“You could have come here.”

He thought about the study door, always closed, the Puccini, the heavy silence of the great man at work. “You know that wasn’t an option.”

“It’s always an option. This is your home.” When Anthony didn’t answer, Dorothy said, “I have to tell you about what Max said the other day. Such a funny thing.”

Anthony’s pulse picked up. “You saw Max?”

Dorothy paused, then said, “Yes. I had him for two nights.”

“Two nights? Where was Cassie?” His mother had had Max for two nights and Anthony couldn’t even get five minutes on the phone with him? Every time he asked, Cassie said he wasn’t available. He was four years old! Of course he was available! No, said Cassie. He was at camp. He was at a playdate. A swimming lesson. A birthday party. Some of this was true, probably (Cassie kept him remarkably busy), but it couldn’t all be true. Cassie thought Anthony was a bad influence on Max; Cassie wanted to keep him to herself.

“She had to go away for work,” Dorothy said cagily.

Right, thought Anthony. Because art that sat in an expensive boutique in Boston’s South End (and really, if they were being honest, didn’t sell a hell of a lot) required so much business travel. Could his mother be so naïve? “Where’d she go?”

“I’m not sure,” said Dorothy.

“Interesting.”

“In the end, I didn’t care,” said Dorothy. “Because I was so happy to have Max.”

Again he thought of their wedding, on the grounds of an old horse farm in Shelburne, Vermont. Cassie’s blond hair was in those braids with the wildflowers woven in. Her dress was held up with the aid of two slender straps that looked like pieces of braided ribbon. She was paler than dawn, with minimal makeup. Her skin was luminous; everything about her was luminous. She walked down the cedar path that led to the wildflower arch completely barefoot, her toenails painted a pearly pink. The irony must have struck Dorothy immediately; after the ceremony she pulled Anthony aside and whispered, “Your new wife is already barefoot and pregnant!”

The reality was that though Anthony had flicked Dorothy’s comments away like they were a fly, she had seen Cassie’s true colors long before he had. Cassie was in it for the money and the prestige. They’d written their wedding vows themselves; Cassie had insisted they use none of the usual, hackneyed phrases, no ’til death do us part, no for richer or poorer. Anthony had thought that was further proof of Cassie’s stylishness and charm, but in retrospect it just seemed prescient.

“Well, what did Max say?” Anthony asked now. “That was so funny?”

“We were baking cookies, and while the cookies were in the oven he asked me if they were loading! Can you imagine? Loading! Cookies!”

Anthony smiled. That was a very Max-like question.

“It reminded me of when you were about his age and you asked what wist was,” Dorothy continued. She laughed. “Somebody had used the word wistful in front of you, and you, precocious boy that you were, assumed that if one could be wistful, there was something called wist one could be full of.”