“Yep,” Allie agreed, a brussels sprout on her fork. “After my marriage broke up, I felt the loss of the shared life. But being alone has a wonder to it, and a freedom. Also an engulfing loneliness. Tradeoffs. Never any free lunch. When you have a partner, your life is important to someone. You’re each other’s witnesses. You behold each other.” She said “behold” slowly. “You’re less alone for a while.”

I felt, I must admit, sad. Sad about my aloneness, and sad about trusting someone to stay around without some disaster happening. Illness. Death. Infidelity. I guess I am like T.J., but don’t have age as an excuse, just history. “He’s away too much” was all I said to her.

But Allie watched me, watched me smooth my napkin, toy with my food, sip my wine, brush my hair away from my forehead. “Not from you,” she said. “Because of his job. Because of his kids. And do you? Do you love him?”

“I’m still infatuated with him. It’s his cute smile and way of flirting. How much fun we have doing all the things we love together. How good a father he is and how he doesn’t control me. When we’re together, it’s seamless. I consider him all the time. I’d be desolate if he left.”

“Well?”

Then the phone rang. A reprieve from her question.

NOW TAYLOR’S LIDS are at half-mast, the lashes luxuriously shadowing her cheeks as she watches Allie with sidelong glances. Allie is wearing a black tank top and a green tie-dyed wraparound sweater. Black jeans. There’s always something a little unusual about how she dresses, a combination of designer and Target but also comfortable and cozy.

How does she read Taylor these days? Does she think it is the kind of crush that younger women sometimes develop for older ones that is mostly a result of mentoring or is it sexual attraction? Allie doesn’t seem in the least bit uncomfortable, so perhaps there’s something I don’t know.

Everyone is in her place, talking and laughing. I check my cell phone, but it is quiet. No call. I imagine Sky’s restlessness, her sense of growing worry as she waits for her doctor’s news. And then I imagine her and Troy at dinner, toasting their healthy baby with glasses of sparkling water. I’ve been forgotten in the joy. I think about Allie’s statistic—the higher rate of divorce for couples with children—and the trauma Sky and Troy have had to endure to have a child. Laurie and Olivia. T.J. and his desire for a biological child.