigned indifference but in truth everyone was on edge, as you could plainly see in their faces—and then a few people clapped and the whole group broke out in nervous laughter. “No potato peeling for you this week, you lucky devil,” Paulette sang out. “And no dishes either. Queen for a day! Or no, for a week, a whole week!”