“Honest?” Noah asked his grandfather.

“Honest. But don’t mention it to the girls yet, will you? I should have told your mom and your aunts before anyone.”

“So then will you move out of here?” Noah asked.

“Afraid not, son.” Nat turned to Delia. “Noah liked my old place better,” he said.

“The old place had this real cool tree house out back,” Noah told her.

“However, it did not have an elevator. Or a handgrip above the bathtub. Or a physical-therapy room for ancient codgers.”

“You’re not an ancient codger!” Noah said.

“Plus there’s the little detail of my contract with Senior City,” Nat told Delia. “Bit of a problem with the board of directors, as you might imagine. All my life savings are sunk in this apartment, but the minimum age of entrance is sixty-five. Binky’s thirty-eight.”

“And how about her sons?” Delia asked.

“Yes, that would have been a poser! Rock music in the cafeteria, skateboards down the halls… However, her sons will stay on with her parents. One is already in college, and the other’s about to go. But even so, the board is having hissy fits, and then a few neighbors are mad at me too, because men are mighty scarce in these parts. Plan was, I would marry one of the residents, not some luscious babe in the gift shop.”

“Well, I think you’ve made the perfect choice,” Delia said.

She meant it, too. She had developed a liking for Binky, who edged all their conversations with a ruffle of admiring murmurs and encouraging remarks.

So when Delia stopped by the following week, she made a point of telling Binky that Nat was a lucky man.

“Well, thank you,” Binky said, bearning.

“Have you set a date yet?”

“We’ve talked about maybe June.”

“Or March,” Nat amended.

Binky rounded her eyes comically at Delia. March was right around the corner; they were halfway through February. “He has no idea what goes into these things,” she said.

“Oh, are you planning a big wedding?”

“Well, not that big, but… My first wedding, I eloped. I was a freshman at Washington College and wore what I’d worn to class that day. So this time I’d like all the trimmings.”

“I’m going to be best man,” Noah told Delia.

“You are!”

“I get to hold the ring.”

“You’ll come too, won’t you, Delia?” Nat asked.

“If I’m invited, of course I will.”

“Oh, you’ll be invited, all right,” Binky said, and she patted Delia’s hand and gave her a dimpled smile.

But later, riding home, Noah told Delia that Binky had been crying when he got there.

“Crying! What about?”

“I don’t know, but her eyes were all red. She pretended she was fine, but I could tell. And then when she was in the kitchen the phone rang and Grandpa shouted out, ‘Don’t answer that!’ and she didn’t. And he didn’t either, just let it ring and ring. So finally I said, ‘Want me to get it?’ but he said, ‘Nah, never mind.’ Said, ‘It’s probably just Dudi.’”

“Who’s Dudi?”

“One of my aunts.”

“Oh.” Delia thought that over. “But why wouldn’t he talk to her?”

He shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “You want to watch your speedometer, Delia.”

“Thanks,” Delia said.

She’d been issued two tickets in the last three weeks. It was something to do with this open country, she believed. The speed just seemed to inch up on her, and before she knew it she was flying.

Back in Bay Borough, Joel was already home and waiting to hear the latest. He took a rather gleeful interest in Nat’s wedding plans. “Noah’s going to be best man,” Delia told him as she hung up her coat.

“No kidding!” He turned to Noah. “Where are you throwing the stag party?”

“Stag party?”

“Have you thought out your toasts yet?”

“Toasts!”

“Don’t you pay any attention,” Delia told Noah. He was looking worried.

It occurred to her that she was bound to run into Ellie at the wedding. Scandalous that they hadn’t met before; Delia was in charge of Ellie’s son. What kind of mother entrusted her son to a stranger?

A couple of weeks before, passing through Nat’s bedroom to use his bathroom, Delia had noticed a color photo of his daughters on the highboy. At least she assumed they were all his daughters-Ellie and three other blondes, linking arms and laughing. Ellie was the most vivid, the one you looked at first. She wore a cream dress splashed with strawberries that matched her strawberry mouth. Her shoes, though, were not very flattering. They were ballerina flats, black ballerina flats, papery and klutzy. They showed the bulges of her toes. They made her ankles look thick.

Why did Delia find this so gratifying? She had nothing against Ellie; she didn’t even know her. But she bent closer to the photo and spent several moments hunting other flaws. Not that she found them. And not that she would have occasion, anyhow, to point them out to Joel.

14

On a Friday morning at the tail end of February-a day so mild and sunny that she would have supposed spring was here, if she hadn’t known the tricky ways of winter-Delia walked to the Young Mister Shop to exchange some pajamas for Noah. (She had bought him a pair like an Orioles uniform, not realizing that for some strange reason, Noah preferred the Phillies.) And then, because it felt so pleasant to be out in nothing heavier than a sweater, she decided to walk to the library and visit with Mrs. Lincoln awhile. So she cut across the square and started up West Street. At the florist’s window she slowed to admire a pot of paper-whites, and at Mr. Pomfret’s window she slid her eyes sideways to check out his new secretary. Rumor had it he was limping along with a niece of his wife’s who couldn’t even type, let alone run a computer. But the way the light hit the glass, Delia would have had to step closer to see inside. All she could make out was her own silhouette and another just behind, both ivy-patterned from the sprawling new plant the niece must have set on the sill. Delia increased her speed and crossed George Street.

The window display in the Pinchpenny was little girls’ dresses this week; so now the two silhouettes were made up of rosebud prints and plaids. She noticed that the second silhouette was storky and gangling, mostly joints, like an adolescent boy. Like Carroll.

She turned, and there he was. He looked even more startled than she felt, if that was possible. His expression froze and he drew back sharply, hands thrust into his windbreaker pockets, elbows jutting.

She said, “Carroll?”

“What.”

“Oh, Carroll!” she cried, and the feeling that swept through her was so wrenching, like the grip of some deep, internal fist, that she understood for the first time how terribly much she had missed him. His face might have been her own face, not because it resembled hers (although it did), but because she had absorbed its every detail over the past fifteen years-the sprinkle of starry freckles across his delicate nose, the way the shadows beneath his eyes would darken at fraught moments. (Right now they were almost purple.) He raised his chin defiantly, and so at the very last second she merely reached out to lay a hand on his arm instead of kissing him. She said, “I’m so happy to see you! How’d you get here?”

“I had a ride.”

She had forgotten that his voice had changed. She had to adjust all over again. “And what are you doing on West Street?” she asked.

“I tried your boardinghouse first, but no one answered, and then I happened to see you crossing the square.”

He must not have told the family he was coming, therefore. (She had sent Eliza her new address weeks ago.) She said, “Is something wrong at home? Are you all right? It’s a school day!”

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

He was trying, unobtrusively, to step out from under her hand. He was darting embarrassed glances at passersby. Much as she hated to, she let go of him. She said, “Well, let’s… would you like some lunch?”