Okay.

Her clock said 5:30. God love Nantucket, the Far East of the United States. Morning came early. Connie put a second pillow over her head, and closed her eyes.


When she reawoke at ten minutes to eight, she thought, My God, I’m in my bedroom! I’m in my bed!

She had done it. She had faced down some kind of demon and slept in her own bed. But this pride was quickly replaced by guilt. She had slept in her own bed when not sleeping in it had been a tribute, of sorts, to Wolf.

Connie pulled a feather pillow to her chest as memories of the previous night came back to her. She had held hands with Dan Flynn, and just that act-holding hands with a man-had felt sinfully good. All her life she had had boyfriends; in high school and college she left one for the next. She hadn’t been alone for five minutes, she realized, until Wolf died. That she had survived for so long without male attention seemed amazing, like going without hot food or good books. At the Club Car, Dan had put his mouth on her neck, and something inside of her stirred, as if returning from the dead. She had to shake off the chill, but she was doing it; she was warming up! How long since she had given her physicality any thought? With Dan, all she wanted to be was a body.

Once they were home and Meredith had stumbled up to bed, Dan and Connie had gone into the kitchen-ostensibly for a nightcap-though what Dan had asked for was water. Connie didn’t remember water, what she remembered was soft, deep kissing that sent her into the stratosphere.

And Dan, the gentleman, had kept it to just kissing. Connie had cried, she remembered that now, when she told Dan that she hadn’t kissed a man since Wolf died. She had believed that her days of being kissed were over. Dan didn’t offer a parallel sentiment. He didn’t say that Connie had been the first woman he’d kissed since Nicole died, which probably meant he’d stanched the bleeding of his heart with the kindnesses proffered by other women. He’d had sex with a woman from Nicole’s yoga class when she brought over a brown-rice casserole, or he’d allowed himself to be seduced by the children’s twenty-one-year-old nanny. Men were different creatures. If Connie had been the one who had died, Wolf would never have spent two and a half years sleeping on the sofa. He would already be remarried to some younger, prettier, less seasoned version of Connie. Of that she was sure.

Connie drank down the water and slipped out of bed. She would leave it unmade; she liked the way it looked rumpled. Finally, the bedroom looked inhabited.

She brushed her teeth, washed her face, inspected her skin in the mirror. She was still pretty. Big whoop. She had always been pretty, but this morning she was grateful for her looks. Dan Flynn had kissed her. He had left it at kissing-maybe because he wanted to take it slow, or maybe because today was Monday and he was scheduled to work at a house on Pocomo Point at 8 a.m.

Yes, that was it. That was what he’d told her.

It was Monday.

Connie gasped. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She… she couldn’t even say it. A realization came to her that was so slippery, it shot right out of her grip, ricocheted around, bounced, and oozed before landing with a big, ugly, stinky splat on the floor of her mind.

She hadn’t called Ashlyn yesterday. It had been Sunday, and she hadn’t called.

Connie looked at herself in the mirror with wide eyes. Her eyelashes stuck together with clumps of the previous night’s mascara. She had gone on a date with another man, she had kissed that man, she had slept in her own bed for the first time in two and a half years. This was all noteworthy. Indeed, startling.

But overshadowing these developments: she had forgotten to call her daughter.

After the initial panic passed, Connie thought, I wonder if Ashlyn noticed. And if she did notice, I wonder if she cared.


Connie hadn’t spoken to her daughter since ten days after Wolf’s funeral, on the day that they settled Wolf’s estate and took care of the accounting at their lawyer’s office in Georgetown. Ashlyn had received a trust fund filled with stocks and government bonds-it was a portfolio that Wolf had been building for her for years-that was now worth between $600,000 and $700,000. And she had inherited Wolf’s navy-blue Aston Martin convertible. Ashlyn had been able to contain her seething anger and bitterness until she had the money in hand and was seated behind the wheel of the car-and then she drove out of Connie’s life.

Part of it was the curse of having a daughter who was a doctor. When Wolf was diagnosed with prostate cancer, Ashlyn had just graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and she was doing her residency in pediatric oncology at the Washington Cancer Institute at WHC. Wolf had been suffering from symptoms and ignoring them; he was too busy with work, and although beaming with pride about the accomplishments of his daughter, he himself didn’t like to go to the doctor. He liked to allow his body to heal itself, no matter the suffering. This had been true through the decades that Connie had been married to him, with stomach bugs, ear infections, colds. The problem with Wolf’s prostate had presented itself a little differently, interfering as it did with their sex life. Connie had been relieved when Wolf made an appointment with a urologist, and then when he got the news of irregularities with his prostate, she was alarmed. But the first oncologist they saw was a placid man who assured them that radiation would take care of the problem. Wolf would be tired; for a while, he would be incontinent and their sex life would be put on hold.

