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My parents and the Hale’s had agreed after numerous back and forth phone calls, that the dinner should proceed for the sake of appearances if nothing else. I’d heard Lorrie had agreed to go, so I had as well.

“There are twenty-six people coming.”

“Twenty-six isn’t a large dinner.”

“It is if no one’s allowed to say why they’re there.”

She gave me the look she used when she suspected I was being deliberately literal, which I was, though not entirely.

“I’m going,” I said. “I’m telling Lorrie myself so she doesn’t spend the evening wondering whether I’m waiting for an opening.”

My father set his glass on the entry table beside the lilies.

“She knows the evening has changed.”

“She knows what I told her when everything was awful. Tonight will be different. The club, flowers, champagne, everyone watching her hand as if they expect a ring to appear by dessert. I’m not letting her walk into that room unsure of what I’m going to do or say.”

That came out more firmly than I expected.

My mother looked at me for a long moment, and something in her expression shifted. It wasn’t approval. Patricia did not change emotional lanes that quickly. But it was something.

My father saw it too and frowned.

“Be careful,” he said.

I picked up my keys from the little silver tray on the hall table and walked outside.

The Saab had been parked in the shade so it wasn’t horribly hot, though I opened both doors and waited for any hot air to dissipate.

The radio came on in the middle of “Dancing in the Dark.” Springsteen sounded restless, which felt appropriate, although I doubted he’d written the song for men driving to their girlfriend, or soon to be ex-girlfriend, with an engagement ring in their pocket, and no intention of becoming engaged.

Traffic was light. A boy on a ten-speed cut across the road without looking, a Walkman clamped over his ears, hair flying behind him. Two women stood outside a shop window pointing to a dress on a mannequin with shoulder pads that could have held up a roof.

The Hale house looked exactly as it always did, white and gracious, with hydrangeas crowding the walk and the lake shining beyond the lawn. Walter’s Volvo was in the drive. Bitsy’s Mercedes sat closer to the house, angled in a way that suggested she’d arrived home in a hurry.

Lorrie’s Rabbit was parked by the pool house with the top up and a towel draped over the steering wheel.

I parked behind the Mercedes and had barely closed my door when Walter opened the front door.

He wore a white dress shirt, a tie with sailboats on it, and the expression of a man who’d already heard enough today to make him wish for another scotch.

“Paul.”

“Mr. Hale.”

His eyes moved over me. “She’s in the pool house.”

“I’d like to speak with her.”

“That’s up to Lorrie.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded once as Bitsy appeared behind him in a black dress and pearls, her blond hair swept back, lipstick fresh, a diamond and gold earring in one hand.

“Paul,” she said. “Don’t make my daughter cry, her eyes will be puffy at dinner.”

“I’m hoping not to.”