“I know it has,” she said, “but I still like it. Do you remember the first time we drove over that summer, with Carter and Rene? We met that man who made bracelets from airplane metal.”

I confessed that I remembered the trip, but not the man or his bracelets. “Unless I’m wrong, that was the first time we went anywhere during the day, and I was more than a little worried about getting back to the Inn on time for dinner.”

“That’s what you said,” she corrected. “But that wasn’t it. You were worried what people would think if they saw us together.” She leaned quickly to me and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. “I wanted to do that on that trip.” She glanced out of the window. “In fact, I think we were at this exact spot when the urge struck me.”

“Good try, but I doubt it, since this is a new road. It’s a good thought, though.”

She laughed and sat back against the seat and stared out of the window at the mountains and the orchards that seemed to rotate around us as we rode past them. She said, “Do you know what I’d like, Bobo? I’d like for you to meet my children.”

It was the first time she had mentioned them since the lunch in the Inn.

“I’d enjoy that,” I said. “Tell me about them.”

She was silent for a moment before answering. “They’re very sweet, very close. Sometimes they remind me of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, but they’re also very spoiled in a way. They know how to play me against their father and their father against me, and that gets tiresome.”

“I know,” I said.

“It’s that way in your home, too?”

“From their first temper tantrum.”

“In our home, Peter can buy their attention, and does. I don’t believe in that. But they would like you.” She looked at me. “In fact, they already do.”

“Should I ask how?” I said.

“A few years ago, when we were all together on vacation in Maine without their father, it began raining one night and we were all tucked inside a cabin talking girl talk and they asked me about the boys I’d dated. I told them about you.”

“Everything?” I asked.

“Enough for them to understand. They were envious. They wanted to know why it only lasted for a summer.”

“What did you tell them?”

“What they wanted to hear. That it was the perfect summer and then it was over.”

“That sounds a little tragic,” I suggested.