She walked out into the October sun, taking in the smell of her coffee. She waited for the ahhhh, the sensual, lift-me-off-my-feet feeling the smell always gave her, but her stomach tightened. She breathed out through her nose, emptying it of previous notions, and sniffed again. Again, it smelled off. Damn it. She didn’t need the stupid pregnancy test. She offered her latte to Allison, sitting on the café steps, reviewing her pictures on her camera.

Allison smiled. “How did you know?”

7

OCTOBER 28—NIGHT

Ted and Allison sat on beach chairs on the grass in front of Lucy’s listening to old Mr. Fitzwilliams play the fiddle while Mrs. Fitzwilliams sang “If I Had a Hammer.” The moon was bright enough to light the green, casting flickering moon shadows of the older residents and children dancing on the grass. The Halloween festival was drawing to a close, the bowls and platters from the potluck down to their last bites; the fire truck, upon which the children had climbed, back at the firehouse.

When Ted was a child, there had been a parade starting at the elementary school for the mothers on Halloween, during which the children showed off their costumes, most of them homemade. In those days kids dressed as gypsies and ghosts, hobos, witches, and ballerinas with cardigans over their sparkling tutus. At twilight they knocked on doors holding a bag for candy in one hand and a small orange cardboard box in the other: “Trick or treat for UNICEF,” they would cry, and receive candy along with coins they gave to their classroom teachers the next day. What ever happened to those little boxes? They were such a simple way to remind children to think of others.

These days Halloween went on all day and into the night, dinner on the green followed by music and two cauldrons of cider, one spiked, provided by Lucy. This was a change, but not a bad one; even Ted could see that.

The Fitzwilliams started playing “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night” and Allison clapped along. Ted was not a clapper. He didn’t have a good sense of rhythm, and the idea of being off beat embarrassed him. It was the same reason he wouldn’t dance. Allison couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t dance with her. She didn’t understand the deep feeling of humiliation he felt that he moved so gracelessly, so out of time. She was disappointed in him these days. She’d wanted to have sex the other night, so he pretended to be interested—but it was clear pretty quickly that he wasn’t all that interested after all. She’d asked him if he’d be open to trying something new. “Sure . . . ,” he said, not at all sure.

“How about porn?” she’d said, as casually as if she were suggesting they order a pizza.

“Porn?”

“Can’t hurt,” she said with a laugh.