Nancy sniffed. “Why?”

“I thought it might be fun. I thought it might be something I could do with the boys when they get home this afternoon.”

“It sounds messy,” said Nancy.

“I don’t mind a little mess.”

Lu watched Nancy’s eyes roam around the kitchen. “No,” Nancy said finally. “I guess you don’t.”

Lu had to get Nancy out of here. She peered at the clock on the microwave and feigned shock. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “Is that the time? I need to jump in the shower.”

“Now? I’ve only just arrived. I thought we could visit.” Lu wondered if she could use Jessica as an excuse, but surely a lie like that would get back to Nancy.

The coffeepot was gurgling along happily, like it had not a care in the world. Lu was searching her mind for other places she could reasonably pretend to need to be when Nancy asked, “When do you pick them up?”

Lu checked her watch. “One o’clock.”

“I could get them.”

“Really?” Lu approached this offer with care. She didn’t want it to run away, like a frightened animal. “Would you really do that?”

“I would. I’ll take them to lunch after. We’ll sit somewhere by the water, look at the boats. When Jeremy was a boy he used to love to eat over by New Harbor.”

The boys had brought bagged lunches to camp, but Lu wasn’t about to divulge that piece of information to Nancy. She hoped the boys wouldn’t either. They were growing children: they could eat twice. This would give her at least ninety extra minutes, maybe enough time to shower and put on actual clothes and buy the vinegar and the vegetables and set up the mason jars, so that when the boys got home she’d have the project ready to go.

“That’s settled, then,” said Nancy. She wiped her hands together as though she were wiping away a problem. “Do you need to call someone at the camp, let them know I’ll be collecting them?”

Did she? Lu couldn’t remember. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Maybe you’d better, just in case.”

“Right. You’re right. I will.” (She wouldn’t.)

Lu poured the coffee into two mugs and placed one in front of Nancy. Once they’d had their coffee maybe she could usher Nancy toward the door.

“How are things in the bedroom, Lu?”

Lu choked on her coffee. “I’m sorry?”

“In the bedroom. Between you and Jeremy?”

Lu’s face grew hot. Something about Nancy turned her into a compliant child who felt like she had to answer any questions put to her. Her own mother didn’t have that effect on her. Nobody else in the world did! It was just Nancy. Once, when Sebastian was a newborn, Nancy had inquired into the specifics of Lu’s violent case of mastitis. And Lu had told her!

“They’re fine,” she said, inaccurately, now. The truth was that Jeremy was so often working, and Lu was so often up in the night with Chase and his vicious nightmares, that they sometimes seemed more like office mates on rotating schedules than like husband and wife. Coworkers.