Ashlyn had been privy to what the doctors had told Wolf, and she had agreed with their treatment plan. She and Wolf had private phone conversations about his illness, and that was fine. Ashlyn had a shiny new medical degree and she wanted to show it off. She knew far more about cancerous cells than Connie did, even though cancer of the prostate wasn’t something Ashlyn saw in ped onc. Connie and Ashlyn didn’t discuss Wolf’s illness except in the most general terms because it was prostate cancer, and despite the fact that Ashlyn was a doctor, Connie still believed Wolf’s privacy should be respected.

As predicted, the cancer went away following radiation treatment. Wolf wore adult diapers for twelve weeks or so; when they went to the theater, Connie would carry a spare diaper in her purse and slip it to Wolf like a contraband package before he went to the men’s room. It was a humbling time for Wolf, but a small price to pay for a clean bill of health.

And then life went back to normal. Wolf was given an Institute Honor Award from the AIA for a student union building he designed at Catholic University, and three enormous commissions followed, including a federal commission to design and build a new VA building in downtown D.C. Wolf had never been busier, but both he and Connie recognized the work and its compensation as a golden sunburst that would mark the pinnacle of his career. They had nearly $3 million in investments with Delinn Enterprises, and that money was growing exponentially-one month they had a return of 29 percent-and this, along with the award, the commissions, and Wolf’s restored health, secured their sense of good fortune and well-being.

Wolf started experiencing splotchy vision at the same time that Ashlyn brought a friend home for her parents to meet, a woman named Bridget.

Ashlyn and Bridget both lived in Adams Morgan, less than thirty minutes away from Wolf and Connie in Bethesda, but they decided to come and stay for the weekend. Connie, initially believing this to be a “country escape” for two overworked, stressed-out residents, took great pains to make the house welcoming. She made up the beds in both guest rooms and put dahlias in glass vases on the nightstands. She baked cranberry muffins and braised short ribs to serve with a mushroom stroganoff. She filled the Aston Martin with gas and mapped out the drive to the biggest pumpkin patch in the state of Maryland. She had bought two novels lauded in Washington Post Book World and had rented a handful of new releases from the video store.

What Connie hadn’t done was to think about what this visit from Ashlyn and her closest friend might mean-until she saw them walking hand in hand, with their duffel bags, from the Metro station. Until she saw them stop in the middle of the brick path that led to Connie and Wolf’s front door and face each other and share an intimate, whispered moment-Ashlyn was clearly reassuring Bridget that the weekend would be fine; her parents were open-minded, tolerant, liberal people, registered Democrats, pro-choice, anti-war-and then kiss.

Connie was watching them from the front window. She had been anticipating their arrival. And quite honestly, it was as if her heart were a teacup that fell to the floor and shattered.

Ashlyn and Bridget were lovers. The reason that Ashlyn had wanted to come spend the weekend wasn’t to tell her parents this but, rather, to show them.

Connie straightened her spine. She tried a couple of smiles before she opened the front door. She needed to talk to Wolf, but he was on-site. The commissions had kept Wolf at work for ridiculously long hours, and although Connie hadn’t complained, she now felt abandoned and resentful. She needed Wolf here. He should have been paying attention; he might have prepared Connie for this possibility. Was her daughter, her only child, a lesbian? Yes, it appeared so. Although girls, Connie thought, were more apt to experiment sexually, weren’t they? Time to ruminate was running out; Connie could hear the girls’ footsteps on the stairs leading to the front door. She could hear Ashlyn giggling. This didn’t mean there would never be a wedding at the house on Nantucket as Connie had always dreamed. This didn’t mean there would never be grandchildren. Connie was liberal; she was tolerant. She had taken women’s studies classes at Villanova; she had read Audre Lorde and Angela Carter and Simone de Beauvoir. But was it still okay for Connie to say that this wasn’t how she wanted things to turn out? This-Connie opened the door and saw Ashlyn and Bridget side by side, grinning nervously-wasn’t what she wanted at all.