“Four is pretty typical,” Suzanne said.

Was it? Jillian had learned to read at six. Had kids changed that much since Jillian was little, or was it the moms? It was stressful being a mother these days, increasingly so. Mothers who chose to stay at home were so well educated—and so ashamed about not earning a paycheck—that they put every ounce of their abundant energy into mothering, determined to get results.

She would take Suzanne under her wing, Allison decided. They already ran into each other all the time—at the post office, at the supermarket, on the green. She’d asked them to dinner one afternoon last week, when Adam was climbing on the town train and Suzanne was sitting on a bench looking despondent.

Allison would ask her if she wanted to go to yoga at the town hall next week. Maybe they would stop by Lucy’s afterward for coffee. And of course Suzanne and Grant would come to the Halloween festival at the end of the month.

There was something serendipitous about Suzanne’s arriving so soon after Valeria’s departure, as if she’d been selected especially for Allison, to fill the empty space in her friendships. Allison imagined a different kind of a relationship with Suzanne, one more mentor/mentee; Suzanne would see her as a role model. Allison imagined a phone call in the not-too-distant future. “Will you watch Adam for a while? I just need a little ‘me’ time,” to which she would answer, “Sure, hon. Let me just finish up some work on the book here, and I’ll be right over.” Suzanne would envy her her intellectual life, as well as the free time that came with having an older child. “Your time will come,” Allison would assure her.

“. . . near the river and all the restaurants—you can’t beat it,” Grant said, nodding at Ted until Ted nodded along with him, agreeing that Rosslyn sounded like the ideal place to work. She imagined Grant in court, nodding at a jury until its members nodded back, agreeing that his client could not have committed the murder.

Grant was grasping the back of his neck with interwoven fingers, making his elbows jut out in a diamond shape behind his head. It was impossible to avoid looking at the defined muscles in his arms. The shirt he was wearing—a snug polo style with short sleeves—only added to the effect. Was it some sort of alpha-male posturing? Ted was softer, his arms more like Allison’s, his face round, in contrast to Grant’s strong jaw. He and Suzanne were so tall and angular, she and Ted so much smaller and rounder; it was as if they were different species. She thought of the early species of humans, some tiny, some big. Or dogs. Dogs were like that too.

“We were very sorry to hear about your loss,” Suzanne said to Ted.

“My loss . . . ?” Ted said.