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almost never wore jeans. It broke her heart to think of him choosing his outfit, thinking this would be good for the chic hotel in SoHo.
    They settled into an Irish bar on Grand Street. She waited for her dad to grow back into himself.
    He ordered a whiskey sour, which came with a maraschino cherry, and she ordered a glass of white wine. She still felt a little weird ordering a drink in front of him.
    “How’s Paul?” she asked. She actually knew how Paul was, because she exchanged emails with him almost every week, but Paul was such a hero to them all he seemed like a safe subject to talk about.
    “It’s good to have him back from Afghanistan. He’s doing well. He always asks about you. What a life, you know?”
    “Yeah,” Carmen said. She thought of Paul as her stepbrother, but was he still her stepbrother, since his mom had died? He was the only one in the family Jones hadn’t met yet.
    “He sent me a video of F16s taking off from the aircraft carrier. One of them was his. Pretty incredible.”
    In the old days, Carmen might have felt threatened by her father’s obvious pride, but a year and a half ago Lydia had died of breast cancer and all she felt was sad. And anyway, Carmen was an actress on TV. She knew her dad was proud of her too.
    “How’s Krista?”
    This was a little more complicated, and her dad was smart enough to know it. Krista, Lydia’s daughter, was the one whose house he went to for dinner every Sunday night. “Good. The baby is … almost one, I guess.”
    “Is that Tommy?”
    “No, I think the middle one is Tommy.”
    She wasn’t sure whether this confusion was for her benefit. “The baby is … Joey?”
    “Yes. And the oldest is … he’s gotta be five.”
    “Jack.”
    “Right, Jack.”
    Krista was younger than Carmen, and yet she’d already managed to produce three children. Sometimes that seemed kind of thrilling to Carmen and other times grotesque. But it was good, really, that Krista was stocking the family with grandchildren, because Jones was adamant about not having any.
    “Have you babysat recently?” He and Lydia used to do it together every Friday night, and now he sometimes volunteered to go it alone. He was brave that way.
    He nodded and raised his eyebrows high. “There’s a handful for you.”
    Carmen nodded too. She was glad Krista was still in Charleston, living in a house with a proper dining room just a few miles away, giving her father grandchildren and keeping an eye on him. Carmenwas grateful for that. Whatever else she might feel, gratitude was the main thing.
    There was pathos in the way it all fit together. When Carmen was growing up, her dad had been more of an idea than a father to her. Now she was more of an idea than a daughter to him.
    “How’s your mom?”
    Her dad always felt the need to ask that question at some point. It used to seem dutiful, but now it had a different cast.
    It was amazing, the reversals you could see if you only kept track. It used to be that her dad was in the middle of a happy marriage and a boisterous family and her mom was single and uncertain. It had been her mom who would ask in that wistful way, “How’s your dad?” Now her mother was happily married to a successful lawyer, living in a big fancy house in Chevy Chase with Carmen’s eleven-year-old half brother, Ryan, and her dad’s face was the one that betrayed longing when he asked about her.
    “So, I have something exciting to tell you,” Carmen announced. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Her father, of all people, was the right person for this news.
    “What?”
    “Tibby sent me a plane ticket yesterday. To Greece. To Santorini.”
    His eyebrows lifted. “Santorini? Where Lena’s grandparents lived? Where you all went when you were in college?”
    “Yes, exactly.” Her dad was always good for remembering the facts. “She sent tickets to Lena and Bee too. We’re going to have a reunion.” She felt the tears spring to her eyes as she said