As he was walking up the beach wrapped in a towel, he saw Jane sitting on the cramped cinder block patio behind the motel. She had on a blue, beachy bathrobe with big yellow flowers splashed on it, and her face was partly hidden by her sunglasses. She was holding a book in her hands, although she didn’t seem to be reading it. As he got closer, he saw that it was the copy of Playing with Childhood, Gloria’s harsh critique of parenting that he’d given her weeks earlier. He pulled a chair beside her and she peered at him over the top of her sunglasses. “Do you like my outfit?” she asked.

“Better than I like mine.”

“Opposite ends of the same impulse—trying to hide your flaws by showing them off or covering them up. Thomas gave me this,” she said, and fingered the lapels of the robe. “What’s your excuse?”

“Low self-esteem.” He tapped the cover of Gloria’s book. “What do you make of this?”

“It says everything I’ve ever thought about children and childhood.” She slid her sunglasses back up to her face and scratched at the back of her neck. It was late afternoon, and she couldn’t have been out here for more than twenty minutes, but already her skin, newly exposed by the hairdo, looked scorched. “But reading it in someone else’s words made it sound heartless. Poor Russell. If this book is any indication, he must have been raised in a laboratory.”

“Gloria likes to get on her soapbox and be outrageous enough to make people listen. I think Russell probably had a fairly normal upbringing.”

The corners of Jane’s mouth turned down, and for a moment, Desmond had a horrible feeling she might get weepy. Having met Gerald, he should have known better than to fling around the word “normal” so casually. Trying to recoup, he said, “What matters is that, eccentric or not, Gloria was a loving, devoted mother.”

“I’m sure she was. I’m not so sure I have been.”

“According to your lists,” he said, “you spend half your day doting on Gerald, driving him from one appointment to the next, taking him to museums, classes, lessons.”