He never would’ve hooked up with Gigi if his kids had been out front of the roller rink, SkateWorld, like they were supposed to be.

Inside, Otis and Suzi were whizzing around the rink under the disco lights, and although he was annoyed by the crowds and the blaring music and the flashing lights in the dimness and the smell of grease and sweat and by having to come inside to get his kids—again!—it also did his heart good, as they say, to see his children enjoying themselves, even though they did it in very different ways.

Suzi swung around the rink hand in hand with Davis, a dark-haired kid who was a couple of inches shorter than she was. Davis was something of an Eddie Haskell type, somebody who could charm any adult he saw fit to charm, but Vic liked him. He came to most of Suzi’s local soccer games. He left messages on their voice mail, pretending to be Bob, a Sears appliance guy, because he knew Vic thought it was funny.

Suzi skated carefully and had Davis to hold on to, and Vic was glad. He had to keep himself from forbidding her to do any activity that might cause an injury and ruin her chance to go to the Olympic Development soccer camp in July. She hadn’t made the cut last year, but it was just so cool that she’d have the chance to participate this year and hopefully get chosen to go on to regionals in New Orleans in January. And then … but, no, he wouldn’t let himself get his hopes up too high.

Free spirit Otis, on the other hand, swooped around the rink alone—around and around and around he went, skillfully avoiding other people, just as he did in real life. Otis never seemed to need, or want, any attention or affection, so most people eventually let him be, even, to a degree, his own parents; but it was either let Otis be or struggle with him constantly. Skating was the only physical activity Otis had ever enjoyed, and he was damn good at it. Even so, Vic had to force him to go skating on occasional Saturday afternoons, and he had to drive him there because Otis wouldn’t waste his own gas. The only place Otis ever really wanted to be was working on his science project in that hideous shed. This place, at least, was an improvement over the shed. Without noticing his father, Otis swung past again, wearing a glow-stick necklace, which meant he’d once again won the boys speed skate for his age group.

Vic was standing there, admiring his progeny, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Victor? Victor Mature?” Only one person ever called him after the B-movie actor from the forties and fifties—the chump who played opposite Rita Hayworth in the forgettable My Gal Sal. Vic smelled her perfume before he turned around. Prada—the same scent Caroline used to wear before she pitched her bottle along with all her fancy face lotions.

There stood Gigi Carter with the tousled blond hair, a smart Southern belle who was going to seed, in a sexy way. Gigi was a friend of Vic’s from graduate school at FSU. Gigi had finished her Ph.D. in English—focusing on Southern women’s literature—but she had a trust fund income and didn’t have to look for a full-time teaching job. He saw her occasionally in the halls of Florida Testing and Assessment, where she temped from time to time. She preferred temping, she’d said, because it gave her more time to ride horses and write.

Vic gave her an awkward hug.

Gigi was wearing a sundress, so obviously she wasn’t skating. She didn’t seem like the skating type. In fact, Gigi wasn’t athletic looking—she was pale and knobby—but in her case, appearances were misleading. She trained and boarded horses and taught riding lessons and was a skilled rider herself. She’d given riding lessons to Ava and they’d gotten along famously—until Ava had fallen off one of Gigi’s horses and hadn’t wanted to go back.

Gigi asked Vic where his family was, and he happily pointed Suzi and Otis out to Gigi, who hadn’t seen them in a while and made the appropriate fuss about how grown-up and good-looking they were.

“Is Travis here?” Vic asked her over the refrain of “YMCA” by the Village People. Travis, her son, was Ava’s age.

“Travis wouldn’t be caught dead in here,” Gigi said. “My niece’s birthday,” she said, indicating a picnic table in the snack bar crowded with small kids eating giant saggy slices of pizza. “Buff’s daughter. Angel. She’s four. Let’s sit.” She pulled Vic gently back onto a big carpeted block of wood that served as an observation bench beside the rink. Her brother, Buff, she reminded him, lived in Canterbury Hills. “They have two daughters, Angel and Rusty. You know them? The Coffeys?”

Caroline, Vic’s wife, knew Paula Coffey from school committees and disliked her because she was too peppy. Vic had never met Buff, but according to neighborhood gossip, Buff would preach the socks off anyone he could corner. He was a minister at some wacky fundamentalist church. “I know of them,” he told Gigi.

