“Don't look at me like that. He just wants some free legal advice, and a shoulder to cry on.”

“Don't give me that.” India was uninvolved in the local scandals, but she was not without a degree of sophistication. And she knew Gail's fondness for flirting with other people's husbands. “Dan has always liked you.”

“I like him too. So what? I'm bored. He's lonely and pissed off and unhappy. That equals lunch, not a steamy love affair necessarily. Believe me, it's not sexy listening to a guy complain about how often Rosalie yelled at him about ignoring the kids and watching football on Sundays. He's not in any condition for anything more than that, and he's still hoping he can talk her into a reconciliation. That's a little complicated, even for me.” She looked restless as India watched her. According to Gail, or what she said anyway, Jeff hadn't excited her in years, and India knew it. It didn't really surprise her. Jeff was not an exciting person, but it made India think as she listened. She had never actually asked Gail what, in her opinion, was exciting.

“What do you want, Gail? Why bother with someone else, even for lunch? What does it give you?” They both had husbands, full lives, kids who needed them, and enough to do to keep them out of trouble and constantly distracted. But Gail always gave India the impression that she was looking for something intangible and elusive.

“Why not? It adds a little spice to my life, just having lunch with someone from time to time. And if it turns into something else, it's not the end of the world. It puts a spring in my step, I feel alive again. It makes me something more than just a chauffeur and a housewife. Don't you ever miss that?” She turned to India then, her eyes boring into hers, much as they must have done cross-examining a defendant in the courtroom.

“I don't know,” India said honestly. “I don't think about it.”

“Maybe you should. Maybe one day you'll ask yourself a lot of questions about what you didn't have and didn't do, and should have.” Maybe. But to India, at least, cheating on her husband, even over lunch, didn't seem like the perfect answer, far from it. “Be honest. Don't you ever miss the life you had before you were married?” Her eyes told India she wouldn't tolerate anything less than full disclosure.

“I think about the things I used to do, the life we had before. … I think about working …and Bolivia …and Peru …and Kenya. I think about the things I did there, and what it meant to me then. Sure I miss that sometimes. It was great, and I loved it. But I don't miss the men that went with it.” Particularly since she knew Doug appreciated all that she'd given up for him.

“Then maybe you're lucky. Why don't you go back to work one of these days? With your track record, you could pick it up again whenever you want. It's not like the law, I'm out of the loop now. I'm history. But as long as you have your camera, you could be right back in the fray tomorrow. You're crazy to waste that.”

But India knew better. She knew what her father's life had been like, and theirs, waiting for him. It was more complicated than Gail's perception of it. There was a price to pay for all that. A big one.

“It's not that simple. You know that. What am I supposed to do? Just call my agent tonight and say put me on a plane to Bosnia in the morning? Doug and the kids would really love that.” Even the thought of it was so impossible that all she could do was laugh at it. She knew, as Gail did, that those days were over for her. And unlike Gail, she had no need to prove her independence, or abandon her family to do it. She loved Doug, and her kids, and knew just as surely that he was still as much in love as she was.

“They might like it better in the end than you getting bored and crabby.” It surprised India to hear her say that, and she looked at her friend with a questioning expression.

“Am I? Crabby, I mean?” She felt a little lonely at times, and maybe even nostalgic about the old days now and then, though not often anymore, but she had never become seriously dissatisfied with what she was doing.

Unlike Gail, she accepted the point to which life had brought her. She even liked it. And she knew the children wouldn't be small forever. They were already growing up rapidly, and Jessica had started high school in September. She could always think about going back to work later. If Doug let her.

“I think you get bored, just like I do sometimes,” Gail said honestly, facing her, their children all but forgotten for the moment. “You're a good sport about it. But you gave up a hell of a lot more than I did. If you'd stayed with it, by now you'd have won a Pulitzer, and you know it.”

“I doubt that,” India said modestly. “I could have wound up like my father. He was forty-two when he died, shot by a sniper. I'm only a year older, and he was a lot smarter and more talented than I was. You can't stay out in that kind of life forever. The odds are against you, and you know it.”

