“Holy crap! So, Dad really did split you up. What a prick. Did you ever see this Hank guy again?”

“On and off throughout college. We stopped speaking altogether, though, when he found out I’d started dating your dad.”

“Not behind his back?”

“No, no. I was a lot of things, but I never cheated on any guy I was with. Of course, Hank didn’t see it that way. He said I’d encouraged your dad that night at the poetry…what do you call them nowadays…slam?”

“Kind of. But did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Encourage him that night?”

Behind Blythe’s carefully modulated expressions, a touch of regret twitched her impressively wrinkle-free skin here and there, especially around the eyes. She might be telling the truth, but it was nonetheless only a version of it, one she’d edited long ago for her own peace of mind. Being completely honest after all this time was probably impossible. She was seeing that pot-fueled night through forty years of hedging and revising and second-guessing.

“I didn’t say no,” she admitted. “And I could have. I really should have.”

“All this time and you’re still cut up about it? How serious was this Hank?”

Blythe paused to consider and didn’t bother wiping the dampness from her eyes. “The love of my life.”

Rose said nothing while her mom fought back the urge to weep. Somewhere inside her deep surprise at this confession, a few inklings of even deeper understanding began to flash. Things Rose had never tried to make sense of before, but which, in this new context, absolutely did make sense. About her mom. About her dad. About that day at the fair when she’d been twelve. It suddenly sprang to mind. Dad’s friend, but Dad not being there, how happy Mom had seemed, and how everything had changed—absolutely everything about their lives—after the fire.

“The fire,” Rose spoke out loud. “He was there that day, wasn’t he? That was him. That was Hank.”

Blythe wiped her eyes with heels of her palms, nodded quickly. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered that or not.”

“Only fragments. I know you never talked about it after, but I still remember bits and pieces, like the hot dog stand spilling over into the hay, and the hay catching fire…”

“What else?”

“Some kind of tent was burning, too. A red one. Was it a big top?”

“There were two tents. Nothing so big, but there were people inside.”

“And I remember a really loud bang, like a giant tire bursting.”

“A car’s tires,” Blythe explained. “The fire spread around the parking lot.”

“And screaming. I definitely remember screaming. From high up, I think?”