“Rusty’s headed for trouble,” Gigi said. “She used to be such a great kid. And she’s so smart.”

Vic said he was sorry to hear that, and decided not to mention all the neighborhood gossip he’d heard about Rusty. According to the stories, Rusty was more than headed for trouble. She’d already been suspended for having pot in her locker and had been caught shoplifting at Hot Topic. She skipped school and periodically ran away from home. Supposedly, she was one of the vandals who occasionally swept through Canterbury Hills at night. So far, they hadn’t done any major damage, and their pranks were kind of funny if it wasn’t your mailbox sprouting a spray-painted penis and, of course, if it wasn’t your teenager doing it. He didn’t think his teenagers were doing it, but he’d probably be the last to know.

“Hey,” Gigi said. “See that old lady sitting over there with them?” She pointed.

Vic barely looked. “Uh-huh.”

“Just moved in across the street from Buff and them. But it’s y’all she really wants to meet. Seems to know a lot about your father-in-law. Come on over and I’ll introduce you. Her name’s Nancy Archer.”

It was the old lady who was supposedly going to take Suzi to Italy. “Does Suzi know she’s here?”

“They were talking up a blue streak earlier. They’re real buds.”

“Don’t make me go over there,” Vic said. “I don’t want to meet any new people. I know too many people already.”

“Fine, Puddleglum.” Gigi was scanning the skaters. “They should serve martinis to the adults who’re brave enough to come in here, don’t you think?”

“I do think,” Vic said, but, actually, he found the skating rink, once he got acclimated, to be mesmerizing. He got a kick out of watching not only his kids but people of all ages and races and types, from the little dread-locked five-year-old boy to the older white woman in Ice Capades attire, forming the letters Y, M, C, A with their arms as they skated past.

Vic never was much of a roller skater, but back in Iowa, he and Caroline, before they had kids, used to go ice-skating on Lake Macbride. He could still picture that silly fur hat and old yellow ski coat Caroline used to wear. Those exhilarating Sunday afternoons, holding hands and moving together over the dazzling white lake, looking forward to a warm fire and split pea soup and an evening reading and talking, were some of the happiest days of his life.

“Hey, Mr. Mature,” Gigi said, squeezing Vic’s elbow. “Good news. I’ve been assigned to your portfolio project.”

The Great Portfolio Project! Vic and his team had spent months designing it, convincing the higher-ups that it would be a better way than the usual standardized tests and timed writing essays to assess high school students’ writing. Eleventh graders in participating high schools would assemble portfolios of the best writing they’d done that year in math, language arts, science, and social studies, and trained FTA scorers would evaluate them. Following the national trend in education, FTA would be encouraging writing not only in language arts, but—and here came the buzzwords—across the curriculum. The plan was that after they’d tested the project and gotten it up and running, they’d sell it to various school corporations across the state, who, hopefully, would be delighted to jump on board.

FTA had lined up ten high schools from around the state to participate on a trial basis at no cost to them, with the understanding that, depending on how happy they were with the results, they could later buy into the project at a discount. Vic was more excited about going to work than he had been in years, but he was more stressed-out as well. There were big bucks involved and a strict timetable, and his ass was on the line. Human Resources had hired Gigi and fifty other temps for the trial scoring.

“You’ll be my boss. Can you handle it?” She swung her crossed leg, silver high-heeled sandal dangling from her narrow foot.

It would make everything more fun to have someone he actually knew and liked working with him. “You can help me train the language arts scorers.” He made this statement without thinking about it first. As soon as he said it, he knew he shouldn’t have. But for the first time in forever, he felt a bit reckless. He was aware that he was willing to risk pissing off his boss because he wanted Gigi’s company, but what was wrong with that? Why was he arguing with himself?

Suzi and Davis, gliding past, waved at Vic. Then Suzi clapped her hand over her mouth, meaning, Uh-oh, I forgot what time it was!

Otis continued round and round with smooth scissor strokes, looking neither left nor right, his shaggy hair flying out behind him. A couple of tweenage girls struggled valiantly to keep up with him. He would never notice them.

“Don’t you have to be, like, a permanent employee to train scorers?” Gigi asked him. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to.…”

She was right. Temps weren’t supposed to train people. “I can assign you any job I want to,” Vic said. “That’s why I make the big bucks!” Gigi kept staring at him quizzically, so he kept on, digging himself deeper into the hole. “I know you’d be good at it. You won a teaching award, right? So, congratulations! You’re a trainer! If they sold booze in here, I’d buy you a martini to celebrate.”