“Some people manage it. And if we live to be ninety-five here, so what? Who will give a damn about it when we die, India, other than our husbands and our children?”

“Maybe that's enough,” India said quietly. Gail was asking her questions she almost never allowed herself to think of, although she had to admit that in the past year it had crossed her mind more than once that she hadn't done anything truly intelligent in years, not to mention the challenges she'd given up. She'd tried to talk to Doug about it once or twice, but he always said he still shuddered to think of the things they'd done in the Peace Corps and she'd done after. Doug was a lot happier now. “I'm not as sure as you are that what I would be doing would change the world. Does it really matter who takes the pictures you see of Ethiopia and Bosnia and on some hilltop, God knows where, ten minutes after a rebel gets shot? Does anyone really care? Maybe what I'm doing here is more important.” It was what she believed now, but Gail didn't.

“Maybe it isn't,” Gail said bluntly. “Maybe what matters is that you're not there taking those pictures, someone else is.”

“So let them.” India refused to be swayed by her.

“Why? Why should someone else have all the fun? Why are we stuck here in goddamn suburbia cleaning apple juice up off the floor every time one of the kids spills it? Let someone else do that for a change. What difference does that make?”

“I think it makes a difference to our families that we're here. What kind of life would they have if I were in some two-seater egg-crate somewhere crawling in over the trees in bad weather, or getting myself shot in some war no one has ever heard of, and doesn't give a damn about. That would make a difference to my children. A big one.”

“I don't know.” Gail looked unhappy as they started walking again. “Lately, I think about it all the time, about why I'm here and what I'm doing. Maybe it's change of life or something. Or maybe it's simply the fact that I'm afraid I'll never be in love again, or look across a room at a man who makes my heart leap right out of my chest looking at him. Maybe that's what's driving me crazy, knowing that for the rest of my life Jeff and I are going to look at each other, and think okay, he's not great, but this is what I got stuck with.” It was a depressing way to sum up twenty-two years of marriage, and India felt sorry for her.

“It's better than that, and you know it.” At least she hoped so, for Gail's sake. It would be terrible if it wasn't.

“Not much. It's okay. Most of all, it's boring. He's boring. I'm boring. Our life is boring. And ten years from now I'll be nearly sixty and it'll be even more boring. And then what?”

“You'll feel better when you go to Europe this summer,” India said kindly, as Gail shrugged a shoulder in answer.

“Maybe. I doubt it. We've been there before. Jeff will spend the entire time bitching about how badly they drive in Italy, hating whatever car we rent, and complaining about the smell of the canal in the summer in Venice. He's hardly a romantic figure, India, let's be honest.” India knew that Gail had married him twenty-two years before because she was pregnant, and then lost the baby after three months, and spent another seven years after that trying to get pregnant, while fighting her way to the top in her law firm. India's life had been a lot simpler than Gail's had been. And her decision to give up her career had been less agonizing for her. Gail was still asking herself if she'd done the right thing nine years after retiring when the twins were born. She had thought that she'd been ready to do it, and it was obvious now that she wasn't. “Maybe having lunch with other men, and having an ‘indiscretion’ with them now and then, is my way of compensating for what Jeff will never give me, for what he isn't, and probably never was.” India couldn't help wondering if her affairs only made her more dissatisfied with the life she was living. Maybe she was looking for something that didn't exist, or wasn't out there, not for them at least. Maybe Gail was simply unwilling to admit that, for them, that part of their lives was over. Doug didn't come home from the office with roses in his arms for her either. But India didn't expect that from him. She accepted, and liked, what they had grown into. As he did.

“Maybe none of us will ever be madly in love again, maybe that's just the bottom line here,” India said practically, but Gail looked outraged.

“Bullshit! If I thought that, I'd die. Why shouldn't we be?” Gail looked incensed. “We have a right to that at any age. Everyone does. That's why Rosalie left Dan Lewison. She's in love with Harold Lieberman, which is why Dan isn't going to get her back. Harold wants to marry Rosalie. He's crazy about her.”