“Almost ten. Do you have your things packed?”

“No,” she said. “Hello-o, did anyone warn me? All at once I’m yanked out of bed and told I’m being evicted.”

“I guess it’s the only time your mother can come,” Liam said. He helped himself to an English muffin. “She said she had a busy day today.”

“So she couldn’t inform me ahead? Maybe ask me if it was convenient?”

Kitty popped the tab on her Diet Coke and took a swig. Then she stared moodily down at the can. “I don’t know why she wants me back anyway,” she said. “We’re not getting along at all.”

“Well, everybody has their ups and downs.”

“She’s this, like, rule-monger. Nitpicker. If I’m half a minute late it’s, whoa, grounded forever.”

“I would have supposed,” Liam said, picking his way delicately between words, “that she would be less concerned with all that now that she has a… boyfriend, did you say?”

“Howie,” Kitty said. “Howie the Hound Dog.”

“Hound dog!”

“He has these droopy eyes, like this,” Kitty said, and she pulled down her lower lids with her index fingers till the pink interiors showed.

Liam said, “Heh, heh,” and waited to hear more, but Kitty just reached for the butter.

“So, are they… serious, do you suppose?” Liam asked finally.

“How would I know?”

“Ah.”

“They go to these movies at the Charles that all the artsy people go to.”

“I see.”

“He has permanent indigestion and can’t eat the least little thing.”

Liam said, “Tsk.” And then, after a pause, “That must be hard for your mother. She’s such an enthusiastic cook.”

Kitty shrugged.

This was the first boyfriend Liam had heard about since Madigan died-Barbara’s second husband. He had died of a stroke several years ago. Liam had always viewed Madigan as temporary, ersatz, a mere substitute husband; but in fact Madigan had been married to Barbara longer than Liam himself had, and it was Madigan who had occupied the Father of the Bride role at Louise’s wedding. (Everything but the actual walking her down the aisle; that much they had oh-so-graciously allowed Liam.) At Madigan’s funeral the girls had shed more tears than they ever would for Liam, he would bet.

“I’m just thankful your Grandma Pennywell didn’t live to see your mother marry Madigan,” he told Kitty. “It would have broken her heart.”

“Huh?”

“She was very fond of your mother. She always hoped we’d reconcile.”

Kitty sent him a look of such blank astonishment that he said, hastily, “But anyhow! Shouldn’t you be packing?”

“I’ve got time,” Kitty said. And even though the doorbell rang at the very next instant, she continued licking butter off each finger in a catlike, unhurried way.

Before he could get all the way to the door, Barbara walked on in. She wore a Saturday kind of outfit-frumpy, wide slacks and a T-shirt. (No doubt she would have dressed differently for what’s-his-name. For Howie.) She was carrying a lidded plastic container and a cellophane bag of rolls. “How’s the head?” she asked, striding right past him.

“Nobody seems to inquire about it anymore,” he said sadly.

“I just did, Liam.”

“Well, it’s better. It doesn’t ache, at least. But I still can’t remember what happened.”

“When do you get the stitches out?”

“Monday,” he said. He was disappointed that she had ignored the reference to his failed memory. “I’m hoping maybe when I’m sleeping in my own bed again, it will all come back to me. Do you think?”

“Maybe,” Barbara said absently. She was putting the container in his refrigerator. “This is homemade vegetable soup for your lunch. Where’s Kitty?”

“She must be packing. Thanks for the soup.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Guess what Julia brought: beef stew.”

“Ha!” Barbara said. But he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. She said, “How late did Kitty stay out nights?”

Liam didn’t have time to answer (not that he’d have been able to, since he was generally sound asleep when Kitty got home) before Kitty called from the bedroom, “I heard that!”

“I was only wondering,” Barbara said.

“Then why don’t you ask me?” Kitty said. She appeared in the hallway, struggling under the weight of her duffel bag, which was bulging open, too full to zip. “Typical,” she told Liam. “She’s always going behind my back. She doesn’t trust me.”

Liam said, “Oh, now, I’m sure that’s not-”

“Darn right I don’t trust you,” Barbara said. “Who was it who changed my bedroom clock that time?”

“That was months ago!”

“She snuck into my room before she went out and set my clock an hour behind,” Barbara told Liam. “I guess she thought I wouldn’t notice when I went to bed. I’d wake in the night and look at the clock and think she wasn’t due back yet.”

Liam said, “Surely, though-”

“Oh, why do you always, always take her side against me?” Barbara demanded.

“When have I taken her side against you?”

“You don’t even know what happened! You just jump on in with both feet!”

“All I said was-”

“Do you have a grocery bag?” Kitty asked him. “I’ve got way too much stuff.”

She made it sound as if he were somehow to blame for that. In fact he felt blamed by both of them. He went over to a kitchen cupboard and pulled out a flattened paper bag and handed it to her in silence.

As soon as Kitty left the room, he turned to Barbara and said, “Shall we sit down?”

“I’m really pressed for time,” Barbara said. But she followed him into the living room and settled in the rocker. He sat across from her. He laced his fingers together and smiled at her.

“So!” he said. Then, after a pause, “You’re looking well.”

She was, Saturday clothes or no. She had that fair, clean skin that showed to best advantage without makeup, and her serenely folded hands-the nails cut sensibly short and lacking any sort of polish-struck him as restful. Reassuring. He went on smiling at her, but she had her mind elsewhere. She said, “I’m getting too old for this.”

“Pardon?”

“For dealing with teenage girls.”

“Well, yes, you are a little old,” Liam said.

This caused Barbara to give a short laugh, but he was only speaking the truth. (She’d had Kitty at age forty-five.)

“It wasn’t so bad with Louise,” she said. “Say what you will about the born-again thing; at least it made her an easy adolescent. And Xanthe I don’t even count. Xanthe was such a good girl.”

Thank heaven for that much, Liam thought, since Xanthe wasn’t her own. Wouldn’t he have felt guilty if Xanthe had given Barbara any trouble! But she had been so docile-a quiet, obedient three-year-old when Barbara first met her. He’d brought her along to work one morning when his child-care fell through, and the two of them had hit it off at once. Barbara hadn’t fussed over her or used that fake, high, cooing voice that other women used or expected Xanthe to rise to any particular level of enthusiasm. She seemed to understand that this child had a low-key nature. And she’d already known that about Liam. She certainly knew he was low-key.

So why did she want more than that after they were married? Why did she prod him, and drag him to counseling, and at last, in the end, give up on him?

Women had this element of treachery, Liam had discovered. They entered your life under false pretenses and then they changed the rules. Underneath, Barbara had turned out to be just like all the others.

Take today, for instance. Look at her sitting in his rocking chair. Although she had started out so calm-hands folded in her lap-she grew more restless by the minute. First she picked up an issue of Philosophy Now from the floor beside her and examined the cover. Then she set it down and looked around the room, knitting her eyebrows in such a way that Liam felt himself becoming defensive. He sat up straighter. She turned her gaze on him and said, “Liam, I wonder if you might perhaps be a little bit depressed.”