“Rain check!” Gigi said, moving aside as Suzi came hurtling toward Vic, falling on top of him and nearly knocking him down.

“My friend’s here!” Suzi said to her father, clambering shakily to her feet. “My friend Mrs. Archer. The one who wants to take me to Italy. Come meet her.”

“Don’t have time right now, kiddo,” he said, waving and smiling at the old lady, who sat by herself at a small table on the edge of the party. She waved back, and for a moment he was afraid she’d get up and come to them, but, thank God, she didn’t.

Suzi went over to Mrs. Archer before they left, her Rollerblades slung over her shoulder, and gave her friend a hug good-bye. Now, as Vic often did, he felt proud to have a daughter like Suzi. She always put herself out for people. Everyone except her own sister.

* * *

Vic thought that the best way to handle the whole Italy thing was just to ignore it, but Caroline thought differently. She wanted to meet Mrs. Archer and size her up, and she wanted Vic to be there with her.

“You’re not thinking of actually letting her go off to Italy with a total stranger,” Vic said.

“What I think,” Caroline said, “is that Suzi probably read too much into a casual invitation. Let’s find out for sure instead of thinking.”

“Why do you hate me?” Vic asked her.

She sighed, looking even more exasperated. “What kind of nincompoop question is that?”

“We should rent a villa in Tuscany,” he suggested, “Just you and me.” Neither he nor Caroline had ever been to Italy.

“Like I have time,” she said. “Have you seen the pile of laundry in there?”

Nowadays everything Vic said got on Caroline’s nerves, so he tried to stay out of her way. In the evenings he’d been escaping to his little study (closet) in the basement to check out the National Hurricane Center Web site. After supper and before Nancy Archer was due to arrive, he snuck down and sat in his dark study bathed in the blue glow of his Mac laptop.

Praise be! A new hot spot! He clicked on the little orange circle on the map.

Oh, the possibilities! Thanks to the Internet, you could now watch a storm during its inception and incubation through all stages of development, which in turn allowed you more time to obsess, if you were so inclined. Conditions had to be just right for a hurricane to develop. First of all, he’d discovered, for a trouble spot to form, ocean waters had to be warm, warmer than usual, and along with that you needed a cool upper atmosphere. There also had to be a disturbance near the surface of the water, an inverted trough of low air pressure moving through, such as a West African Disturbance Line—a line of convection that formed over Africa and moved into the Atlantic Ocean. Many factors could dilute storm activity—the infamous El Niño causing vertical wind sheer, a dry dusty Saharan Air Layer cooking the upper atmosphere, an area of high pressure hulking like a big bully, deflecting all storms. The 2005 hurricane season notwithstanding, the more Vic knew about hurricanes, the more it seemed a sort of miracle that one ever formed at all.

Vic would never have admitted it to anyone, but part of him was hoping for a hurricane to hit Tallahassee. Growing up in the Midwest, he’d always run outside, instead of into the basement, when the tornado sirens started wailing, but he never actually got to see a funnel cloud. Now he wanted more than just to see a storm coming. He wanted to be in a storm. Period.

Almost every summer, tropical storms flooded Tallahassee, but a tropical storm, nasty as it might be, wouldn’t do. It had to be a big mother. Cat. 3 or better. Chances this year were good. According to the weather experts, the 2006 hurricane season was supposed to be as bad or worse than the previous season, which was the most active hurricane season in recorded history, the season of Dennis, Emily, Rita, Wilma, and Katrina. He’d watched news coverage of those hurricanes and found himself, in a sick sort of way, envious of the survivors he heard telling their stories. They’d lived through a natural disaster of legendary proportions, they told awe-inspiring stories, and their lives would never be the same. Of course there were tragic losses, and he felt bad about the losses, when he thought about them, which he didn’t spend much time doing. Instead, he kept imagining what it would be like to be right in the middle of all that fury, and hoped he’d get the chance.

