“It’s … a little sore. Very sore. Sort of this dull throb. Pretty painful, actually. I’ll have to take some Tylenol. But I’m sure it’ll be better by tomorrow.”

“No more swimming alone, okay? I’m serious. It was a stupid thing to do.” He propped his arm along the back of the cushions and gave her his I-mean-business-you-lowlife-rookie look. “And while we’re at it, don’t get too cozy with Lilly.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. In case you didn’t notice, she’s not too fond of me. Still, I think you need to hear her out.”

“That’s not going to happen. This is my life, Molly, and you don’t understand anything about it.”

“That’s not exactly true,” she said carefully. “I’m an orphan, too.”

He withdrew his arm. “You don’t get to call yourself an orphan if you’re over twenty-one.”

“The point is, my mother died when I was two, so I know something about feeling disconnected from your roots.”

“Our circumstances aren’t anything alike, so don’t try to make comparisons.” He gazed out into the woods. “I had two great parents. You didn’t have any.”

“I had Phoebe and Dan.”

“You were a teenager by then. Before that, you seem to have raised yourself.”

He was deliberately turning the conversation away from himself. She understood that, too, and she let him do it. “Me and Danielle Steel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was a fan, and I knew she had lots of kids. I used to pretend I was one of them.” She smiled at his amusement. “Now, some might find that pathetic, but I think it was pretty creative.”

“It’s definitely original.”

“Then I’d fantasize a mercifully painless death for Bert, at which point it would be magically revealed that he wasn’t my father at all. My real father was—”

“Let me guess. Bill Cosby.”

“I wasn’t that well adjusted. It was Bruce Springsteen. And no comments, okay?”

“Why should I comment when Freud already did the job?”

Molly wrinkled her nose at him. They sat in surprisingly companionable silence, broken only by Roo’s rhythmic snores. But Molly’d never been good at leaving well enough alone. “I still think you need to hear her out.”

“I can’t come up with a single reason why.”

“Because she won’t go away until you do. And because this will keep hovering over you for the rest of your life.”

He set down his glass. “Maybe the reason you’re so obsessed with analyzing my life is so you won’t get depressed thinking about your own neuroses.”

“Probably.”

He rose from the glider. “What do you say we go into town for some dinner?”