“That’ll be Lulu,” she told Toby, Lulu infuriated again by Sophie. No, not Lulu, who never took taxis, it must be Sophie, who often took them, although she could not afford them, and even more often, in a way that Fee had never entirely understood, just happened to find someone with a car who just happened to be going in the exact direction in which Sophie wished to go. It would be Sophie, bursting in with rain-drenched hair and a highly wrought story of love or friendship, work or betrayal. Well, there was plenty of food for two—Fee had learned over the years to be generous when calculating supper portions. She looked up to see Emma, her controlled, confident Emma, standing in the doorway clutching a wad of damp tissue, tears running down her face like the rain outside the window. Fee’s heart froze with fear.

“Honey, whatever has happened?” she said.

“He said my legs were good enough!” choked Emma, collapsing into her mother’s arms.

“And I know it was wrong,” she said sometime later, when the supper had been consumed and the whole tale told. “It was greedy and mad, and I don’t know what came over me. And now I have a pair of stupid shoes that I’m too ashamed to look at, never mind wear, and a credit-card bill that’s going to come in for the first time in my life, and I feel like I’ve taken something completely precious and pure and beautiful, which was our life together, Matthew’s and mine, and thrown something dirty at it that’s ruined it forever.”

Fee looked at her daughter, and sighed. Then she rose, and went to the kitchen counter, returning with a bowl of cherries and a box of Bendicks mints.

“Dessert,” she said. “I’ve retired from making them, so if you want something fancy, go visit your sister … Emma, I want you to listen to me because I’m going to tell you a secret about marriage.”

Unwrapping from its cool green foil the one chocolate mint she decided she would allow herself, Emma glanced up at her mother warily.

“It’s not going to be one of the fish and bicycle secrets from the collective, is it?” she asked.

“No, it’s not.” Fee smiled. “But it is a piece of advice from someone who’s been married since before you were born, and if you’re smart, you might want to hear it.”

“Okay.” Emma sighed, crumpled the foil, and settled herself for a lecture.

Fee sat for a moment, pursing her lips with the look that Emma knew meant she was composing her thoughts.

“Times have changed in the last hundred years,” she said then, slowly. “Good Lord, they’ve changed since I was a girl, and if Grandma Jo, for instance, could see the world today, heaven knows what she’d make of it. She was unusual, I think, because she was a writer and helped her husband run a school, but most women of her time sat at home and tended the house while the men went out to work. These days, thank God, we’re far closer to being partners with our men than we’ve ever been, but the truth is, we’re not quite there yet, and maybe we never will be. Matthew’s a good man, Emma, as your father is, and I think you’ll be very happily married. But … I’ve noticed that already you do more than he does. You cook far more often than he does, you’re the one who notices when you run out of milk, you’re the one who does the laundry, you were the one who chose his mother’s birthday card. It always happens. The woman works far harder around the home than the man does, and, good God, just wait till the kids come along and see what it’s like. Don’t get me wrong: a happy marriage is wonderful—it’s one of the greatest blessings that life can bring. But it’s also true that a very great deal of it is tedious and repetitive, and if we women aren’t very careful, the best of us can find ourselves turning into a drudge. So—do you know what the answer is?”