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which overlooked the golf course at Green Manor, which billed itself as a Community for Active Adults. Her father had moved here after her mother died, which was when he got Active, especially in the Adult Department.
    "Hi, sweetheart," he said, standing at the counter, absorbed in slicing a tomato onto a plate. His wrinkled forehead knit over his brown eyes, set close together and hooded now, and his nose had a telltale bulb at the tip from the drinking he'd given up, years ago. Even at sixty-eight, her father had enough black in his thinning hair to make people wonder if he colored it, and Ellen was pretty sure he didn't.
    "Dad, are you gonna die?" she asked, only half-joking.
    "No, never." Her father turned with a broad smile that served him well on the back nine and the road, where he drove a thousand miles a week as a sales rep for an auto-parts company.
    "Good." Ellen slid out of her coat and purse, dumped them on a kitchen chair, and kissed him on the cheek, catching a whiff of strong aftershave. None of her perfume lasted as long as her father's aftershave. She fleetingly considered picking up a bottle of Aramis.
    "You look nice, honey. Dressed up."
    "I'm trying not to get fired."
    "Succeeding?" Her father sliced another pink-red tomato. Already on the table sat a plastic tub of Whole Foods tuna fish, a loaf of multigrain bread, and a pitcher of green tea, permanent fixtures in Don Gleeson's Antioxidant Heaven.
    "So far." Ellen crossed to the counter, plucked a floppy tomato slice from the plate, and plopped it into her mouth. It tasted like nothing, a winter tomato.
    "Don't let the bastards get you down. How's my grandson?"
    "He has a cold."
    "I miss him. When am I gonna see him?"
    Ellen felt a guilty twinge. "Soon as I can. So, what's up with the doctor? You're scaring me."
    "I waited lunch for you."
    "I see that, thanks. You're avoiding the question."
    "Sit down like a civilized person." Her father carried the tomato plate to the table and set it down, then eased into the chair with a theatrical groan. He always moaned for comic effect, though he kept in great shape, fit and trim in his pale yellow polo shirt, Dockers, and loafers.
    "Dad, tell me." Ellen sat next to him, worried. Cancer was the worst sort of coward, sneaking up on people, and her mother had died from lymphoma, having lived only three months after her diagnosis.
    "I'm not sick, not at all." He untwisted the tie on the plastic bag of bread, extracted two slices from the center of the loaf, and set them on his plate, open-faced.
    "Then why did you go to the doctor?"
    "Make yourself a sandwich, then we'll talk."
    "Dad, please."
    "Suit yourself, but I'm hungry." Her father popped the plastic lid of the tuna, then picked up the serving fork, speared himself a small mound, and patted it onto his bread with the tines of the fork, making crosshatches.
    "You're stalling, Dad. It's tuna fish, not rocket science."
    "Okay, here it is. I'm getting married."
    "What?" Ellen was dumbfounded. "To who?" She had no idea. He was dating four women here. He was Romeo, with an enlarged prostate.
    "Barbara Levin."
    Ellen didn't know what to say. She didn't even know the woman. Her parents had been married forty-five years, and her mother had passed a little over two years ago. Somehow this meant her mother was really gone.
    As if someone had put a period on the sentence that was her life.
    "El? I'm not dying, I'm getting married."
    "Why, is she pregnant?"
    "Ha!" Her father laughed, then stabbed the tuna with the serving fork. "I'll tell her you said that."
    Ellen hid her ambivalence. "This is kind of a surprise."
    "A good one, right?"
    "Well, yes. Sure." Ellen tried to get a grip, but a hard knot in her chest told her she wasn't doing such a great job. "I guess I just wasn't sure who the lucky lady was."
    "Barbara's the one that matters." He picked up a tomato slice with the serving fork. "You gonna congratulate me?"
    "Congratulations."
    "I needed a cholesterol check.