“Olive Pedestro?” Augusta said. “You entrusted the safety of our family to Olive Pedestro.”

Nick was rubbing the knotty bones of Ingmar’s head with both hands. “Well, I had to—”

“And her deranged son. He’s deranged, you know. He’s been on house arrest before, with an ankle bracelet.”

Nick fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his nose. “He wasn’t part of the deal.”

“And she’s visited you? In Egg Harbor? Where you have a shih tzu? And how dare you name a dog Tobias! How dare you!” It had been his first pick for a boy’s name had they ever had a son.

He stretched his arms open, a supplication. His cheeks were so ruddy that she worried for a moment about his high blood pressure. How high was it?

But she couldn’t let up either. “I bet you gave that dog your last name. Finally, a Flemming, a child of your own!”

“Dogs don’t have last names.”

She looked down at her knit hands. “Why did you interfere?”

“You knew I was there.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’ve always known.”

He was right. At certain events, she’d feel a surge and catch herself searching the audience before reining herself in. “I thought I was just trying to conjure you up,” she said.

“Once, I sat just behind you so close I smelled your perfume.”

“Orchestra?”

“Our third-chair clarinetist.” He nodded. “It was never over, for me.”

She hit him, the flat of her fist to his shoulder, not angry but not joking either.

“C’mon,” he said, “do it. Hit me. Really do it. Like you used to.”

“No,” she said, as if denying him sex.

“I miss the way you used to really lay into me, beating my arms and my chest, sometimes in bed, you know, after.”

“I had to.”

“I should have gotten worried when you stopped getting angry at me.”

Augusta knew the last time she’d hit him. She’d never forget it. He told her someone had been murdered—the oldest son of a colleague. It was Nick’s greatest fear. He was trying to tell her that he’d made the right choice. “You’d have drowned me,” she said. “I couldn’t keep holding you up. We’d been through so much.”

“I wish you’d just kept punishing me, but letting me back in. I needed you all so much, more than you ever needed me.”

“You’ll never know how much we needed you.”

And then there was a cough.

They looked up.

There stood their granddaughter.

One knee cocked inward, her forearms crossed to hide her stomach that was a little pudgy, something she’d probably grow out of this summer. There was something undeniably raw and vulnerable about Atty. Augusta saw it for the first time, but it was so plain she was shocked she hadn’t noticed it before.

Atty stared at them as if she weren’t sure she knew them at all.

She and Nick had never been interrupted in the middle of an intimate moment by a child. The shame Augusta felt was familiar only because she’d felt it in her teen years—her mother walking out onto the porch and nearly catching her holding hands with her date.

“What is it, Atty?” Augusta said.

Atty looked at her dog, who was resting his chin on Nick’s thigh, completely smitten. She felt jealous but also a little intimidated by her grandfather’s magnetism. “I’m supposed to tell you that your daughters want him to stay until they’ve figured out what to do with him.”

“What do they have in mind?” Nick said.

“I think they want you to make amends. I think there’s going to be a process of some sort.”

Nick looked at Augusta.

“They should have cleared this with me first,” Augusta said.

“You’re getting blamed up there too, if I can be frank with you,” Atty said.

“Me? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding,” Atty told her. “But I’ve heard people say that mothers always get blamed for everything so you probably don’t have to take it personally.”

“Augusta?” Nick said. “What do you say to this?”

She drew a deep breath and looked at an ancient ancestor’s portrait on the wall—a pale man with a bulbous nose and flowering white ascot. She didn’t know what to say.

“I think this could help you take your grief for a walk around the block,” Atty told her. “Remember? That’s what you wanted, right?”

Augusta looked at the girl. “One day,” she said, “you’ll be a pair of eyes gazing at some new generation sitting in this very room. You’ll be a portrait just hanging there, gazing away. This is how time marches on.”

She didn’t mean it as a threat but it might have come across that way because Atty looked at the paintings and gripped her own arms more tightly. “I think they want a yes or a no.”

“Freud,” she said, “I blame him on behalf of all mothers.” She waved her hand over her head. “Fine! Fine! Like I ever had a choice.”