“Sure.” I walked back to the kitchen, aware that the house Gabe and I had loved so much, the bungalow we believed looked funky and real, was basically shabby and plain. “Want some tea?”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Alex,” Tina said from the front door.

I turned to see the oversized limo driver, handsome in the way an oak armoire can be handsome, enter with Tina’s luggage, carrying one piece under each arm and another in each hand. “Is the guest room upstairs?” Tina asked.

“There’s a pullout couch in the room on your left, just off the landing,” I said. Tina was already climbing the stairs, swinging her ass at Alex, the limo driver, who was following her. From the expression on his face, Alex was enjoying the view. There is comfort in continuity, I suppose, and Tina, bless her cold Prada heart, was providing some for me.

I have never seen an airport limo driver carry luggage into a house and up the stairs. From the expression on his face, it was apparent that Alex had never seen a woman quite like Tina either.

When they came downstairs, Tina and Alex returned to the limo, where, I assumed, they discussed his fee and the price of tomatoes.

“HOW CAN YOU MAKE IT HERE from Vancouver so fast?” I said. We were seated in the kitchen, sipping tea from earthenware mugs dating back to my first marriage. I refused to apologize for the absence of Royal Doulton. “I talked to you barely eight hours ago. It takes me that long to pack. And how did you get to know your limo driver so quickly?”

I knew how. Tina is an outrageous flirt.

“I always talk to limo drivers.” Tina dampened her lips with the tea. She had changed from her black pencil skirt and pink blouse into rhinestone-encrusted jeans and a cotton sweater that ended precisely halfway between her hips and her knees. I had to admit she looked terrific in both outfits. “I refuse to sit silently in the back of a car, like cargo. I asked him about his life. Alex is a hard-working guy from Lebanon with two sons and a shrewish wife. Do you have cream for the tea?”

“No.” I rose and walked to the bar in the living room. “But I have some brandy for it.” I returned with the bottle and offered it to Tina, who shook her head.

“You really should cut your hair, you know,” Tina said after I had poured enough brandy in my cup to kill the taste of the tea. “You’re getting too old for long hair.”

My hair is toffee-coloured with a natural wave and a hint of red. It, plus the fact that I inherited our mother’s bosom, has always made Tina jealous. Tina inherited our father’s thin black hair, which she keeps short, and more of his chest than Mother’s. Maybe even the hair on it. I haven’t looked lately. Until a few years ago, Tina’s revenge had been to suggest I was adopted.

“Gabe likes it this way,” I said.

I waited for her to correct me, telling me I should be using the past tense now. Instead, my sarcastic older sister was replaced by a solicitous friend, who reached her hand across to enclose mine as her eyes flooded with tears. “Tell me what happened.”

I told her. I told her almost everything. When I had to pause and release my own tears, Tina placed her arm around my shoulder and dabbed my eyes with a tissue. When I gathered myself together again, she sat back and watched me.

“You guys did it on a blanket?” she said when I finished. “The two of you out there on the sand? Were you drunk?”

“A little.”

“I mean, teenagers do that stuff, but at your age …”

“My age? Thanks, Tina.”

“Actually, it sounds kinky and romantic.”

“The truth is, I got bitten by mosquitoes and washed sand out of my hair for a week.”

Tina looked out the window toward the lake. “Gabe was nice. I didn’t know him as well as what’s-his-name.” Meaning my first husband, the one married to Miss Lemon Hair, the aerobics instructor.

“His name was Danny. My first husband’s name was Danny.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Probably saving his money to buy his wife new tits when the old ones wear out.”

“Why do you do that?” She fixed me with a look on her face that I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen and dating Dale somebody, a boy on the next block with perfect teeth, curly hair, and the personality of a tree stump. Tina lusted after him, tried to hide her jealousy when he ignored her, and covered it with the look of distaste she wore now.

“Why do I do what?”

“Make wisecracks all the time. Your heart is breaking, I know it is, and you act like you’re …” She pursed her lips and shook her head, looking for the analogy. She found it. “Like you’re a stand-up comedienne in Las Vegas.”

“I cry in private, Tina. I laugh, or try to, in public because it protects me.”

“From what?”

“Whatever you’ve got. Look, Tina, I love you for coming here, I really do. Gabe and I …” The lump was rising from my heart into my throat, squeezing tears from my eyes on the way, making a liar of me about not crying in public. “Gabe and I kept to ourselves down here. So I don’t have many people I can call on, and I’m just glad you came. Really.”

Tina rose from the chair and held me in her arms. I cried this time not for the absence of Gabe but for the presence of Tina and the touch of her arms on my back, pulling me to her. Sometimes the worse-tasting the medicine, the more you need to take it.

“WE’LL GO SEE MOTHER and then eat at one of those cute little restaurants down by the lake.” Tina had planned our evening for us. A week ago I would have resented it. Now I welcomed it.

I had had a bath, put on a blouse and skirt, tied my hair back, slipped on a ring Gabe had given me, and returned downstairs. Tina had unpacked her clothes and moved a chair from the dining room into the downstairs bathroom to hold her perfumes, shampoo, nail polish, blush, skin cream, anti-fungal spray for her feet, and cosmetics.

“Your hair looks nice,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t cut it after all.” Then, looking down at my hands, “Where did you get that ring?”

“Gabe bought it for me,” I said. “A long time ago.” Which was a lie, unless two weeks is a long time on your calendar. It was on mine.

She lifted my hand and looked at the ring, then at me and back to the ring again. “It’s a black opal,” she said. “They’re expensive.” She twisted my hand to catch the light from the lamp. “Looks like diamonds around it.”

That’s what they were. Twelve perfect diamonds positioned around the opal in a yellow-gold setting, the stones elevated on a series of round concentric steps. I knew every facet of every stone and the swirl of every mark on the opal.

Tina brought her eyes back to mine. “This ring cost a fortune.”

“Maybe new.”

“He didn’t buy it new?”

“I don’t know.” I withdrew my hand and began twisting the ring to take it off. This had not been a good idea. I had been childish, the kid wanting to show her older sister something more spectacular than anything Tina’s wealthy husband had given her.

“Was it a special occasion?” she asked. “Your birthday?”

“No.” I removed the ring and walked to the stairs. “I don’t think I’ll wear it.”

“He just shows up one day with a ring like that and says, ‘Here’s something for nothing’?” She was speaking to my back.

“Yes.” I began to climb the stairs.

“How much do they pay cops in this town anyway?” she shouted, but I had turned the corner on the landing, heading for my lingerie drawer, where I had hidden the ring after Walter Freeman asked if Gabe had purchased anything expensive for me lately.

“SHOULD’VE PUT IT IN A POPCORN BOX.” That’s what Gabe said the night he gave me the ring, sitting on a bench on the beach, facing the lake. He pulled a tiny brown felt bag from the pocket of his windbreaker, the blue one with the police department crest, withdrew the ring, and handed it to me. “Let’s see if it fits.”