“He is!” Where else would he be? “He had to stay longer than he thought.”

“I don’t know how he does it,” sighed Nancy. “All those hours, working so hard.”

“I know how he does it,” said Lu. “He has a wife.” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Well,” said Nancy. “Yes. But you don’t see his patients for him, do you? You don’t perform his surgeries?”

Lu thought, Everything but! She chortled gently and said, “No, of course not.” Then, because she had the impression that this was what Nancy wanted, she added, “I could never.”

Nancy nodded crisply and made her way, uninvited, to the kitchen, while Lu followed behind, explaining apologetically that the boys weren’t home because of the clamming camp. Too late Lu saw that she’d gotten so caught up in the pickling plans that she’d forgotten to clean up after breakfast; she watched Nancy take in the constellation of morning toast crumbs, the Rorschach blot of orange juice. Under Chase’s stool, she could be certain, was an entire meal’s worth of surrendered cereal bits. She pictured them being carried off by an army of industrious ants. Look what we’ve found, one ant would say to another. Look at this, it’s a goddamn gold mine! And then they’d motion to all of the other ants to join them.

Lu swiped as many of the crumbs as she could into the sink without being too obvious about it. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked Nancy.

“I had mine hours ago.” Nancy was a competitively early riser.

“Me too,” said Lu. “But I’m going to have more.”

“I suppose I could have another.”

Lu made herself busy with the coffee maker. She couldn’t bear to be idle in front of Nancy; it made her feel naked.

“Were you . . . exercising?” Nancy took in Lu’s apparel. “While the boys were gone?”

“I was,” said Lu untruthfully. “Yes.” She pretended to wipe some sweat off of her forehead. “Just got back, in fact. Spinning. Really tough class.” She shook her head as though she could scarcely believe it, how tough it had been. “One of the teachers here . . . man, oh, man . . .” She let her voice trail off and she looked into the middle distance. Her legs positively ached with the memory of that class. “Tommy, his name is.”

Lu had been fourth in her class at Stanford Law. How she’d loved the gleamingness of the Stanford campus, the umbrellaed tables set out in Crocker Garden, the thinking that went on. Advanced Supreme Court Litigation, American Legal History, 21st Century Skills and Practice Management: she’d loved it all. Later, when she was working, she’d loved wearing suits every day, heels, ticking her way down the hall at the firm, her mind ticking too, keeping up with her heels. She’d never minded the long hours. She’d thrived on them. And now an imaginary spin class made her tired.

“I was thinking of doing some pickling,” Lu said.