Tallahassee was twenty-five miles inland, but that didn’t make it safe from hurricanes. People still talked about Hurricane Kate, which wreaked havoc in 1985—ten years before Vic and his family moved from Iowa to Tallahassee. People said there were trees down everywhere, especially the big pines, power and water out for six weeks. There hadn’t been any direct hurricane hits since then, but Vic was hoping for the worst, which, he supposed, made him a selfish and callous person, but as long as he never actually voiced this desire, who would know? It’s not like he could cause a hurricane to come there. Get bigger, he told the little orange circle that wasn’t quite a storm. It didn’t budge.

* * *

Mrs. Archer showed up right at seven thirty p.m., and Vic was annoyed to be summoned out of his hidey-hole, but he tried to cover up his annoyance by offering the old lady some chocolate cake, and of course Caroline and Suzi wanted some, too, so he divvied up the remains and gave himself the smallest piece. Carrying their slices of cake on Caroline’s precious Jadeite dessert plates, they paraded into the living room—Vic, Suzi, and Caroline and Nance, as she insisted on being called. The rest of the family was nowhere to be seen. Otis was out in his shed, Ava was in her bedroom, supposedly doing homework, and Wilson was downstairs “resting.” None of them wanted to be subjected to an awkward evening with Nance, the fool who was dangling a trip to Italy in front of Suzi.

Vic’s living room felt more cramped and shabby each time he entered it. One side had big windows looking out at the front yard, and the other walls were covered with bookcases and flea market oil paintings and old family photos—of Caroline’s family—in antique frames. Every flat surface was littered with fifties knickknacks—souvenir ashtrays, chalk bookends with animals heads on them.

Once upon a time Vic had welcomed all the stuff Caroline brought home from her excursions, but that was back when the kids were little and it felt like they had room to spare. Now they were living with three hulking teenagers and a dog and Caroline’s ever-present father—who’d always been kind to Vic, even though he’d been an English major, and had paid for private elementary school for all three of his grandkids, so how could Vic complain about his being there? It was just that this house was starting to feel just as chaotic and unwelcoming as the house he grew up in. If a hurricane did come through Tallahassee and their house was flooded, all Caroline’s crap would be ruined and they’d get to start over again.

As soon as Nance spotted the old photographs, grouped together on one wall and lined up on top of a short bookcase, she shuffled over to see them, oohing and aahing. Suzi told her who was who. Nance seemed most interested in photos of Wilson and his wives. Suzi pointed out Wilson’s later wives, Lila and then Verna Tommy, both of them plump and blond and sweet faced, unlike Caroline’s own mother, his first wife, Mary, who was dark and serious looking. Nance picked up and closely examined the oval sepia-toned portrait of Wilson and Mary on their wedding day, both of them gazing down at her bouquet of daylilies like it was the most compelling thing in the world. “What a lovely couple!” Nance said. “Oh, I just love old photographs.” She turned to Caroline, who was slouched at the other end of the couch from Vic, waiting to be able to politely eat her cake, as he was. “Your mother made a beautiful bride,” Nance said to Caroline.

“She left when I wasn’t even a year old,” Caroline answered. “Never heard from her again.”

“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.” Nance set the photograph back down in front of the others, positioning it carefully. “She must’ve been out of her mind. Simply out of her mind to do that.”

“Okay, time to eat.” Suzi knew when to head her mother off. She herded her new friend, both of them clutching their cake plates, forks, and napkins, over to the old red armchair in the corner, where Nance settled down.

Suzi, her wild curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, plopped down between Caroline and Vic, emitting waves of lemony smelling perfume.

Nance sat on the edge of her seat and began to eat daintily, careful not to drop a crumb. She was the kind of person who was easy to overlook. She had a short white cap of hair and pale skin. She had a dark place on one cheek, like an age spot, and legs speckled with bruises, which Vic assumed were from bumping into things. She wore a flowered skirt and tucked-in blouse, and the whole affair rode up too high on her waist. This was the only fashion faux pas Vic ever noticed in anybody, because he’d once been accused of high-waistedness himself.

In between bites of cake, Suzi reached over and adjusted the strap of Caroline’s tank top so that it was covering the tattoos on her left shoulder.

Caroline, his former sprite of a wife turned menopausal mess, yanked her strap back down.

“You’re just as cute as your daughter,” Nance said to Caroline.

Caroline shook her head, ungracious about the compliment.

