Irene bows her head. She notices his use of the pronoun we, which she finds both sweet and confusing. What he doesn’t understand is that there is no we. Irene has lost her house here and her home in Iowa City. She feels like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoons: suspended over a canyon, running on air, and then looking down and realizing there’s nothing beneath him. Irene’s problem can’t be fixed. It can’t be made better by fresh grilled mahi for dinner. Irene’s problem is that her husband of thirty-five years, in addition to keeping a mistress and fathering a child and lying about his whereabouts, had been evading tax laws and laundering money.

“Did I ever tell you that Russ sent me flowers on New Year’s Day?” Irene asks. “Calla lilies, a beautiful bouquet. He must have arranged it with the florist ahead of time and paid extra because of the holiday. And do you know what I thought when I got them? I thought, What a lovely man Russell Steele is. I am so lucky to have him.”

“AC,” Huck says. He turns off the heat under the eggs and takes a step toward her, but she holds up her palm to warn him away.

“He was dead by the time the flowers arrived.”

“Irene,” Huck says. “You’re allowed to be upset.”

Apparently, Irene hasn’t avoided the nervous-breakdown stage after all because what she wants to do is scream, You’re damn right I’m allowed to be upset! It’s a good thing the man is dead because if he were alive, I’d kill him!

But Irene holds her tongue and a second later, Maia walks into the kitchen. She’s wearing pink shorts, a gray T-shirt with a hand-painted iguana on the front, and a pair of black Converse.

When she sees Irene, she does an almost comical double take. “Um…hi? Miss Irene?”

“Good morning, Maia,” Irene says. She turns the corners of her lips up, which physically hurts. Then, as a demonstration that everything’s okay, everything’s fine, she takes a sip of her coffee. It’s strong. One small mercy.

Maia looks from Irene to Huck and back with raised eyebrows. “Did you…stay here last night?”

Irene nearly laughs. She has no idea what to say. Part of her wants to claim she’s here just to pick up Huck for their charter, but in another second, Maia is going to notice Irene’s suitcase open on the coffee table.

“I did,” Irene says. “Huck was kind enough to let me sleep on the sofa.”

“Okay…” Maia says.

Huck spoons some eggs onto a plate and pushes the button on the toaster. “Irene and the boys lost the villa, Nut,” he says. “There’s some…tax trouble.”

Tax trouble is a useful phrase, Irene thinks. It’ll put everyone to sleep.