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“I believe you.”

He looked at me then, and there was enough hurt in his face that I wished, briefly, he would hide it better, like he did in the future. He’d been trained in the art of keeping unpleasant emotions behind a good shirt and acceptable posture. Seeing the hurt cross his face before he tucked it away made me feel mean.

“I’m trying, Lorrie,” he said.

The kitchen door opened, and my mother stepped out onto the back porch with the cordless phone pressed to her shoulder, though at the moment she wasn’t talking into it. She looked at Paul, at me, then at our bare feet in the pool, and at the cookie bag between us.

“Paul, dear,” she called. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Hale.”

“Bitsy,” she corrected automatically.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

My mother narrowed her eyes at me.

“We’re having chicken,” she said.

“I appreciate it, but I had a late lunch.”

“You’re too thin.”

Paul blinked. He was absolutely not too thin.

“Mom,” I said.

“What? Men forget to eat when they work too much.”

“I brought cookies,” Paul said, holding up his half.

My mother’s gaze moved to the bag. “From Maison?”

“Yes.”

“Good choice.” She paused. “Don’t swim for thirty minutes after eating.”

“I’m twenty-five, Mrs. Hale.”

“Bitsy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She disappeared back into the house.

I laughed so hard I nearly dropped my cookie in the pool.

Paul looked after her. “I’m going to be calling her Mrs. Hale when I’m fifty.”

Paul at fifty had sat beside me in restaurants and on airplanes, in hospital rooms and school auditoriums, at long tables where our children complained about being hungry five minutes after refusing to eat. He’d called my mother Bitsy eventually, though not until after Claire was born, when she’d appeared at our house in Cleveland with two casseroles, a bassinet, and the expression of a woman who’d waited all her life to organize my nursery.

The memory arrived so clearly I could see the yellow blanket over Claire’s tiny knees.

Then I reached for her face and got only the idea of softness, the crease between her eyebrows when she concentrated, Paul’s hand under her head as he lifted her from the bassinet afraid he’d drop her.

My breath caught.