She strained her tea into her cup and dropped in a couple of cubes of sugar. (She’d been hoping for coffee, but they probably would have sneered at her if she’d dared to ask for it.) She liked the picture Desmond had of their marriage—two distinctly different people with different tastes and personalities who still functioned well as a couple. That was the way she hoped people saw her marriage to Thomas. It was the way she’d seen it for the first couple of years they were together, before she felt swamped by petty annoyances, before Gerald became quite so verbal. “Thank you for saying that,” she said. “Sometimes I think about the marriage going through regular, predictable cycles, like the weather. Or like a washing machine. Some are smooth and quiet, some noisy, but in the end, they all work together and eventually get the clothes clean.”

“What cycle are you in now?”

The cakes were staring up at her, daring her to take a bite. She sliced off such a thin sliver of the chocolate cake, it crumpled into a heap on the plate, and she scooped it up with a spoon. “Probably the WASH cycle. Warm Affection mixed with Subtle Hostility. It’s a low-key mode. What about you and Russell?”

He pondered this for a moment. “The SPIN cycle: Separation Producing Increased Neediness. A lot of chugging and rattling. I was hoping it would be closer to RINSE—Recaptured Independence . . . Negating Symbiotic . . .”

“Entanglement?”

“Exactly.” He picked up one of the cucumber sandwiches and, making what looked like a noble attempt at being not too dainty, popped the whole thing into his mouth. “I miscalculated, it seems. But I guess I’m talking about my own feelings, not the cycle of the relationship.”

“What about Russell’s feelings?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find out this weekend.”

“It’s trouble if you’re not both on the same cycle. The unbalanced light goes on and everything grinds to a halt. My brother and Joyce come to mind.”

He seemed to perk up at the mention of Brian, which probably meant he’d been charmed by his looks—good looks, if she could believe everyone’s opinion except her own. “Another interesting marriage,” he said.

“That’s one way of describing it. He’s been stuck in the raging narcissist cycle for years. I was married to one of those once.”

“Dale?”

She nodded. She looked down at her plate, astonished to realize she’d finished every last crumb of the chocolate cake. She’d been so intent on not eating it, she hadn’t even tasted it. “Are you worried that Russell isn’t missing you enough?”

“Probably. It’s what I deserve, so . . .”

“But people never get what they deserve, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. Anyway, all you have to do is wait for the happy-days-are-here-again cycle.”