But she was nervous about being alone with a man. That was understandable. Wasn’t it? He didn’t seem murdery but maybe he was. Maybe she shouldn’t have invited him to her house. As an extra precaution, she texted Holly: If you don’t hear from me by 10 p.m. please come by and check on me.

Holly texted back, ??

The wine he brought was a Sancerre, a good one, and although she felt funny opening it for just herself she didn’t feel funny enough not to do it, so she poured a healthy glass. Then she poured Anthony a glass of the seltzer he had brought and sliced up a lemon to go along with it.

The elements of the meal came together beautifully, if she did say so herself. (She did.) The artichoke hearts were tender and flavorful and the puttanesca had just the right amount of zing to it.

And the conversation came together almost as well as the meal!

Anthony was a freelance journalist. He’d told her his last name: he was Anthony Jones, not Anthony What. His marriage had been brief, the split fairly amicable, although he preferred not to talk in depth about it. His wife had cheated on him. “Not much to tell,” he said, shrugging. “It’s the oldest story in the world. And this”—he pointed with his fork at his plate—“is the best meal I’ve had in months. Maybe years.”

She smiled. “Just wait until dessert,” she said. She’d made a simple banana chocolate bread pudding with mint crème anglaise. This was not a Dinner by Dad recipe, because, as any avid reader knew, Sammy, the younger of the two boys, did not like bananas. (Oh, how Leo lamented that fact; bananas were so easy, and so portable.)

“You have parents, don’t you?” she asked. “What are they like? What do they do?”

He hesitated and said, “My father is an . . . an entrepreneur.”

“Oh!” she said. “That sounds interesting. In what area?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“It’s . . . sort of complicated. And boring.”

“Ah. Technology?”

“Of a sort.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mom keeps up the house. She brings my dad a scotch every night at five o’clock. He works in a home office most of the time. My mom never . . . had to work. Never wanted to work, I guess?”

“How old-fashioned,” Joy said. Then, because it felt like a judgment (privately it was), she added, “And sort of adorable.” She didn’t really believe that.

He stiffened and said, “Depends on how you look at it. But that’s enough about me. Tell me about yourself.”

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the fact that nobody had asked her about herself for a long time, but Joy found herself opening up like a properly steamed mussel. She told him about her business, and about the very real threat posed by the Roving Patisserie. She told him, because he asked, about her divorce. She told him that she had been twenty-six years old, the mother of a two-year-old, married to a guy who truly thought he was Kurt Cobain without the mental illness, when Dustin had come to her one day and said, “I’m out.”