“Jessica,” I said quickly, “I’m really sorry that happened to you.”

Jessie nodded and smiled in the same practised way that she had flirted with the waiter. She was putting me at ease.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” said Jessie. “I’m just so glad we had the opportunity to reconnect! Life is good now, and I’m very grateful for that. I’m grateful every day.”

The waiter brought us small bowls of some kind of puréed soup. Jessica had chosen the café, and it was the kind of place my mother would have loved, where you had no option but to eat daintily, in three smallish, tasteful courses. You couldn’t order french fries or club sandwiches. Instead, Jessica Hendy and I had our choice of airy salads, delicate soups, and fragrant entrees featuring line-caught rainbow trout and steamed something or other with just a hint of dill. It was the kind of restaurant that, if you were not a put-together woman like Jessica Hendy, made you feel ungainly, like your hands and feet had somehow grown two sizes.

“Are you living here now?” asked Jessica over the soup. “Have you moved back for good?”

I opened my mouth to reply and by the time I was finished the waiter had placed two modest scoops of berry-sprinkled lemon and raspberry sorbet in front of each of us. We were on dessert and I had told her everything. My mother’s death, and funeral, and expectations for what would happen after she had gone. Gorsebrook. Seaside. Kelli’s question mark of a future. I somehow even managed to shoehorn my divorce in there; even though it had happened five years before and I should’ve been well over it, it felt, for some reason, part and parcel of everything I was dealing with now. Finally, I told Jessica about Trevor and the long, strange day Kelli and I had spent feeling kidnapped, squashed together with Trevor in his truck. Not to mention the meal he invited himself to afterwards, his massive, cheesy baked potatoes and no-raw-food policy — I threw this in as a kind of comic coup de grâce to try and lighten things up. I had spoken as if possessed. The only thing I didn’t mention about Trevor was that I had left my sister with him, and he was the sole reason I was able to be there, partaking of this dainty ladies’ luncheon, with Jessica Hendy.

It was only once I took a breath that I registered Jessie had dabbed her eyes with her napkin a couple of times during my monologue.

“Oh no,” I said now. “Does it all sound that terrible? I made you cry.”

“I cry at everything,” Jessica assured me. “Learning to cry has been important. I’m grateful for it. I never try to fight it anymore — I just let ’er rip.”

“Oh.”

“I was mostly crying about your mother. I loved your mother!”

“Everybody loved my mother.”

“You can’t imagine what spending time at your house meant to me — it was so clean, so quiet. So normal.”