“This is unacceptable, Geoff,” she said. Her words sounded sharp and she thought, Good. Let them. “I’m going to have to figure a few things out here. I’ll be in touch.” She might have to find a new supplier. She might have to get her own cows! (Obviously not practical.) She ended the call and laid her head down on the desk, the way she remembered doing in second grade during mandatory rest time, when Mrs. Willingham was her teacher. Mrs. Willingham had long chestnut hair and wore big hoop earrings and had a tinkling laugh. Maybe Joy could go back to second grade, before she had the weight of a business and a rental increase and a teenager on her shoulders. In second grade, her biggest worries had been how to improve her dismal four square skills and who to invite to her eighth birthday party at Forrest’s Family Fun Center in Taunton.

“If you’d stayed close to home, sure and I’d be helping you out too,” Joy’s mother had told her when Maggie was four and Joy called to tell her Maggie had caught the flu at preschool. (Her mother’s lilting brogue and many of her native phrases had never been snuffed out on the streets of Fall River.) “Come home and I’ll help you now,” her mother had said.

Maybe she should have gone back home that day, thought Joy. The punishment for wanting total independence was the same thing as the prize: total independence. She was about to dive headfirst into a big vat of self-pity when suddenly there was a touch on the back of her neck. She looked up, startled. Anthony. Her cheeks warmed.

“Hey,” he said. “I decided to wait. Maggie said you were back here. You look like something happened. How can I help?”

Joy felt a sudden prick of tears. It wouldn’t be a good idea to cry in front of the man she’d just slept with. She would come off as mentally unstable. But. They were four simple words, and nobody ever said them. How can I help?

She lifted her face to him, and it felt like she was lifting it to the sun after a long, dark winter. His body somehow seemed to carry all of her favorite scents: cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg. (Maybe she was attracted to him because he smelled like a bakery. Was there such a thing as whoopie pie pheromones?) When he bent down to kiss her she didn’t even look around first to see if Olivia Rossi or the newly hired college kids could see her. All of a sudden she didn’t care.

Chapter 23

ANTHONY

JOY SAID SHE needed some time to get a few things done and walk the dog. Anthony could go home, and she’d pick him up in ninety minutes. She’d drive, because he still didn’t have a car, and anyway his house was right on the way to where they were going. When she pulled up in the yellow Jeep she gave two successive short honks, but he was watching out the window—he didn’t need the honks.