Sophie stretched the waistband of my boxers, appearing to take a disinterested look; she always let the waistband go with an audible snap. To Molly and Ray, this gesture might have seemed affectionate or cruel—perhaps both—but I knew Sophie. She was always looking for blood. “Aren’t you cold, sweetie?” my mother asked me. “You should put some clothes on.”

I tried to look like I was leaving the kitchen, but I took my time doing it. Sophie knew how to finish a story, and I knew exactly where she was in the fibroid saga—she was almost done with it. “Surgery is an option,” Sophie was saying to my mom and Molly. I was edging toward the TV room with the giant futon—where Sophie and I had slept, where we’d had sex, where there’d been bleeding—but I knew I had to linger in the kitchen a little longer. “I could have a fibroidectomy—or, one day, a complete hysterectomy,” Sophie said, almost casually. She paused; she knew I was waiting to leave. “Don’t worry, Adam,” she said softly, letting me go. “I won’t try the surgery till you’ve moved on. I won’t make you go through the surgery part.”

I love Thomas Mann. He was the perfect writer to discover in a year of bleeding. But twenty-five years later, I was alone with my mother and Molly in their Vermont kitchen. I was older than they’d been when Sophie and I broke up. I didn’t want to hear my mom say, “Poor Sophie”—not again, not when those two old ski jocks were in their sixties, and I was in my forties.

I’d missed having a writer for a girlfriend, if not the bleeding. I’d been seeing another writer; there was something about it that made being a writer a little less lonely. I’d never gone out with a woman who worked in publishing, and Grace had been reading my novels since she was in high school. If you were a writer closing in on fifty—if your relationships had been a rocky road—wouldn’t you have been interested in meeting Grace? Even if you were worried about the age difference. Even if Grace was your mother’s idea.

“Okay,” I said, looking at Molly, who was flipping pancakes. “Okay, okay,” I told my mother, who was doing her wall sits in her long johns against the refrigerator, trying not to spill her coffee.

“Okay to what, sweetie?” my mom asked.

“Okay, I’ll meet Grace. If that’s what you want, I’ll meet her,” I said. I should have known this would make my mother suspicious.

“You’re not seeing anyone, are you? You can’t go out with Grace if you’re seeing someone, sweetie,” my mom told me.

“Ray, let Adam meet Grace—let them decide if they want to go out,” Molly said.