“Oh, that’s your son?” said Jessica, and Trevor rolled out his patented “fruit of my loins” line.

“That’s Jessica’s son,” I told him, pointing out Martin’s blond head. “Working at the table.”

“Well, now, that’s something we have in common,” said Trevor, winking at her. “We should set up a double date.”

Jessica’s mouth fell open at this abrupt flirtation, and her neat eyebrows flexed upwards but she didn’t say anything.

“Trevor!” I said, laughing.

“I mean for the boys,” said Trevor. He grinned and swigged his beer. “Mike doesn’t have too many buds. Your boy play soccer, Miss Jessie?”

“He’s crazy about it,” said Jessica, turning her gaze back to Martin and keeping it there. By now I had a sense of the persona Jessica typically put forward to strangers — and this was not it. I remembered her competent, inconsequential way of flirting with the waiter, when she and I first reconnected — her dutiful charisma, like Marilyn Monroe stopping to sign an autograph for a fan. And since then I kept noticing this effortless, almost reflexive way she had of charming the pants off whoever crossed her transom.

But this was the first time I had ever seen Jessica’s vivacity switch in the off position. It wasn’t Trevor’s flirting that had done it. It was the other thing — Miss Jessie. The same thing he’d done to my mother, and to me, that I’d never really given a second thought to. That is, changed our names, from the moment we first met.

Or, more accurately, he simply took our secret names — the name Kelli called me, the name my mother’s nursing friends called her — and made them his own. Jessica’s secret name was from her childhood, which made it taboo.

For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder if Trevor had also called my mother “Miss,” the way he did me, and Jessica just now. Miss Karie. Miss Jessie. If he’d also tacked that prissy title onto “Rini,” like a fussy little bow.

“Yeah, they’re all crazy about the soccer,” Trevor was saying. “Running and kicking, and that’s about all there is to it. I tell Mike, you want a summertime sport, you play baseball. That’s what we do in this country, at least. But no, he wants to do what his friends are doing.” Trevor raised a hand to his face and scratched his stubble philosophically. “No helping that, I s’pose.”

Jessica glanced at me as if to say, What am I supposed to do here?

“Trevor,” I said. “You sure you don’t want to sit down? Have another beer?”

From her look, I could tell that this was not how Jessica had hoped I’d intervene. But Trevor shook his head and drained his beer.

“Nope, me and Mike gotta be getting along. Weekends are all I get with him. Single father, don’t know if I mentioned that.”

He winked elaborately at Jessica again, mugging like an actor in a silent movie.