Angie’s gaze hadn’t left his face. “But that’s where all this started. I wanted to know if Caroline has been told about our ancient history. Which she hasn’t.”

“She doesn’t know?” Rob sat up straight.

Kai, oblivious as she could be at times, smiled. “Do you think she will be angry at you? Is that why you haven’t told her?”

John said, “Now I’m a obsessive closeted homosexual afraid of anger, confrontation, and women.”

“Named Harvey,” said Kai cheerfully.

The doorbell rang, but John couldn’t bring himself to look away from Angie, who had come back into his life to wreak havoc, and was making excellent progress. He let Rob leave the table to answer the doorbell while he held Angie’s gaze, because it would have been cowardly to look away, and because there was something in her voice he didn’t understand, quite, or even want to understand.

Angie pressed the fingers of both hands to her mouth and then drew them down to her chin. “I think we’ve established that you’re not gay.”

“As you have cause to know,” he said, quietly.

She said, just as quietly, “But the rest of it fits. As I have cause to know.”

Kai said, “So those are the reasons your relationship failed?”

“No,” said Angie, her voice wavering. She managed a smile. “Those aren’t the reasons. Excuse me, would you, Kai? It’s been good to meet you, but we seem to be going in circles here, and I have work to do.”

Angie was so intent on making it to the front door before John caught up with her—she heard him push his chair back when she was halfway through the kitchen—that she turned into the hall without looking and bumped into Rob, who stepped sideways and collided, full force, with Patty-Cake Walker, whose arms were full of huge wallpaper sample books that cascaded across the floor, flapping like a flock of mute and uncoordinated geese.

Then John ran into Angie, and she lost her tenuous balance and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the elbow. She heard herself gasp, and she heard him draw in breath, and then she was free again—absolutely free again, unattached, alone—and standing, breathing heavily, between Patty-Cake Walker and John Grant. Rob was on the floor, gathering the wallpaper books into a pile.

Angie knew her face was red with embarrassment, but John looked far worse, like a teenager who had just been caught on the couch with a fast girl. Patty-Cake was looking back and forth between them with a sharp, uneasy smile that said she was seeing things she didn’t like.

“Hello, Mrs. Walker,” Angie said. “And good-bye. I was just on my way out.”