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dusty rays of sunshine will be slanting through the skylight in Penn Station. You’ll walk on through and out to the street, where nobody is waiting for you, but that’s okay; they didn’t know you were coming. Still, it feels kind of odd standing there all alone, with the other passengers hugging people and climbing into cars and driving away. You go to the taxi lane and you give the address to a cabbie. You ride through the city looking at all the familiar sights—the row houses, the Bradford pear trees, the women sitting out on their stoops watching their children play. Then the taxi turns onto Bouton Road and right away you get a strange feeling. There are little signs of neglect at our house that Dad would never put up with: blistered paint and gap-toothed shutters. Mismatched mortar patching the walk, rubber treads nailed to the porch steps—all these Harry Homeowner fixes Dad has always railed against. You take hold of the front-door handle and you give it that special pull toward you that it needs before you can push down the thumb latch, but it’s locked. You ring the doorbell, but it’s broken. You call, ‘Mom? Dad?’ No one answers. You call, ‘Hello?’ No one comes running; no one flings open the door and says, ‘It’s you! It’s so good to see you! Why didn’t you let us know? We’d have met you at the station! Are you tired? Are you hungry? Come in!’ You stand there a while, but you can’t think what to do next. You turn and look back toward the street, and you wonder about the rest of the family. ‘Maybe Jeannie,’ you say. ‘Or Amanda.’ But you know something, Denny? Don’t count on
me
to take you in, because I’m angry. I’m angry at you for leading us on such a song and dance all these years, not just these last few years but
all
the years, skipping all those holidays and staying away from the beach trips and missing Mom and Dad’s thirtieth anniversary and their thirty-fifth and Jeannie’s baby and notattending my wedding that time or even sending a card or calling to wish me well. But most of all, Denny,
most
of all: I will never forgive you for consuming every last little drop of our parents’ attention and leaving nothing for the rest of us.”
    She stopped speaking. Denny said something.
    “Oh,” she said, “I’m fine. How have
you
been?”
    So Denny came home.
    The first time, he came alone. Abby was disappointed that he didn’t bring Susan, but Red said he was glad. “It makes this visit different from those last ones,” he said. “Like he’s getting squared away with us first. He’s not taking it for granted that he can just pick up where he left off.”
    He had a point. Denny did seem different—more cautious, more considerate of their feelings. He commented on little improvements around the house. He said he liked Abby’s new hairstyle. (She had started wearing it short.) He himself had lost the boyish sharpness along his jaw, and he had a more settled way of walking. When Abby asked him questions—though she tried her best to ration them—he made an effort to answer. He wasn’t what you’d call chatty, but he answered.
    Susan was doing great, he said. She was attending preschool now. Yes, he could bring her to visit. Carla was fine too, although they were not together anymore. Work? Well, at the moment he was working for a construction firm.
    “Construction!” Abby said. “Hear that, Red? He’s working in construction!”
    Red merely grunted. He didn’t look as happy about this as he might have.
    Notice all that was missing, though, from what Denny had told them. How much did he really have to do with his daughter? Andwhen he said he and Carla were “not together,” did he mean they were divorced? Just what were his living arrangements? Was construction his chosen career now? Had he given up on college?
    Then Jeannie came over with little Deb, and Red and Abby left them alone, and by the end of her visit they knew more. He had a
lot
to do with