A shimmer of delight skipped in her face. “He does?”

“Still has some of the records from the fifties.”

“Maybe we can get him to play some for us before you leave,” she said.

“Knowing Sammy, he’d restore the place if we asked him.”

Amy dropped her arm from my arm and took my hand and laced her fingers with my fingers. She tugged at me and we turned from Arch’s and continued walking up the sidewalk.

“I can’t believe Avrum never said anything to me about you,” I told her.

“I asked him not to. It was an understanding between us. I insisted on it.”

“I wish I had known,” I said.

“What good would it have done, Bobo?”

“I would have learned something about you. Where you were, how you were.”

She glanced at me. Her eyes were shining. “Do you know what you would have learned? You would have learned that I was a wife and mother, married to a man preoccupied with success and money and a man very, very talented at gaining both. You would have learned that I serve on a half dozen socially acceptable—some think necessary—civic and art committees in the city. You would have learned that I sometimes work in a boutique that I invested in twenty years ago just to have something to keep me occupied. You would have learned that I have never used my college major, which was philosophy, for the good of anything, unless you count the tending to children, and I do. In fact, I think they’re the true accomplishment of my life. I love them passionately. You would have learned that I have seen the same counselor twice a month for the past eight years and only recently declared myself cured of whatever malady it was that made me carry on before him like I was a talk-show host.” She turned to me and smiled softly. “You would have learned how ordinary I really am.”

“None of it sounds ordinary to me,” I said. “Still, knowing Avrum, I’m surprised he didn’t find some way to tell me about you.”

“He wanted to. He argued with me about it, but I wouldn’t let him. I knew he understood, even if he disagreed.”

We reached Avrum’s bench and sat. She took my hand into both of her hands and began to massage it gently. She seemed peaceful, comfortable.

“And Carter? You never saw Carter?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t ready to see him, either. When I visited my mother, I stayed with her most of the time. Once or twice we drove here, just to see the Inn again, and the village. But even that was hard to do. There were too many memories for both of us.”

“I know,” I said.