“You should have called,” Annajane said. “Just to let me know.”

“I know I should have. Now,” he said. “I was a selfish, self-centered idiot. I was so furious with Dad, I couldn’t even speak. And he was half in the bag. He fell asleep as soon as he got in the passenger seat. I swear to God, more than once, as I was driving, I had the urge to reach over and throttle him. For what he’d put me through. And what he was doing to Mom. I didn’t give a thought to you.”

Annajane sighed. “Why didn’t you just tell me that night—as soon as you got home?”

“I don’t know,” Mason admitted. “I remember how tired I was, and then you were so pissed at me; I just wasn’t in the mood for a fight right then. I’d made up my mind, the next day, to have it out with Dad. I was seriously thinking, on that long drive home, maybe it was time to leave Quixie. Get out from under all the family drama, and see if I could make it on my own someplace else. I hated his guts that night.”

“I wish I’d known,” Annajane said.

“I shook him awake when we got to Cherry Hill that night,” Mason said. “I didn’t even cut the engine. I just said, ‘We’re home.’ He got out of the car. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. He could tell how angry I was. I think he said something like, ‘Talk to you tomorrow,’ and he staggered toward the front door. And I just drove off. Of course, the next time I saw him, he was barely alive. All I could think about was how I’d left it with him. ‘We’re home’—that’s the last thing I ever said to my father.”

“Oh, Mason,” Annajane began.

Just then, Mason’s cell phone began to ring. He looked annoyed but pulled it from his pocket and looked at the readout screen.

His expression softened as he saw who the caller was. “Hey, Soph,” he said. “Everything okay?”

Mason listened for a moment, then laughed. “No, afraid not, punkin. Letha is the boss, and if the boss says you have to go to bed, then you’d better skedaddle. Okay? Hmm? Yeah, actually she’s right here.”

He handed the phone to Annajane. “Sophie would like a word with you.”

“Hi, Sophie,” she said.

“Annajane, Aunt Pokey says you spent the night at her house last night.”

“That’s right,” she said cautiously.

“No fair!” the girl cried. “Petey and Denning and Clayton get all the fun. I want you to spend the night at my house.”

“Not tonight,” Annajane said. “Maybe the next time your daddy has to go out of town, I can come over and we’ll have a spend-the-night party. Girls only! How would that be?”

“Come tonight,” Sophie said.

“I can’t tonight, sweetie,” Annajane said. “It’s a school night for you, and a work night for me.”

“But Letha says I’m not going to school tomorrow, because I had an operation.”

Annajane rolled her eyes at Sophie’s logic. “I forgot about that. However, I still have to go to work. We’ll have our slumber party. Soon. Okay?”

“Oh-kay,” the child said reluctantly.

She handed the phone back to Mason, barely suppressing a yawn. “Speaking of skedaddling. Guess I better call it a night, too. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and tomorrow, I think, is gonna be another killer day.”

“We need to talk about something else,” Mason said, keeping his voice low. “It’s … about Celia.”

Annajane put her wineglass down carefully. “I’m listening.”

“First, we need to talk about us,” Mason said. “The other night, you told me—there was no us. There never could be. But then you broke your engagement to Shane. I’m kinda getting mixed signals here, Annajane.”

She gave a wry smile. “I could say the same thing about you.”

“Let me ask you something,” Mason said, leaning forward so that his knees were touching hers under the table. “In a perfect world—where we hadn’t split up, where there was no Shane and there was no Celia—do you think we’d still be together?”

“No,” Annajane said.

His face fell.

“Not the answer you wanted, I know. But I just think our lives were veering so off track, we probably wouldn’t have made it—even without the things that broke us up. Your family—mine—our jobs, our own selfishness, pride and insecurity, we had to work through all those things. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m only just now really starting to figure out how to be a grown-up. So maybe now I’m almost ready to have a mature, committed relationship.” She laughed. “Of course there’s just one thing standing in the way of that.”

“Celia.”

Annajane shrugged.

“I can’t,” he started to speak, and then reconsidered.

“No matter what else happens, I want you to know that I love you. I always have. That’s never changed. Do you believe me?”

“I guess.” Her pulse was racing. She glanced up at him, then looked away.

“No, that’s not good enough,” Mason said, taking her hand and looking directly into her eyes. “I need you to understand that there are things that are out of my control. Situations…”

She lifted her chin. “Why don’t you just come right out and tell me what’s going on?”

“She’s pregnant,” Mason said.

Annajane picked up her glass of wine and sipped slowly. She was aware of the hum of voices around them, the smell of a sizzling steak being carried to a table next to theirs, the easy jazz playing on the restaurant’s sound system, the breeze rifling the fronds of the potted fern next to their table. A tiny piece of her brain noted these things and filed them away. This is how it felt the night I learned I would never win the man I loved. I drank this wine and ate these foods, and I will never see or smell or taste these things again without thinking of that night.

“What will you do now?” she asked, putting the wineglass down because her hand was starting to shake. She rested her left hand on top of her right, to keep it from trembling.

“I don’t know yet,” Mason said. “She just told me a couple days ago.”

Annajane bit her lip and looked away. “And she’s sure?”

“So she claims,” Mason said bitterly. “At first I couldn’t believe it. I mean, we’ve been living apart for weeks now. She was obsessed with all this wedding stuff, and Sallie decided it didn’t look right to Sophie for us to be living together, so Celia has pretty much been staying at Cherry Hill. Plus, I guess maybe I subconsciously knew I didn’t want to go through with the wedding, because I just didn’t have the desire…” His face colored briefly and he looked genuinely ill. “I couldn’t even remember the last time…”

“I’ll bet Celia could,” Annajane said. She felt bile rising in her throat. Had Celia done this on purpose? Deliberately gotten pregnant just to make sure Mason would marry her?

“March,” he said glumly. “She was on birth control, the patch. She claims it sometimes happens. But…”

Annajane was having a hard time catching her breath. It felt as though she’d been punched in the chest. She held up her hand, struggling to regain her composure. “I don’t want to hear this, Mason. It’s too personal.”

“My God,” he said, his voice breaking. “I never saw this coming.”

Annajane sat back in her chair, easing her hand out from beneath his. She folded her hands in her lap, just for something to do.

“So now what?”

“Celia knows I’m in love with you. But she doesn’t seem to care. She says she can’t raise a child by herself. Not that I would let her. Celia’s not really … maternal.” He straightened his shoulders. “This is my responsibility. I’ll just … have to figure out how to make it work.”

Annajane could only nod. She felt her eyes filling with tears and was sure that everyone in the room was watching them. She fumbled with her napkin and tried to push her chair away from the table. But the chair caught on the edge of the tablecloth, and her glass of wine tipped over, sending a rivulet of sauvignon blanc flowing across the table and into his lap. “Damn. I’m sorry,” she said, desperate for a way out. But her chair was stuck on the edge of a flagstone. “I need to leave. Right now. Please, Mason.”