She used to be cute, Vic thought, until she gave up on herself and everyone except Ava. When Vic met Caroline she’d been a fashion merchandizing major at the University of Iowa, working part-time at a clothing store, called Barbara’s, in downtown Iowa City. After she graduated and married Vic she was promoted to store manager. Women from all over Johnson County—and surrounding counties—flocked into Barbara’s to get Caroline’s sartorial advice. She used to wear slightly unusual but pleasing combinations of clothes, like plaid Bermuda shorts and a ruffly top, or a slinky dress and cowboy boots, and she’d always gotten stylish haircuts. Back then she’d had a calm sense of purpose about her, but these days she was either comatose or bristling with manic, angry energy.

Now she was wearing a pair of baggy, ripped-up shorts and a tank top with Gumby on it, her face puffy from an earlier crying jag. She’d scrunched her hair up in a bunch of tiny ponytails to keep it off her face and neck, which made her look like a crazy person. She’d tendered this invitation to Nance as a concerned parent, but she did not project either competence or hospitality. What Nance didn’t know was that she’d actually dressed up for her. She’d put on a bra!

Vic knew how he looked to Nance—a run-of-the-mill middle-aged white guy, curly hair in need of a trim, an eager-to-please smile meant to cover up his desire to get the hell out of there.

Nance was glancing around the room like she was looking for something or someone. She turned to Caroline. “Your yard is so beautiful. Who does it?”

“We do,” Vic said.

Caroline gave him a cold smile, because, it was true, she’d been doing the yard work of late, but it was because he was either at work or at soccer with Suzi.

Nance smiled eagerly. “I believe I’ve seen your father out there from time to time. I’d love to talk to him about Memphis. I lived there for years.”

“Oh,” Caroline said.

“Is he here?”

“He’s napping,” Caroline said.

“Maybe another time?”

“Sure.”

Vic sighed. Why were they talking about Wilson and Memphis instead of Italy and Suzi?

“This is just the best cake, Caroline!” Nance said, dabbing at her lips with a napkin.

Vic waited for Caroline to correct Nance and give Suzi credit, but she didn’t.

“I made it,” Suzi said. “For Mom’s birthday.”

“All by herself,” Vic added.

“Well, it is scrumptious!” Nance said, then went on nervously. “It’s so nice to meet more neighbors. I feel so blessed. I just happened to buy a house across from the youth minister at the Genesis Church. What church do ya’ll go to?”

“We don’t,” Caroline said.

“Not very often,” Vic added, trying to smooth over his wife’s bluntness.

“I go with my friend Mykaila,” Suzi said. “Mykaila’s African American, but they go to a white church.”

“I swan,” said Nance.

Everybody went back to eating.

A churchgoing Southern lady who used old-timey expressions like I swan and took vacations in Italy. She was too good to be true, like some innocuous creature in a mystery novel who actually turned out to be a ruthless criminal.

“That Reverend Coffey’s daughter’s kind of strange,” Nance continued. “I came home from Publix yesterday and found her in my carport, just sitting there!”

“Did you ask her what she was doing?” Suzi asked.

“She wanted to know could she wash my car for eight dollars. I found that peculiar. Why eight dollars?”

“I know her,” Suzi said. “Rusty. She must need the money for drugs.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Nance said, waving her hand dismissively. “I live next door to a dope fiend.”

“Let’s talk about Italy!” Suzi announced, setting down her cake plate on the coffee table.

“Yes, let’s do,” Vic said, setting his plate down, too.

“Italy?” Nance said.

“You know,” Suzi said, speaking to Nance like she was a child. “Our trip to Tuscany. How about early August? After soccer camp and before school starts.”

“Sounds good,” said Nance, nodding vigorously. If she was surprised by Suzi’s insistence, she didn’t show it. “That would be the perfect time.”

“You really want to take Suzi?” Caroline asked. “May I ask why?”

Did she have to be so openly suspicious of the woman? “We wanted to make sure,” Vic said, “you know, that Suzi didn’t misread your invitation.”

“No, she did not!” Nance smiled at Suzi, who glanced down at the carpet, pleased. “One of my childhood friends has a villa just outside Lucca,” Nance said. “Her better half recently died and she’s been after me to come visit and I’ve been itching to go, but I need this young thing to come along and help me.”

A villa outside Lucca. Sounded heavenly. He and Caroline were the ones who ought to be going there.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Italy,” Suzi said. “Ever since I saw Under the Tuscan Sun with Diane Lane. You didn’t tell me about your best friend’s villa, Nance.”

