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too fast. When he tried to get off the turnpike, the car skidded and went off the road. She said he died instantly.”
    “Instantly?”
    “That’s what the woman said.”
    “Who was she?”
    “I don’t know. She wouldn’t give a name, even when I asked. I bet it was the girlfriend.
    “He asked about you, Miranda. When we had coffee, he asked if I had heard anything about you.”
    My heart lurched. “Really?”
    “Yes. He was disappointed when I didn’t know.”
    We were silent while music from the reunion filled the air around us.
    “Is there anything else?”
    “No. I told you I asked the woman for her name but she wouldn’t say. She hung up right after that.”
    Zoe sighed and looked at the ground. It was such a final, nothing-left sigh.
    “Thank you, Diana. It makes it clearer.”
    We hugged. She stepped back, hands on my elbows, and looked at me a moment more. Then she turned and started for the building.
    “Diana?”
    “Yes?”
    “Really, he was happy?”
    She only nodded. Which was better than any words. It allowed me my own vocabulary for his happiness.
    “Thank you.”
    She reached into her handbag, took out a card, and handed it to me. “Call if you want to talk, or if you’re ever in Kalamazoo, Michigan.”
    Zoe and I stood in silence in the middle of the lawn. After time had passed I said, “I don’t want to go back in there. I’ll call a cab. Could you give me a key to your house?”
    “Let’s go someplace and drink a lot.”
    Instead we ended up driving around again. Past the same places we’d seen that afternoon, which now felt like a million years ago. I turned on the radio and, as if they knew our mood, all the stations seemed to be playing only songs we’d loved when we were young. Which was all right because we finished being young that night and it was right to be immersed in it one last time.
    I hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going, and realized where we were only when she slowed and turned into the parking lot of the Carvel ice cream stand.
    “Good idea!”
    “If we’re not going to get drunk, we’ll get fat.”
    We ordered the old usual—vanilla cones dipped in heated chocolate—and went back to her car. In our party dresses we sat on the hood and ate.
    “They’re still delicious.”
    “I haven’t had one in years. I used to bring the kids when they were young, but they wouldn’t be caught dead with me in public these days.”
    We watched people come and go. Back at the country club, our classmates were dancing and reliving happy times. But Kevin was back there too and so was James.
    “Zoe, what do we do now?”
    “Hope, honey. Same thing as I said before.”
    “Not much hope in Mudville tonight.”
    “Did I ever tell you about the time I found Andy’s gun?”
    That stopped me. “You’re kidding! Andy, your slimy ex-husband?”
    “Yup. It was the first year we were married. I was putting away clean underwear in his drawer. Sitting on top of his Fruit Of The Looms was a gun.”
    “Why’d he have it?”
    “The most interesting thing was, the moment I found it, the only thing that went through my mind wasn’t ‘He’s got a gun!’ What hit me was, ‘The world is an amazing place.’ You know how it is when you’re first with someone and love him: you think you know everything about him. Then you open a drawer one day and there’s something—an old love letter, a diary, a gun. It’s impossible to connect with the person you thought you knew.
    “It was kind of wonderful, Miranda. I knew no matter what happened, life was always going to be interesting.”
    “Because you found a gun?”
    “No! Because it was part of Andy too. I really didn’t know him and that excited me. There were all these new things to discover. In the end we divorced, but back then, life was still opening up. It excited me. It still excites me. You should let it do that. You should let that happen.”

A YOGURT TRILOGY
    “Y OU’RE A THIEF, MIRANDA.”
    I rolled