Jerry’s voice was so big on the phone. She isn’t prepared for how small he’s become, like a freeze-dried version of the Jerry she used to know. He is sick, but he has the same twinkle in his eyes. He’s clearly glad to see her.

Sherri tosses her purse on the old couch. Jerry hadn’t replaced anything in all these years. It was as if he’d been living in a museum of Sherri’s life. Everything is the same, just more worn down, like the faded upholstery on the his-and-hers wing chairs her parents used to occupy. Sherri is surprised the old sheet music she’d last played wasn’t still sitting on the rail of the piano, yellowed with age.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jerry says. He’s eating a slippery-looking hard-boiled egg. The room smells of sulfur.

“I feel like I have.” She plunks down in the chair across from him. “You knew.”

“Is this how you say hello after all this time?”

“Jerry.” Her hands shake. “Why—why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what? Slow down. Are you mad about the yoga studio? I know some people around here think that yoga is the devil’s doorway, but you ask me, Raylee’s the perfect tenant. Those kooks are real quiet until they start with their ‘ohm’s.”

“I’m talking about Arthur,” Sherri says. “And, well, his son.”

Jerry reaches for the napkin and wipes the sides of his mouth with it. “Oh.”

“All these years you knew. I feel like such a fool.” She wants to be angry, but how could she be when Jerry is so sick?

“Yes, I knew, I knew.”

“Jerry, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, well, what difference would it have made if you’d known, huh? Would his death have been any less tragic?”

Sherri has to give this some thought: Would it have been better or worse if she’d found out that Arthur had been married, that he’d had a family?

“When did you find out?”

He sips his water out of Sherri’s old juice cup. This is a conversation he’s been expecting, Sherri can tell. “‘Son of Prominent St. John Family Drowns While Partying with Playboy Bunnies.’ Salacious stuff. It was all over the news back then, but of course you weren’t here to see it.”