“Jack Stevens was Miles’s childhood friend,” she explained to Kristen. “They were inseparable all the way through college and even after.”
“I see,” Kristen said gravely. “Did something… happen to him?”
“You could say that,” Miles said with a mirthless laugh.
Their mother set her glass hard on the picnic table. “I’m sorry, that is a ridiculous thing to say.”
“Oh. You’re sorry?” Miles asked with mock surprise.
“You’d think we’d murdered someone, Jack and I!”
“I misunderstood. You’re not sorry.”
“Don’t talk to Mom that way,” Ames said very quietly. He was holding the newborn; cradled in his burly, veiny arms, it looked like a mouse engulfed by a python.
“Oh. Now I’m the bad guy,” Miles said.
Alfred felt a sudden absence of pain, like the cessation of a toothache. “Does he still live in Chicago? Jack?”
Miles looked at his watch. “How long have you been here? Forty minutes? Forty-five?”
“Thirty-seven,” Trudy said.
“You timed our arrival?” Alfred asked.
Miles and Trudy exchanged a glance. “We wondered how long it would be before you did something provocative,” Miles said.
“Thirty-seven minutes is an improvement,” Ames said, and everyone laughed except Miles.
“I don’t think he’s funny,” Miles said.
“I was funny,” Ames said.
“Portia is almost thirty years younger than your father,” their mother said, addressing Miles. “Your half sister, Beatrice, is the same age as your daughter. But none of that is a problem. Gee, I wonder what the difference could be?”
“We didn’t know Portia before Dad married her,” Miles said.
“You’re lucky I didn’t marry Jack.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t marry Jack. Or you wouldn’t know your grandchildren.”
Ames was on his feet with martial swiftness. “Don’t. Talk. To Mom. That way,” he said in a barely audible murmur. Trudy plucked the infant from his arms.
“Careful,” Miles checked Ames. “His next topic might be what you do for a living.”
“Now who’s being provocative?” their mother said.
“I’m retired,” Ames said with a smile. “More than happy to talk about it.”
Miles tossed his sandwich over the rail of the deck. “Thirty-seven minutes,” he said. He looked exhausted, dark swatches under his eyes, as if the idiocy of other people were sapping his life force.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Alfred said. “About Jack.”
“Yes. As far as I know, he still lives in Chicago,” Miles said acidly. “Why, are you planning to visit him?”
“I think I will,” Alfred said, and stood up. “I think I’ll visit him right now.”
There it was: frank surprise in the faces around him, unguarded and pure—like kicking open a door and finding golden light behind it.
Alfred retrieved his satchel and glanced at Kristen, half expecting her to stay behind. But she joined him at the door.
“Wow,” she said as they left the house. “Is it always like that?”
5
Back in the rental car, Alfred tried to avail himself of the vaunted intelligence of his new phone, but it seemed capable of telling him only that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jack Stevenses lived in the Chicago area. His momentum stubbed against this fact.