"Baby, it's not real," Leanne said. "It's make-believe. That's Daddy's job — pretending."

Henry sobbed and wailed, his little body shaking.

Betty said, "Get a cookie. Get the child a cookie." It had never worked with the girls when they were little, but you never knew. Did they even have any cookies?

Leanne and Miranda took Henry into the kitchen and sat him on the counter.

"I'm really sorry, Leanne. My mother should not have been watching that while you were here."

Leanne was opening cabinets. "Where do you keep your cookies? Don't worry about it, Randa. Right, Henry? Mommy and Randa are right here. And Daddy is just fine. So try to shape up, sweetheart," she said to Henry, kissing his forehead.

"I don't have any shape ups left in me," he sobbed.

Miranda opened a cabinet and stared at the boxes of whole-wheat pasta, the saltines, the can of chickpeas, and the jar of almond butter. "How about sort-of peanut butter on a cracker?" Henry nodded solemn agreement. "Good," she said. "And don't cry about Daddy. He'll come back from the TV and see you really soon, right?" She looked at Leanne. "Right?"

Leanne shrugged.

"Right," Miranda said. "I know he will. Let's call him. You know, you can call him up on the telephone and you can see him at the same time talking to you on the computer."

Henry ate his cracker while he contemplated that.

"Okay," he said finally.

Leanne looked relieved. "Thanks," she said to Miranda. "It's so difficult sometimes with Kit in California."

"I understand. It's all been so painful and awkward."

Leanne nodded. "I guess." She stroked Henry's hair.

Miranda watched Leanne's hand. How easily it shaped itself to that beautiful head. She felt a confused stab of jealousy and looked away.

"Painful subject," Leanne said very softly.

Miranda took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly. It was going to rain. She gazed out the window at the putty-colored sky. Then she said what she had wanted to say for a long time, a simple sentiment, a statement of friendship and solidarity, but it had until now always seemed so presumptuous. "I'm so sorry he made you so unhappy."

There was an awkward pause, and then Leanne said, "Me?"

"Well, me too. And I know how weird it is coming from me, but when your husband leaves you... I mean, look at my poor mother... You feel so abandoned. So hurt..."

Leanne was staring at her. "Kit didn't leave me," she said.

"More?" Henry asked, pointing to the crackers.

Miranda spread more almond butter on another cracker, then absentmindedly ate it herself.

"More please?" said Henry.

"I kicked Kit out."

Miranda picked up Henry and set him on his feet on the floor. "Go ask Betty if she wants a cracker, okay?"

She licked almond butter off her fingers as he scuttled away.

Finally, she said, "Ah."

In an irrelevant echo, a crow outside gave a hoarse caw.

The faucet dripped hollow, portentous plunks.

"Also, about Maine?" Leanne said at last.

"Look, I'm really, really sorry I mentioned that. I know it was awkward. I mean, even if you left him," she added. She got up and tightened the taps, first the hot, then the cold. The dripping continued. "It's a tricky subject. Especially between you and me."

Leanne produced an uncomfortable laugh and turned away.

"Okay, I know it's unlikely, our friendship." Miranda felt almost elated, declaring friendship, just like that. "Bizarre that Kit brought us together..."

"Henry brought us together," she heard Leanne say.

Miranda had never really discussed Kit with anyone, but now she found herself compelled to talk about him to the last person in the world she should. "I guess I just needed you to understand about Kit. Because you're the only one who really can." She heard how ungainly she sounded, on and on in an inappropriate, breathless rush, yet she couldn't stop. "All those stories from Maine, they meant so much to me; I was just so happy to be around someone who had such an idyllic childhood, especially after all my Awful Authors and their gruesome stories of childhood, which all turned out to be fake anyway; it was just so comforting, and inspiring, actually, to meet someone normal, someone who didn't have anything to hide, whose childhood was so real, and so real to him..."

As she was speaking, Leanne leaned toward her across the table in an almost menacing posture. After every few words she would try to interrupt Miranda, but Miranda stumbled on. She felt like a broken-down racehorse who has to reach the finish or his heart will break. It was suddenly urgent that she explain herself. "My whole career was built on cheesy lurid tragedy. Cheesy lurid tragedy that turned out to be fake cheesy lurid tragedy. Think how that felt. It felt like shit, okay? So think how refreshing it was to talk to someone who grew up in a family full of love and fun and birds and wildflowers..."

