“Stop it. Alexa! That’s ridiculous.” Rebecca considered her daughter. For such a long time after Peter’s death she’d been consumed by her own grief—its inability to be contained, its bewildering peaks and valleys. Her sadness was so unwieldy, sometimes unpredictable, irascible. And Morgan was so young and needed so much. Sometimes Rebecca forgot to acknowledge that Alexa had her own grief that was complicated in its own way. She saw now that this had been a failure of hers. “You know, when your dad and I first split up, I figured there was no hope for me. A single mom with a three-year-old! Even though you were the cutest three-year-old around, I just wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah,” said Alexa, smiling weakly. “I can see how I might have cramped your dating style.”

“I was prepared to be alone,” Rebecca said. “Forever. I thought it would be just you and me, and we’d have this tidy little life, and then you’d grow up and leave me eventually, and I’d just, I don’t know, shrivel up and die or something. Or get a cat.”

“Not a cat,” said Alexa. “Never a cat.”

“The first time I went out with Peter, years later, I waited to mention you until the very end of the evening. Not because I was ashamed of you. No, don’t look at me that way! But just because I wanted to know what kind of person he was before I trusted him with the idea of you. Does that make sense?”

Alexa nodded.

“And then when I told him, do you know what he said?”

“‘No can do’?” said Alexa.

“Stop. No, of course not. His eyes lit up—I mean, they lit up, that’s an overused expression but honestly they did—and he said, ‘When do I get to meet her?’”

Alexa’s eyes were wet. “He did? He said that?”

“He did. The second time we went out, we took you to the Big Apple Circus. You might not remember that.”

“I don’t.”

“You were terrified of the elephant, and we had to leave early.”

“Oh no!” said Alexa. “I’m sorry! Were you and Peter bummed out?”

Rebecca laughed. “Not at all. I think you did us a favor. Barnum and Bailey it was not.”

“I’m so jealous of Morgan sometimes,” Alexa said. “Because she got him from the beginning of her life. She got a good one. And my father—well, he’s just gone.”

Rebecca hesitated. Now would be—could be—the time to tell Alexa that her father had initiated contact. But then she thought about all the times he’d promised to change and hadn’t been able to. She knew he had a disease from which a lot of people never recover. She knew he might not be better.