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same man for a year.…”
    Damn!
    He hoped no one had heard his sudden intake of breath. It wasn’t fair—the good ones were always taken; he’d been watching her for weeks.
    Oh, get a grip, Abe.
    He looked around to see if any of the other men looked similarly disappointed and saw that they didn’t. They looked as earnest as Missy, their sympathetic brows creased with concern.
    I should have known. She’s always with that guy
.
    Well, she wasn’t tonight. “I know that my boyfriend needs time to himself, and that it isn’t personal when he doesn’t want to be with me every day, all day. I mean, we both work, but when we’re not working, we don’t have to be together all the time. I know that, I really do.”
    She was too young anyway, and a shade too perfect—perfection was blandness. He’d be sick of her in five minutes.
    “I’m doing okay with that. It’s just that lately he’s seemed really distant sometimes. I keep wondering if something’s bothering him and telling myself that it’s not my problem. He and I are two different people. If he’s having a problem, it’s something he has to work out for himself, it’s nothing I can help him with.”
    Suddenly he saw through her as clearly as if she were made of Lucite:
She thinks she’s the problem. She’s afraid he’s going to dump her.
    Adrenaline suited through him. She’d be vulnerable now; it was a perfect time to move in.
    She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “I’m a social worker. I spend all day every day trying to solve people’s problems. I think I should be able to solve his and everybody else’s as well. Sick, isn’t it?”
    No one answered. It was forbidden.
    “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, not to meddle; not to try to help when I know I could. He has to go through this thing alone, whatever it is. I think it’s something like a mid-life crisis. Except he’s only twenty-six.”
    Before Abe could stop himself, he snickered. You weren’t supposed to do that, but it didn’t matter—a few others chuckled indulgently, laughing with, not at, because that was the way it was done here. She threw back her head, tossing the blond hair out of her face, and laughed with the others. She was flushed, maybe embarrassed.
    “My mother died when I was twelve; there were three kids in my family younger than me, and I was all the mom they had till my dad remarried a few years ago. I’ve been a mother all my life. How am I supposed to stop now?”
    The inevitable tear or two spilled.
    “But I know I have to, because it’s inappropriate to act as the parent to another adult. He doesn’t need that and he doesn’t want that. And neither do I.”
    She paused to blow her nose.
    “Except I do.” Laughter again. “Well, that’s what I’m fighting. I guess that’s all I have to say.”
    The leader said it was time to stop. This was the part Abe hated. The group stood and joined hands. Someone volunteered to lead the prayer. Then there was the ritual wagging of joined hands that accompanied the chant.
    At first he hadn’t said the chant, but it got easier every time; he said it now as heartily as anyone else, his gorge rising hardly at all.

FOUR
     
    SONNY WATCHED HER as she slept, pale hair falling away from her face. He was hectored by guilt over his adventure of the night before. He hadn’t intended to see her, in fact had told her he couldn’t, but his encounter with the gypsy-like Di had left him too restless to sleep alone. He’d phoned Missy and told her he was lonely.
    That she would see him hadn’t been in doubt. Missy was Missy—always ready to help no matter how shabbily she was treated. She was such a lovely person, a truly good person—a near-perfect person, to Sonny’s way of thinking, and he wanted to treat her like a princess. She was the perfect woman to marry, and when he’d asked her, she’d accepted as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune. But he knew he was getting the better part of the