“Sometimes I wish one of my parents had been a vet. Or my stepdad. They don’t really get it, you know?”

“Even my mom doesn’t get how things have changed, honestly.”

“But I bet her eyes don’t glaze over when you talk about work.”

“Fair point.”

Emilia stared out the window with obvious curiosity as they approached Morgan’s childhood home. She tried to see it from Emilia’s perspective: the older house, in need of a new coat of paint, not quite yet shabby but derelict by Boston suburb standards. The wide lawn, mostly blueberry scrub at this point, and the red barn with its aging cupola and lopsided weather vane. Kraken raised his head in the back seat and thumped his tail in anticipation.

“You grew up here?” Emilia asked as she took it in.

“Yep.” She pulled in beside her mother’s Jeep. “Ready?”

Emilia smiled. Morgan forcibly reminded herself Emilia was here to talk about her father, not to meet her girlfriend’s parents. They were not a couple. She had no right to the vivid fantasies now rolling through her head like some jackass’s idea of a movie montage, about showing Emilia her childhood haunts or sitting on the porch with her father and her arm around Emilia’s shoulders with a scratchy wool blanket over their laps to keep off the evening chill.

I love you.

Had the thought merely been the by-product of sex and loneliness? She wanted to believe that was the case. She didn’t want to give a name to the tightness in her chest and the sickening ache that filled her whenever Emilia left her side.

Shannon greeted them at the door with an enthusiastic ear scratch for Kraken, a kiss for Morgan, and a handshake and warm smile for Emilia.

“You look so much like your father,” she said to Emilia as she ushered them inside. “Did Morgan warn you about the dogs?”

“No, but I love dogs.”

A streak of black, gray, brown, and white shot past them as her mother’s two border collies circled the newcomers. Kraken raised his lips disapprovingly, then ignored them.

“Your father is out back trellising his tomatoes. Can I get you girls a drink?”

Morgan followed her mother into the kitchen, noting the smells coming from the oven. Her mouth, ever a traitor, watered in anticipation. “Lamb pie?”

“Yes. Unless you’re a vegetarian, Emilia? I should have asked.”

“I’m not.”

“Good. Not that I mind, of course, but Morgan loves her meat.”

“Ma.”

“Well, it’s true.”

Kate had been a vegetarian. Was probably still a vegetarian, she corrected herself. When had she started thinking about Kate in the past tense? She suspected this was behind her mother’s comment and groaned inwardly.