“We can’t afford that kind of trip right now,” Caroline put in.

“Maybe Suzi could earn the money,” Vic suggested, realizing that he was mostly championing the trip because Caroline was against it.

“I’d pay for everything,” Nance said. “Should’ve mentioned that right off. Money isn’t a problem for me, thank the Lord.”

“But why Suzi?” Caroline persisted. “You just met.”

Nance explained that she didn’t have any children and that she herself had been an only child and didn’t have any other living relatives. “I lost my daughter a long time ago,” she said. “Suzi reminds me of her. I’ve never stopped missing her.”

Vic said he was sorry, but Caroline said nothing.

Suzi said, “What about your son? The doctor?”

Nance looked briefly confused, then she smiled. “That’s my stepson,” she said.

Suddenly Caroline turned to Nance, and asked, in an accusatory voice, “How long did you live in Memphis?”

“Since the early fifties.”

“Have you lived anywhere else?”

“Little Rock, when I was a child. After the war I moved up to Memphis with my first husband.”

“So you’ve been married more than once,” Caroline said.

“Twice. Just had the one daughter. But I didn’t get to see her grow up.” Nance set her empty cake plate and fork down on the mosaicked end table and dabbed at her little bowlike mouth.

Caroline handed Vic her empty cake plate, like he was supposed to do something with it. He set it down, too hard, on top of his.

“That spot on your face,” Caroline said. “Has it been there a long time?”

What was with all these random personal questions?

Nance touched her cheek. “It’s a birthmark.”

Now Caroline seemed agitated. She shifted around on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her. Vic could tell that she wanted to get back to her bedroom and shut the door on all of them. Their bedroom had somehow become her bedroom. In the last few years of their marriage, Vic had been eased into the category of people who got in Caroline’s way.

Now it was Nance’s turn to ask Caroline a question. “When did your father live in Memphis?”

“He grew up there. Got his first job there, after medical school.”

“How interesting! And where did you say his job was?”

“I didn’t.”

Why was Caroline being so grudging toward Nance? She was the one who’d insisted on inviting Nance over. It was obvious Nance was lonely and Memphis was something they had in common. Would it hurt to just humor her a little?

“Wilson was a researcher at the medical school,” Vic said.

“I wonder if I ever ran into him,” Nance said. “I went to the free clinic at the medical school. Lived in Lauderdale Courts at the time. Didn’t have much money then.”

There was a loud startled cry and then, with a great flapping, Ava swooped down the hall into the living room. She perched on the ottoman, knee up like a large bird. She wore white cotton socks with her shorts because her feet were always cold. “Where did you say you lived in Memphis?” Ava asked Nance.

“This is my daughter Ava,” Vic said.

“Hello, Ava. Nice to meet you. We were living in Lauderdale Courts. Public housing.”

“Wow,” said Ava. “I can’t believe it.”

“Oh no,” Suzi groaned. “Here we go.”

“Did you ever meet Elvis?” Ava asked Nance. “He lived there in the early fifties.”

“I knew who he was. Didn’t really know him. He used to play his guitar in the courtyard.”

“Oh my God!” Ava jumped and began to pace back and forth, back and forth, the width of the living room, head tilted, twiddling the fingers of one hand, the way she did when she got excited. Vic watched Nance watch Ava curiously, wondering, no doubt, what was up, why a young woman would act this way. The pacing was an Asperger’s thing, and Vic found it charming, because she did it when she was excited and happy. Caroline, however, found it embarrassing.

Sure enough, Caroline told Ava to sit down.

Ava didn’t seem to hear her mother. “Did you talk to Elvis?” she asked Nance, pacing.

“Not really,” said Nance. “Just to say hello. To me he was just a white boy singing colored songs. How wrong I was!”

“Oh, I wish you’d talked to him when you had the chance!” Ava said. “You’re so lucky! Mom and I went to Memphis over Christmas break. We got to see Graceland and Lauderdale Courts and Sun Studio and Humes High School. All the old Elvis places.”

“Please stop talking about Elvis,” Suzi said. “We’re trying to plan our trip to Italy.”

“Please be nice to your sister,” Caroline told Suzi.

“Please sit down, Ava,” Suzi, the assistant parent, put in.

“Please shut up,” Ava told her.

