7:45 P.M.

“DOES ANYONE ELSE LIKE CARP?” Conrad is asking. We haven’t ordered yet because no one can agree on what to do. Conrad is determined to share, Robert wants to order separately, Audrey is displeased with the menu, and Jessica and Tobias have eaten two breadbaskets already. It irritates me that he has an appetite.

“I’m still breastfeeding,” Jessica says to no one in particular. “I need the carbs.”

The waiter comes over for the second time and I just jump in. “I’ll have the frisée salad and the risotto,” I say. I send Conrad a look. He nods.

“The scallops,” he says. “And some of those aphrodisiacs.”

The waiter looks confused. He opens his mouth and closes it again.

“Oysters,” Audrey clarifies wearily. “I’ll have the same, with the frisée salad.”

Professor Conrad elbows her. “Audrey, I never,” he says.

She isn’t having it. She’s still irritated.

It strikes me as everyone places their orders—pasta and soup for Jessica, steak and salad for Robert—that I didn’t really think this through. When I chose each of these five people to be on my list, it was entirely about me. My issues with each of them, and my mixed desires to be in their presence. I didn’t think of how they’d get along together.

I permit myself a glance to my left, to Tobias. I already know what he’ll order. I knew it the instant I opened the menu. I do this sometimes, now, when I’m at a restaurant. I’ll scan the menu and choose what he would want. I know he’ll get the burger and fries, extra mustard. And the beet salad. Tobias loves beets. He was a vegetarian for a while, but it didn’t stick.

“The crudo and the scallops,” he says.

I whip my head to look at him. He raises his shoulders up back at me. “The burger looked good, too,” he says. “But I just ate all that bread.”

Tobias was concerned about his health in odd ways. Sometimes I thought he had a thing for staying thin—maybe because it made him look like a starving artist? He didn’t work out, he wasn’t a runner, but he’d skip meals sometimes or he’d come home with a new juicer and declare he didn’t want to eat processed foods anymore. He was an excellent cook. The crudo. I should have figured.

The waiter takes our menus and then Audrey leans forward. For the first time I catch small little lines around her eyes. She must be in her late forties.

“I came with some conversation topics,” she tells me. She speaks in that low, hushed voice we all know so well. She’s delicate, so feminine it pains, and I have a pang of regret that she is seated at this table with us. She shouldn’t be here; it’s not worth her time.

“We don’t need topics,” Conrad says, brushing her off. “We just need wine and a theme.”

“A theme?” asks Robert. He looks up from his water. He’s a small man, short. Even seated you can tell. My mother had two inches on him. I always thought I fell somewhere in the middle based on the small pile of old photographs, but looking at him now I know I’m all his.

We have the same green eyes, the same long nose, the same crooked smile and reddish-brownish curly hair. He didn’t go to college. No one in his family did either. He got tuberculosis when he was nineteen and spent a year and a half in a hospital. Solitary confinement. His own mother could only visit through a glass wall.

My mom told me that story years later. Years after he had left, after he was already dead and I couldn’t ask him any follow-up questions myself. I never knew whether it was supposed to humanize him, or make him seem more obtuse, abstract—untouchable. But I also never knew if she kept on loving him. I still don’t.

“Theme!” Conrad calls. “Let’s have a theme.”

“Global service,” Audrey says.

Conrad nods. He takes a notebook and pen out of his breast pocket. He always kept a notebook there, should he be inspired. He used to take it out periodically during class and scribble things inside.

“Julie!” Conrad says. “You’re up.”

Jessica looks at him, a piece of baguette in her mouth. “It’s Jessica,” she says.

“Jessica, of course.”

“Family,” she says, sighing. “But I don’t think this is the point.”

“Responsibility,” Robert adds. I do an inadequate job of choking back a laugh. Responsibility. How ridiculous.

Then Tobias. He sits back in his chair. He loops his hands behind his head. “Love,” he says. He says it so simply, so easily. Like it’s obvious. Like it’s the only possible answer to Conrad’s question.

But it isn’t, of course. Because if it was I wouldn’t need him at this dinner. If that were true, we’d still be together.

I clear my throat. “History,” I say, as if to counter.

Conrad nods. Audrey sips. Jessica balks.

“We’ve been over this,” she says, glaring at Tobias and me. “You guys can’t keep living in the past.”

Let go and let God.

“Sometimes it is impossible to move forward without understanding what happened.” Conrad.

“What did happen?” Audrey says.

I keep my eyes on the table, but I still feel his on me. I wish he were seated where Conrad is. I wish I couldn’t smell him—heady and dense—or find his foot under the table, so close that if I wanted to I could hold it against mine.

“Everything,” I say after a moment. “Everything happened.”

“Well,” Conrad says. “Let’s start there.”