There were four cars in the driveway, all Mercedes and BMWs. Inside, the house was sunny and bright. Piano music tinkled from the stereo. The French doors were open to the patio, and I could see people chatting, enjoying the new, weighty summer air. My mother was in the kitchen with a pink sweater tied around her shoulders.

“Baby doll!” she exclaimed when she saw me. She rushed around the counter to hug me. “I was cutting the cake. You’re just in time for dessert.”

“Who’s here?”

“Oh, just people from the club. They’re delightful. Come meet them.” She wiped her hands on a towel and led me by the hand to the patio.

“Everyone,” she said, putting her arm tight around my shoulders, “this is my daughter, Billy.” She introduced me to three couples and a woman named Blythe.

I shook hands, and my mother checked her guests’ drinks and announced that dessert would be served soon.

“Billy, honey,” my mom said, when the introductions were over, “you simply must hear about our golf game this morning. There was the most unbelievable wind.”

The whole crowd burst out laughing. “It was absurd!” my mother continued, everyone’s eyes on her. “Marg nearly killed one of the caddies when the wind took her ball.”

“Yes, right,” said Richard, who was Marg’s husband. “The wind was what happened to that drive.”

They all laughed again, and my mother continued with the story of their game. Her eyes shone bright, as she spoke, letting her gaze move from one of her friends to the next, then back to me. These people clearly adored her, and she them. It was the happiest I’d seen my mother since Jan died. And that alone made me happy.

Eventually, my mother brought dessert out to the porch and she and her guests told more stories about a dinner they’d all been to a few nights before. The conversation ran effortlessly, my mother at ease in her role as friend and hostess.

A half hour later, her friends were saying their goodbyes. I helped my mother bring the plates into the kitchen and load the dishwasher. Now was the time, it seemed.

But how to tell her about my father? Meanwhile, my thoughts kept straying to Chris, still in his deposition, and to Harper Frankwell. I had work to do at the office, and it didn’t involve a budget.

In the kitchen, my mother polished her tiny cordial glasses with a white cloth, all the while talking animatedly about the unbelievable putt Richard had made and the fabulous golf pants Blythe had purchased.

I tried once or twice to steer the topic toward my father, or toward her and me, but her chatter was too hard to derail. In some ways, I didn’t want to stop her. She seemed so happy chugging away in her kitchen, and I didn’t want to tear her from her new life. Yet I needed, at least, to find some part of the woman she used to be. I thought of the way my father had run from his problems, and how I’d vowed not to do the same thing any longer, not mentally or otherwise.

“Mom,” I said interrupting her. I took the glass from her hand. “I have to talk to you about something.”

“Of course, dear. As soon I get this done.” She picked up the glass again and held it to the light, peering at it with a jeweler’s cunning eye.

“I’d like to talk now, if that’s okay.”

“Flawless,” she declared the glass, ignoring the pleading tone in my voice. “Now, let’s cover up that cake.” She bustled over to the cake plate, whistling an aimless tune.

I hated to do it, but there was one dose of electric shock coming up. “I have to talk to you.” My voice was loud, something my mother disliked, and she pursed her lips, giving me a slightly stern stare.

“Mom,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “Please stop moving for a moment. Please. Mom, I need you.”

She blinked a few times.

Before I could tell her that there was no immediate crisis, and that I needed her in a general sense, she’d pushed the cake plate away and took me by the shoulders. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.” She gave me a quick, tight hug. “Are you all right? And how are things with Chris? I got so caught up in my little gathering that I didn’t think. Forgive me.”

I sensed her there-my mother of old.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I was glad to meet your friends, and I love to see you enjoying yourself.”

“Still, it’s not right.” She shook her head. “I really don’t know how I could have forgotten to ask you. Tell me what’s happening. How is Chris?” She led me to the breakfast table tucked into bay windows.

“I’m not sure,” I said, settling onto a padded bench next to her. “We haven’t talked much since the other night.”

“Oh, Billy, don’t let this go too long. You can lose each other when you do that.”

Now it was my turn to blink a few times. This was my mother of old, the one who told me honestly when she thought I was angry or in denial about something. I’d gotten tired of that, of her constant involvement, but now, seeing her thrive, I craved that part of her again.

“You’re right,” I said. “There’s been something wrong for a while, and we’ve been pushing it away.”

“It’s like your father and me.”

At the mention of my father, I flinched internally. I worked up my courage and began to think of how to tell her I’d met him, but then her statement sank in. “What do you mean it’s like you and dad?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I knew he was unhappy. It was hard to miss really, with his drinking and his moods, but I didn’t do anything about it.”

I turned toward her on the bench. “Mom, you did nothing wrong. He was the one who left out of the blue.”

She put her hand over mine. “Nothing really happens out of the blue, and rarely is someone completely blameless. I know I’m not.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I said.

“That’s the whole point, baby doll. I didn’t do anything. You know how my family was.”

I nodded. My mother had been raised on the North Shore. She’d been “trained,” as she put it, to be a perfect country club wife. She hated it, but she learned how to set the perfect table, how to iron her husband’s shirts with precisely the right amount of starch, how to make witty banter with the neighbors she disliked. She met my father at a jazz club, where she’d gone on a whim, and she realized immediately he wouldn’t be the husband her family wished for her. He was a playboy with a mysterious importing job that involved lots of overseas travel. But they fell in love, and she got pregnant. She said she felt alive for the first time. But that excitement didn’t last long. She was busy with the quick succession of three children, and before she knew it, her husband had left her.

“Your father was rarely happy in our marriage,” she said.

Like Chris, I thought.

“But I didn’t want to see it,” she continued. “Oh, it was obvious in many ways, as I said, but I tried to ignore it. I thought if I were the ideal wife, he would eventually settle into this new life and he’d love it.”

“It still wasn’t your fault, Mom. He was the one who ran away.”

She shrugged, rearranging her pink sweater around her shoulders. “I don’t think in terms of fault anymore, although as I said, I know I’m not blameless. I should have faced things head on, long before he thought to leave. That’s why my marriage with Jan was so much better. I didn’t look the other way anymore, not about his problems or mine.”

“That’s how I want it to be with Chris,” I said. “Starting today, in fact.” Chris had asked for time alone, but I’d decided that he’d had enough time. Not because I didn’t respect his need for privacy, but because I’d started to see how entirely too much time had passed without me addressing our distance. In some ways, I think I had expected it, some subliminal part of my psyche telling me that all men left-physically or emotionally-at some point. I was hoping Chris hadn’t entirely taken off yet.