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it, the “it” that is always out there, ready to transform your life into something unrecognizable. Because this, too, is how life can change: you can ask for what happens to you, without realizing what you’re asking for. Perhaps this is supposed to be fate.
    But then again, fate could be something much more terrible: something that could have been avoided. Fate might be no more than a mischance—the look intercepted, the wrong thing said, the decision to take a shortcut on a hot July afternoon through the woods behind a shopping mall.
    After five days with us, Aunt Fran and Aunt Claire departed together, both with sore throats from so much talking and smoking and both anxious to see their own families, to relax back into caring for people with manageable problems. Both of them had tried to get Ada to come back with them for a visit, but Ada refused. “I’m happy where I am,” she was reported to have said. But before they left, they had each spent part of a day with Ada, “trying to get her story”; unfortunately, neither one seemed certain what to say about whatever story she gave them.
    It must have been shocking, to think that all these years they had imagined she felt herself a sister to them the way they felt a sister to her.
    â€œWell, it’s not that she’s any different from before,” Aunt Claire told my mother on their last afternoon. They were all three crowded into the pantry, putting away our blue-rimmed dishes. “It’s just that I feel I hardly knew who she was.”
    My mother caught sight of me sitting under the dining-room table a few feet away. “Marsha, go on out. Your aunts and I are talking.”
    I went into the living room and sat behind the sofa.
    â€œI don’t think Ada wanted this,” said Aunt Claire hesitantly in a lower voice. “At least, I don’t think she planned to want this.”
    â€œIn my opinion, it’s all about sex,” said Aunt Fran.
    â€œPlease, Fran,” said my mother irritably.
    â€œDo you think you’ll ever forgive her?” said Aunt Claire. “Really ever forgive her?” She handed my mother a wine glass to polish.
    They all three held glasses to the light, looking for water spots.
    â€œI think Ada’s jealous of you,” continued Aunt Claire, after a few moments when my mother didn’t say anything. “She’s always wanted what you have.”
    â€œWhich is what?” said my mother, knitting her eyebrows.
    â€œChildren. The whole ‘being settled’ thing, with Larry getting successful and all, or at least comfortable. This house. You’re always so busy—you know what I mean, in that way a woman with a big life is busy. School, errands, birthday parties.”
    â€œErrands,” said my mother. “Birthday parties.”
    â€œLook, I’m trying to tell you something. To her I bet your life has always looked … so
set.
”
    â€œIt’s certainly set now.”
    â€œYou’re not listening, Lo. You don’t have to let her take everything away. You still have a family. You still have your kids. I don’t think Larry wants to leave.”
    My mother picked up another wine glass and held it upside down by the stem, dangling it over the floor. “I’m no longer interested,” she said, “in what Larry wants.”
    â€œDon’t do it, Lois,” I heard Aunt Fran break in, and the rough pleading in her voice struck me, which is why I have always remembered this conversation. “Don’t do it,” she said.
    It would have blown past, my father’s infatuation with Ada. He was a mostly mild man with a weakness for passion, a suburban father burdened with the heart of a Russian hero without any sort of balancing grand intellect or ironic world view. The yearning itself, the recklessness, that’s what lured him. Ada had it, too, the desire to do something dramatic, large, doomed.