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seemed to be somebody Karen didn’t know. Her mother put her hand on the boy’s shoulder; they walked over to a bookshelf. Three girls hurried up to her. “Mrs. Freed! Mrs. Freed, you gotta help us.
    We’re desperate.” They like her, Karen thought. For some reason it was shocking.
    She wandered into her mother’s study, a small, narrow room off the kitchen. The desk was snowed under with books and papers. This was where her mother did science book reviews for some magazine that only other librarians read. Karen could read the reviews only after they were published. Her mother’s other writing was off limits because it was unpublished. She had written a story for little kids, “Don’t Stop That Music,” that she kept sending around to publishers and getting back in the mail.
    Karen peeled the paper off the second creamsicle. Once her mother had said to her, “You know what my life wishes are for you, darling? That you find somebody good to share your life with and that you have work that you love. Then you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”
    “Like you?” Karen had said. . Her mother had hesitated, then nodded. “Like me.”
    Karen remembered that hesitation. Sometimes she heard her parents fighting behind their closed bedroom door. Then she wondered about the things she and her sisters said about their parents. That they loved each other so exclusively, that they were neurotically dependent on each other. It was exciting to talk that way, but was it true?
    “I wonder where Tobi is,” her mother said, sitting down at the desk. “She couldn’t be jogging all this time?”
    At once, Karen imagined Tobi with the man in the photo, jogging by the reservoir, side by side, his
    bow legs churning, Tobi’s heels kicking up. She saw this so vividly. She said, “Yes. She is!”
    The hall door slammed. “Tobi?” her mother called.
    “Me,” Liz answered. “Want some help?” she said, looking in. Scott hovered behind Liz. Over her shoulder, he waved to Karen.
    Karen dropped the creamsicle sticks into the wastebasket, swiped at her mouth. Was she smeared orange? She hunched over to hide her stained sweat shirt.
    “Your timing is great,” her mother said to Liz. “Karen and I did it all. But if you want to sign up for next week—”
    Liz was rosy; all her freckles stood out, the way they did when she’d just come out of the shower. “We took a ride,” she said. “It’s beautiful out.”
    “We went to see the house I’m working on,” Scott said.
    “The one Scott designed,” Liz said.
    “No, no, no. Don’t give your mother the wrong idea. I did the drawings, but it’s nothing complicated. I’m no architect.”
    “You could be,” Liz said.
    Scott looked from Liz to Karen to her mother, the same tender glance all around. “Listen to her,” he said, putting his chin on Liz’s head. They went out again, their arms around each other, and Karen and her mother heard Scott saying, “Come on, give me a little kiss!”
    “There,” Karen’s mother murmured, “is a man who likes women.”
    Mom?” Tobi said, coming into the kitchen, and bumped into Karen, as if she didn’t see her standing right there with a handful of silverware. Was Tobi nervous? “I want you to meet someone, Mom,” she said, and there he was, the man from the photograph, towering over Tobi, big and burly in a flannel shirt.
    “This is Jason.” Black eyes, a brushy, flowing mustache, and thick, black hair, long hair, down to his shoulders. And—aha, Karen had been right, bow legs.
    “Pleased to meet you, Tobi’s mom.” He should have had a deep, resonating voice to go with the rest of him; instead it was light, smooth, almost a boy’s voice. “I’d like to call you something else—and, really, not Mrs. Freed.”
    “Well … the name is Sylvia.”
    “I’m Karen.” Not that anybody asked. Jason looked at her, looked down at her. Then his hand, a real bear paw, outstretched; a brief touch, and he
    returned the full force of