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him that. I knew exactly what he would have said—that it wasn’t morally right to enjoy our father’s generosity if I was ashamed of him—to stick up my nose while I stuck out my hand. For all my worldliness and sophistication, I had become a hypocrite. That was the despicable truth I saw in myself as the sun cracked the dark on the dawn of the Fourth of July.

CHAPTER THREE
H IDE-AND -G O -S EEK
    T he entire Fourth of July celebration at my parents’ house was very bittersweet. While I was always glad, even if it was in a halfhearted way, to be with my family, I had never felt like more of an outsider than I did that weekend. I went for Mom’s sake because of the walkway. Messy and inconvenient as it was, it really only represented a few hours’ work to put it all back together again. It was hardly the travesty my mother had described. Why, then, had old Connie been so insistent about my presence? Maybe because Frank was there with his family and Mom really did want to see us all together around the table? Yes, I decided, that was probably it. After all, wasn’t she the sentimental one who took the only pictures that ever recorded our history?
    I felt a twinge of guilt because earlier in the weekend I’d had thoughts that the solo invitation was another attempt to relegate Michael to the sidelines. And Michael, sensitive to my family’s positions and accustomed to being slighted by them, had announced his own plans to save face. But after my late-night talk with Frank I realized my parents were acting the only way they knew how to act. Provincial. Inflexible. Judgmental.
    I couldn’t have the relationship with my parents I wanted as long as Michael was in my life. Dad thought he was satanic, Nonna thought he was a horrible influence, and even though Mom said nothing, I knew what she thought. It was exasperating. The minute I walked into myparents’ home, I was made to feel like a child again, pushed into corners and outwitted by everyone. That was one source of my discomfort. And the straight-out refusal of my family to accept my adult life as it was. I knew that at some point I was going to have to discuss it with them. We were going to have to find some peace about this because there were better-than-even odds that Michael was going to be with me long into the foreseeable future.
    It was nearly seven o’clock when I reached the city limits of Charleston. I dialed Michael’s cell.
    “Hey, sweetheart! I’m almost home. Want to meet me somewhere for supper? Where are you?”
    “Welcome home! I’m just leaving the hospital. I missed you! How was your trip?”
    “Fine. You know. The usual sociology experiment—see how much food you can eat before you explode.” I sighed and Michael laughed a little. “Want to meet at Rue de Jean’s? I could really go for a bowl of mussels.”
    “Sure. I’ll head over and get us a table. See you in a few.”
    “Okay. Love you.”
    “Love you, too.”
    We clicked off, but with that one statement of Love you, too, I slipped right back into my life with Michael. For the larger part of the drive back to Charleston I had worried about where I belonged in the world, and then inside of a one-minute conversation with Michael, I knew.
    I only ever saw the world as worth the effort it took to navigate when I was looking at it through his eyes. With him my worldview was complete, or maybe the world had become so complicated that it took two brains to digest the daily struggles. No, I decided, Michael was my perfect partner. He was all that I was not. I had become addicted to the balance his point of view offered for sorting out everything. I loved the way his thoughts were so carefully constructed, and I loved everything else about him, too, especially his professional work, which provided hours of thinking about and talking about the very real future of humanity. And he did so much charitable work that I wondered how he found the time for it all. When he wasn’t raising money