“You shut up.”

“Stop it, you two,” Caroline said, in that same flat voice she’d been using too often lately.

“Nance’s going to think you fight all the time!” Vic said.

“We do fight all the time,” said Ava.

“It was a joke, Ava,” Vic said.

“A lame joke,” Caroline said, without looking at Vic. “Go finish your homework, Ava.”

“I can’t. I’m going to fail!”

“No, you’re not.”

It was obvious by then that Vic’s family couldn’t hold it together for five minutes, not even in front of a guest. It’s time to go home, lady, Vic silently told Nancy Archer. Just leave us to feast on one another’s carcasses. “Good-bye, Ava,” he said. “Do what your mother asked you to do.”

“I taught at Humes High School,” Nance put in, “for fifteen years.”

To his relief, Ava didn’t respond to this. She slunk back to her room.

“So that’s what you were doing,” Caroline said, half under her breath.

Nance turned to Vic and asked him about his work.

Vic picked up his favorite pillow, a suede pillow with a fuzzy dog embroidered into one side, clutched it to his chest, and told Nancy all about the portfolio project. As he talked, he thought of something he could do for Nancy, a way he could arrange for her to meet more people, nice people, unlike his wife. “We’ll start scoring about the middle of June,” he told Nance. “You probably don’t need the extra income, but if you want to get out of the house, it might be fun. We hire lots of retired people. All you need is a bachelor’s degree. The scoring will last about a month. You can set your own hours!” Vic was aware that he sounded like a game show host, but his enthusiasm wasn’t put on and he knew that some of it had to do with Gigi.

Nance clapped her hands together. “I swan. I just might. Thank you, Vic!”

“Will it be over by the time we go to Italy?” Suzi asked.

“It’ll be over in about six weeks,” Vic said, “God willing.”

“Dad went to graduate school in English,” Suzi told Nance.

“He had to drop out so he could support us,” Ava yelled from her bedroom.

Ava was right … well, half right … but Vic hated to hear such excuses. He’d applied to graduate school because he loved Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but not long after he’d enrolled he was informed that his literary heroes were beyond passé, a couple of sexist old drunks, and he felt trapped in classes where politically correct theory heads pontificated. But he’d dragged his family down to FSU from Iowa so he’d hung on for a while, too long maybe. Finally he grabbed his M.A. as a kind of consolation prize and got on with things, taking a full-time job at FTA. He was fine with his decision. He actually liked his job at FTA and was good at it.

“Is Dr. Spriggs going to score papers for you, too?” Nance asked him.

Caroline answered for him. “Dad’s memory’s not so good.”

“How bad is it?” Nance frowned intently.

“Bad,” said Caroline.

“It’s not that bad,” Vic said.

Caroline made a scoffing sound. “I’m the one who looks after him all day. I should know.”

Suzi clambered to her feet. “I’ve got some social studies to finish. The Incas and Mayans.” She smiled politely at Nance and thanked her for coming. Then she stopped, just before rounding the corner, and stood there dramatically. “So can I go to Italy with Nance? Can I?”

“No, you can’t,” Caroline said.

Suzi said, “What? Why not? She needs me.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Vic said, when Caroline didn’t reply.

Suzi waved at her friend and disappeared.

Nance scooted forward in her chair and gazed at Caroline. Vic expected her to make a case for Italy, but she surprised him. “My new house doesn’t have any yard to speak of. I miss it so much. Maybe I could come work in yours sometime.”

“There’s not much to do,” Caroline said.

Nance began blinking her eyes rapidly, obviously disappointed.

“Come by anytime,” Vic told Nance.

“Mary,” Caroline said, apropos of nothing.

Nance jerked her head quickly toward Caroline, frowned, then looked quickly away.

“What?” Vic said. “Why’d you say that?”

“Mary?” Caroline said again. “Isn’t that your name?”

“It’s Nance.” Nance giggled, even though she was having to apologize for not being Mary.

“Oh, right.”

Had Caroline really forgotten the poor woman’s name that quickly? Vic was living in a house full of lunatics. He wouldn’t blame Nance if she never darkened their door again.

Nance was the kind of woman he’d always wished his own mother could have been—helpful, interested in other people, someone who wasn’t afraid to be ordinary, domestic, happy. She had no idea about the nest of yellow jackets she’d just stumbled into.