“We were just talking about it,” she said more firmly. “It’s a problem with the electric company. They’re fixing it.”

“And how are they going to fix it if you don’t tell me about it? My God, it can’t be that much money.”

“We’re doing fine,” she said. It was all she could think to say.

“You’re not doing fine. You’ve got no power! You have to tell me when you need these things. I’m right here, I want to help!I mean, what kind of mother … You’ve got, you’re paying money for those classes, and for that babysitter when you want to step out, but you let them cut your power? What kind of mother—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. She’d stood up from the couch and was walking toward him, a ship steering into a storm. There were tears in her eyes—of anger or desperation, she wasn’t sure which—and she blinked slowly and took the bag of groceries from his arms, setting it on the counter. “Ice cream,” she said loudly, reaching into the bag. She looked past Uncle Phil at the wall behind him, then leaned sideways until the children came into view. “Who wants ice cream?”

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ragazzino, she wants to write, I’m not what I expected to be. In truth she hadn’t expected much. It’s just that what her life has become, what she’s become, is so much less than what even she thought she would be. There is some basic formula she isn’t privy to, a force that works like a mixer, swirling all the ingredients into a smooth, digestible stock. This shouldn’t be so hard, after all. Uncle Phil will take care of the emergencies. Sometime Monday, he’ll get the power turned back on. He’ll make some excuse—as he shuffles through the newspaper, head bent down—about his mind being somewhere else, on his job, maybe, when he said what he had about her mothering skills. David Hardy, who hasn’t smiled or said hello once since she declined his proposal the day after their date, will most likely come around and apologize for being so standoffish. Just as the men who threw her and her children out of the Westmeyer Hotel apologized on that last day, saying that the decision wasn’t theirs but the owners’. All men, she imagines, perpetually get themselves into situations that call for apologies, and eventually apologize—except for Dermot.

Please, his note had said, don’t take this personally. But there was no apology in what he’d written, or for what he hadn’t done since.