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you to talk, but nothing worked. After a while, your father and I decided to let you start the conversation when you were good and ready, only you never did. By the time we realized you weren’t going to, so much time had passed that we thought forcing the subject might only do more harm. And now, all these years later, here you are.”
    Late-day sun glazed the bay window. The paired recliners were angled to face a wide-screen television, bought for a more recent anniversary. Reflected in the TV’s surface, Noreen and Celia looked like objects left at the bottom of a pool.
    “Mommy?” Celia took a deep breath. “I think I just want to tell you this as quickly and as simply as I can.”
    She stopped. Her mother was shaking her head.
    “Not yet,” Noreen said. “It will be better for us, I think, if we have a quiet night tonight, and then tomorrow you can visit me at school.”
    “At school? But why?” For the second time that day, Celiafelt as if she’d been pulled from the high dive after finally having built up the courage to jump. “With Daddy asleep, can’t we just … I mean, don’t you think that this is the perfect time?” She was whining now, the sound of her indignation indistinguishable from the sound of having been denied another cookie, an extra bedtime story, the keys to the car.
    “I’m sorry, sweetie,” her mother said, the unfamiliar softness in Noreen’s voice breaking ties with all the older battles. “But I would much rather we waited. After what happened with Jem, I learned that when certain things are said or done in certain places, it takes a long time before …” She shook her head. “Besides, this will finally give you a chance to see my personal office! At Christmastime the building’s always closed. I think you’ll be surprised at how cozy it is. It’s a lovely place to have a chat. Very private, very comfortable.” Her smile was equal parts apology and entreaty. “You can come in the morning, whenever you happen to wake up. I think it’s best to do these things in the morning, when the day is still fresh.”
    Noreen touched the television remote and a moment later a snack food jingle flooded the room. At times like this, Celia’s teenaged self felt like an ugly shirt she had tucked into the back of her drawer but had yet to outgrow. Whenever she came back home, her mind resumed all its worst habits: the hair-trigger sensitivities, the rush to judgment, the combative reflex that dug a dividing line between herself and the rest of the world. She partly blamed the house for her regression. Her entire childhood was contained by these rooms, her adult experience here minuscule by comparison.

       That night over the phone, Celia described all this in a degree of detail that would have bored anyone other than a lover, and which left Huck avid for more.
    “What was I supposed to say?” She sighed. “So I sat with her through the end of a cable movie until Daddy woke up, and then we went to Maxi’s to eat.”
    “You got the eggplant parm,” he said. “And you all split the—”
    “—the fruit de mer. And, of course, the ricotta cheesecake for dessert. With me barely able to eat because of everything Mommy had asked me not to say. We drove back with practically my whole dinner in a doggie bag, Daddy going on again about how wonderful it is that I’m home. And as soon as we were inside, the two of them went to bed even though it was only nine o’clock, leaving me downstairs, remembering.”
    “Tell me,” Huck said.
    She pictured him in their living room, worry sharpening the planes of his face. In their earliest days Celia had expected the novelty of Huck’s company to be tempered by tedium, but Huck had not come into his good looks until his twenties. He had spent his acne-tormented teens becoming a good listener, sparing him the interpersonal laziness of the congenitally attractive. Celia couldn’t decide if lately Huck had grown more handsome, or if she’d