A server stepped into Alice’s line of sight, blocking her view. It was several seconds before he moved on. When he did, Alice could scarcely believe her eyes. Standing in between a handsome middle-aged couple was the boy from the photograph, the one she’d tried to show Charlie a few minutes ago, the one she couldn’t stop staring at. The boy was a little older now, a little taller, and more filled out. But he had the same soft brown hair, and eyes to match, the same long, clean limbs. In the picture he was on a tennis court. The white collared shirt he was wearing was offset by vertical navy stripes, thick and widely spaced. His right hand hung loose at his side, his fingers gripping the bill of a navy cap. His face was unforgettable somehow. Not because it was handsome—though it was, very—but because of the expression on it. He looked so purely happy, his smile ear-to-ear, practically jumping off his lips. Maybe he was happy because he was being presented with a trophy, large and shining gold in the sun, or maybe he was happy because the girl he had his arm wrapped around, his partner, was so beautiful . . . and so familiar. An actress? Alice had wondered. She was certainly good-looking enough to be an actress. She had the poise of a professional, too, of someone used to having many eyes on her and yet behaving as if she were unobserved, not a trace of shyness or self-consciousness.

Alice was lost in these thoughts when the boy suddenly glanced up. Their gazes met, and the way he reacted, it was as if he’d been looking at a picture of her moments before. They stared at each other, stared and stared. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from hers anymore than she could pull hers away from his. It felt to Alice like the entire world had ground to a halt. And then his mom laid a hand on his wrist, and with a start he looked down at her.

Alice turned and saw that Cybill and Charlie were several feet ahead, and that Cybill’s lips were moving. Not wanting to miss anything, Alice ran to catch up.

“. . . and he’ll be starting at Harvard in the fall,” Cybill concluded.

Charlie craned her neck to take another look. “So, he’s the brainy type. Not too hard to look at either.”

“He’s perfect if you like them perfect. National Merit scholar, was one of the top crew recruits in the country, organized the Oxfam hunger banquet at his school, and look,” she said, as he slipped an arm around the older woman’s shoulders, “he’s even nice to his mom.”

“A real Boy Scout.”

“A Boy Scout with a jailbird for a dad.”