In truth, it had been dreadful. Jim was still having difficulty looking at Dolly without crying. He’d never arranged a child’s birthday party on his own before, and so he overdid the whole affair. The farm was transformed into a child’s paradise, with mechanical rides and a petting zoo, balloon animal guys, and pony rides. He invited every kid in Dolly’s grade at school and all of their parents, not a one of whom was within fifteen years of him in age. When I arrived, the young parents were getting loaded on free booze while the children ran amok.

“Jim is much more attentive to your baby sister than he ever was to either of our children,” Nancy said.

“He has to be.”

“Not really. He could send her to boarding school in the fall and sleepaway camp in the summer, and never have to deal with her outside of a few odd weekends and holidays. I wonder if he’s more interested because he’s old enough to be her grandfather. Maybe grandparents should raise all the children.”

It seemed a good time to change the subject. “How long are you staying in Nashville?” I asked.

“Until tomorrow. Vanessa asked me to leave. Says she’s fine. I don’t think she’s quite ready to accept me as a doting mother yet.”

“I expect she just wants to be alone.”

“But you’ll be here, won’t you, Charlie?”

“That’s what she wants.”

“It hasn’t taken you very long to resume your place at the right hand, has it?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

She smiled.

“They love you, you know,” she said. “Both of them.”

“I know,” I said.

Later on, after Vanessa had gone to bed, I sat up and had a drink with the former Mr. and Mrs. Jim Haltom. Jim and Nancy were natural together, the way they must have been at some point long before the twins or even Arch came along. They teased each other, told stories I’d never heard about their early lives together, when they’d experienced the Belle Meade version of struggle. I could see that they had, in fact, once been in love. The thought occurred to me that, with my mother gone, the two of them might reconcile. What an ending to the story that would have been.