of life ahead, years that she could make use of, and . . . “I’m so sorry,” Dave was saying. His face was red, and he appeared to be crying. Jo realized that she’d missed something important. “Sorry for what?” she asked, and tried to look appropriately solemn. Dave was staring at his desk, as if he could barely look at her. Jo felt the atmosphere change, the way it did in advance of a storm. She’d clenched her fists, bracing for whatever was coming, when he looked up and said, “You know things haven’t been good between us for a while.”
Jo didn’t answer. Her hands and face felt cold. Things have been fine, she thought. What did I miss? Dave’s shoulders heaved, and he gave a single bark of a sob, then said, “Jo, I want a divorce.”
Jo’s lips were numb, her hands icy, head swirling with a tangled skein of emotions—shock and fear and anger and, yes, relief. Underneath it all, relief. Dave wouldn’t be dead, but he would be gone. She would be free. For a few blissful seconds, Jo let herself enjoy that relief before she thought to ask the obvious question. “Is there someone else?” Dave gave a single, shamefaced nod.
“Who is she?” Jo made herself ask, and Dave had the grace to at least look ashamed when he said, “It’s Nonie Scotto.”
PART
five
1993
Bethie
There she is,” Bethie said, pointing as a tall, skinny girl with a mop of tangled black hair emerged from the Jetway. Her niece was in that awkward place that Bethie remembered from her own adolescence, where you were done being a girl but you weren’t quite a teenager, and where it felt like half of your body parts had declared for Team Adolescence and the other half hadn’t caught up. Lila’s narrow shoulders were bowed beneath the straps of her backpack, and the duffel bag she had was so heavy that it made her lean to the left. Every few steps she’d have to correct her course, or risk banging into the wall.
Four years ago, Bethie had bitten her lip, hard, to keep from saying I told you so, when her sister had called to tell her that Dave was leaving, and she’d had to bite it again to keep from gasping when Jo told her who Dave was leaving with. “What can I do?” Bethie had asked. She’d offered to lend Jo money, to buy Dave out of the house so that Jo and the girls could stay there, but Jo was adamant about doing things on her own.
“Besides, I can’t stay. Nonie lives down the street, and Dave’s moving in with her.”
“Oh, God.”
Jo’s voice wobbled as she said, “I just want a fresh start, somewhere else. In Avondale, though. I’ll stay here, at least until Lila finishes school.”
So Jo and her girls had moved into a condo. Kim, then Missy, had finished high school and started college. Every year, Bethie had invited her sister and her nieces to come for a week or a month or even the whole summer, and for three years running, Jo had turned her down until finally she’d agreed to send Lila.
“I should warn you, she’s pretty miserable,” Jo said.
“We’ll be fine.” Bethie asked when school ended, bought a ticket in Lila’s name, and lined up a summer’s worth of activities for her niece. “We’ll take care of her,” she’d told Jo. Jo had just sighed.
Bethie knew that Lila had always been a challenge. She figured that any unpleasant behavior on Lila’s part was surely a result of her father’s abandonment, of Dave Braverman ditching her mom for that evil minx of a Nonie Scotto. “I never trusted him,” Bethie had railed to Harold the night she’d gotten the news. She’d been pacing through their living room, making a circuit from the gas fireplace at one end to the newly installed French doors at the other, with her manicured nails digging into the meat of her palms. “And you know what else? I sent that bitch a jam sampler for Christmas!” Harold, in his deep, sonorous voice, had told her, “Let it go, hon.” He’d grabbed her, midpace, squeezing her shoulders until she could laugh at herself.
“I’m glad it’s Lila,” she’d told Harold as they’d waited at the gate. Of all her nieces, she felt the most connected to Jo’s youngest, who seemed to be struggling more than her sisters. Kim and Missy had sailed through school, both of them distinguishing themselves in academics and