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Charlie? Admit it, you’re as reluctant as I am impetuous. Huh?”
    â€œYou know what?” she said to him. “I had to coparent with you, but the baby has grown up. She’s an adult, whether she likes it or not, and while she might need her parents, she has had plenty of time to adjust to the divorce. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to talk about this whole thing with you for another quarter century! Leave me alone for a while, will you?”
    She opened the door and got out of his car, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and dragging through muddy puddles behind her. His ability to insult and enrage her had not lessened in twenty-five years. She went to her car and retrieved her purse andbriefcase, locked the door and started walking. Stomping.
    â€œCharlie, what the hell are you doing?” he called out of his opened window. She stomped on, muttering incoherently to herself. He could still, with such ease, provoke her into irrational behavior. Here she was, walking down the soft, muddy shoulder of an isolated two-lane road in the dark, in the rain. It was worse than irrational, it was suicidal. But right that moment it made more sense than sitting in the car with him.
    â€œCharlie, this is stupid!” he yelled.
    God, he was following her. In the car.
    A car going in the opposite direction whizzed by. The splash off the tires provided a fine spray of mud to add to the rain, which had lessened to a heavy drizzle, but was not quite enough to wash the streaks of mud off her face and coat.
    All the stuff she thought she had handled began to come back one at a time. The Samuelsons, Stephanie, Dennis and Dr. Malone, Peaches—and Jake, his timing as bad as ever.
    â€œCharlie!” he yelled. “Hold up, will you? I need to ask you something. I need a favor.”
    â€œIn your dreams,” she muttered to herself. If I am afraid of commitment, she thought, Jake Dugan would be a good enough reason.
    A flashing red light throbbed over her head and she turned to see that her ex-husband had attached his portable police beacon to the top of his car. He followed her at a safe distance, slowly, so that if a car approached from behind, she wouldn’t be mowed down.But then again, she wouldn’t need this service if he hadn’t shown up in the first place, which was the cause of her walking home in the mud and rain when she had a perfectly good cell phone in her purse.
    She made the right turn into her neighborhood in ten minutes. She could have been faster if the weather had been decent. The flashing red light disappeared and Jake’s headlights strafed the houses as he made a U-turn and departed. It was then that she realized she wore his blanket around her shoulders. She shrugged it off on the front walk and hung it over the wrought-iron entry gate.
    She stepped into her house and stepped into sanity. The lights were dimmed, the table set, candles lit, fire in the hearth and two cups of something steaming sat on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Dennis, having heard her come in, appeared in the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel. The sight of all this peaceful domesticity warmed the heart of the drowned rat and without stopping to consider the ramifications Charlene heard herself say, “Dennis, do you still want to get married?”
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    Stephanie moved a cherry around in her Coke with the straw, staring into the mix, daydreaming. She sat at the far end of the bar near the cash register, and when Grant was between customers, he spent a few minutes leaning across the bar talking to her.
    This was how they’d met. She’d been at the bar with a couple of girlfriends and had flirted with the cutebartender. That was two and a half, almost three years ago. It was a lot more romantic then than it was now.
    A guy, carrying his drink, sauntered over and sat down beside her. “Tell me you’re not waiting for someone,” he