“Now I have a good business, and a good home. Mary is a great girl. I think Tony will be okay here. I’ll put him to work in the kitchen. Who knows, maybe he’ll like food service.” Anthony’s voice is so excited, I have a flash of guilt that I so deliberately kept Tony away from his father.

“He’s watched me in the food-service industry long enough; I don’t think it has an appeal for him.”

“Fair enough. Look, Justine, I’ll send you plane fare. He can finish the school year in Seattle and be out here for the summer. How’s that?”

*   *   *

It was a good plan, a workable plan. A summer back east, then home to me in the fall. Except that Tony went ballistic.

*   *   *

Mitch has noticed my slump. “You okay?”

“I think I’ve hit my wall. I’m exhausted.”

Which leaves the question of the rest of the night sitting between us.

“I’ll take you back to your mother’s house.”

“Stepmother.”

“Step, then. Or not.”

It’s that little “Or not” that makes me smile. “I really don’t want to go back there. I’m done with that house.”

“Stay here.”

We are back at Mitch’s hotel, sitting in the lounge, having a last glass of wine and munching the endless popcorn provided instead of bar peanuts like those at Candy’s Place. Mitch leans over. “It’s been hard, hasn’t it?”

“You don’t know the half.” I am so tired that I spill out half my life story, only partially edited. I’ve told him about Mack and our dancing and why I am so desperate to have my dog back. I tell Mitch about leaving home the day after high school graduation and why coming back to New Bedford was supposed to heal that breach, and maybe it has. Because my thoughts have been on the past so much, I tell him about sending my son away when he was sixteen and how that made him so hurt and angry that he estranged himself from me. Mitch hands me his clean handkerchief.

I swallow back the uncontrolled self-pity and ask him to tell me about life with a handicapped plate. He talks of being a normal teenager, then not a normal teenager. About friends who were freaked-out and friends who remained loyal. About being a badass when the mood strikes and the way some music is so divine that he plays without even thinking, just letting the music take charge.

And now we’re at that junction where every date eventually arrives—the yes or no moment.

“No expectations, Justine. There are two beds, and I don’t think I snore.” Mitch tosses this out so casually that it almost seems conceivable that I would share a room with him and not sleep with him.

“What about my expectations?”