"Jesus!" Leanne said. "Stop! I can't stand it anymore. Love and fun and birds and wildflowers? I'm going to puke. Christ almighty..."

Miranda did stop. She became very serious. In a firm voice she said, "Look, whatever Kit did to me, or to you, it's crazy the way we never mention him. I've been worse than you, I know. But I was wrong, okay? We should be able to speak honestly about Kit."

"Honestly? About Kit? Really? Okay. For starters, Kit did not grow up in Maine," Leanne said. "Okay? Got it? He's never even been to Maine. And he didn't have any brothers or sisters. Not a one. He was an only child, okay? And his father? Left when he was two, never showed his face again. The mother? The mother was a drunk who barely knew he existed..."

Miranda sat down heavily at the kitchen table. "Gosh. Really?"

"It's a performance, Miranda. Kit pretends," Leanne said. "That's what he does."

Leanne was on a tear now — how Kit had usurped her Waspy name "because he's a snob, do you get that? Because it made him sound East Coast Waspy"; his pretensions in dress and speech; his irresponsible spending on clothes and cars and boats they could not afford in order to impress his friends; the grandiosity; the selfishness, the lying — always, first, last, and in between, the lying. "You found him boyish. I get that. But there's another side to boyish when the boy lives off credit cards he can't pay, when the boy is thirty-five years old and has never had a job..."

"He's thirty-five? He said he was thirty."

"Too old for you?" Leanne gave Miranda a sharp look, then her face softened into affection. "Poor Miranda."

Maybe it was the gentleness of Leanne's voice, maybe it was simply the last straw, the final example of her own inability to see what was in front of her, but the tears, the bankruptcy tears, the Kit tears, the self-pity, stupidity, whirling queasy exhaustion tears were coming; she could feel them welling up, weeks', months', worth of tears. "Not very good at telling fact from fiction, am I? No wonder I went bankrupt. I'm such an ass. Such a fool... How pathetic..."

Oh, she was feeling sorry for herself now. The shrill insistence of her voice — that always came first. That was the warm-up. Soon the games would begin in earnest, she thought, the Olympic tantrums, the dramatic flinging of arms, the cries of despair. Leanne had never seen her in full sail.

Leanne stood up, moved toward Miranda. "You like a happy ending, Miranda. Nothing wrong with that."

"Except they're not real," Miranda said, her voice rising, tangled in the words. "There are no happy endings."

Leanne stood beside her now. From her chair, Miranda pressed her face against Leanne's waist and began to sob. Leanne held her close and stroked her head until the storm subsided.

Embarrassed at her outburst, Miranda tried to laugh. "Drama is draining," she said.

Leanne sat back down, tilted her head, like Henry.

Miranda reached out and poked her cheek. "You're real, right?"

With a little grimace, Leanne said, "I'm not very good at pretending, if that's what you mean."

There was a heavy, tense moment of silence between them.

Leanne reached across the table and took Miranda's hand. "Not for very long, anyway."

As Leanne's fingers closed over Miranda's, there came a jarring sound, a little shout from the doorway, a sudden shrill "No!"

Miranda jumped. Leanne pulled her hand back. They both turned to the door.

Henry stood there staring at them.

"We were just..." they both began, then stopped. They were just what?

"No!" Henry said again. "Betty says No, she does not want a cracker." He turned and ran back to the living room calling, "I told them! I told them!"

Miranda noticed the top of the almond butter jar on the table. She automatically began to screw it back on.

At Cousin Lou's, the dinners had become somewhat less elaborate. There was a downturn in the real estate market, which did not affect Lou too much. He had made his bundle, as he liked to say, thinking of a package shaped something like a baby, wrapped in cloth and cradled in his arms. He had made his bundle and taken it out of real estate some years ago. Unfortunately, he had put the helpless little bundle into the stock market, and though it lived, it suffered, and so did Lou's parties, causing some of the hangers-on to let go. Annie was glad to see that Roberts was not one of them. It did pain her, though, to imagine what he felt when he saw Miranda so often, for he saw her at the Maybanks' house on Beachside Avenue as well as at Lou's. He turned up frequently at the cottage, too. People should not retire, she thought. They should not even semiretire. Obviously Roberts had nothing better to do than follow Miranda around.