“How about, make sure you keep my mom on it.”

He muttered something about negative energy, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

The garden was dry and sad. The rosemary had grown woody and the sunflowers were at an end and I tried not to make a dumb, maudlin poem out of it all, but the big old rambling house, the scene of so much good fellowship, felt bereft. Sometimes life really was dumb and maudlin.

Inside, I found Oscar going through the books on the office shelves. “Have you looked under M?”

“Yeah, funny.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a jerk. About you and my mom. It’s not such an easy time to be happy about anything.”

“Yeah. Love. Inconvenient, isn’t it?”

I called Boone and asked if he wanted to meet for a drink. He’d been in Placerville all this time, and now he was in town to talk with Ed. Viridian was still in the local hospital. The process of not dying was complicated. There were constant phone calls back and forth with insurance companies, with care centers, with Medi-Cal. The doctors weighed in with predictions and cautions, directives and requirements.

I felt sorry for Boone, I knew he was exhausted by it all. And pulled in different directions by duty and resentment and loss. He’d said as much. I guess I had other, less straight-forward reasons for calling him, having to do with my own vanity and curiosity and indecision, and because Boone was flawed as I felt myself to be flawed. We had that much in common. And he was a part of Viridian’s world, while Aaron was not. I didn’t entirely trust Boone, but even when he’d tried to outmaneuver or flatter me, it meant I might have some purpose or value in that world.

We were meeting in Sausalito, his idea, at one of those restaurants-with-a-view. Again, his suggestion. I didn’t want it to be some big expensive deal, didn’t want him spending the kind of money such a place would take. But I wasn’t going to back out now.

My mom came in while I was drying my hair in the bathroom. “Don’t you look nice.”

“Thanks.” I was making more effort than usual with my hair and makeup. I wore short suede boots, my tightest jeans, and a black top that showed some skin.

“You’re going out?”

“Clearly.”

“With Aaron?”

“No.”

She waited for me to tell her more. She wasn’t so love-crazed that she’d quit being my mother. When I didn’t speak, she said, “Sweetie, I know you don’t want my opinion—”

“But I’m going to get it anyway.”

“I had to listen to a lot of your free opinions lately about my personal life, right? Now it’s your turn. You aren’t happy. I thought you were happy with Aaron. So I was wrong. Try and figure out what’s going to make you feel good about yourself. Then maybe you can decide if it involves anybody else. Be careful driving.”