“Where are the boys?” Jeremy asked. Nancy had gone home. She’d spoken to Jeremy, she told Lu, and now it was up to the two of them to talk it through.
Lu was too nervous to sit still, so she puttered around the kitchen. “They walked over to the club,” she said. “There’s melted crayon painting today!” She tried to make it sound as if melted crayon painting were something to celebrate.
“I see,” said Jeremy. “Did they walk over to the club by themselves?”
Lu shook her head.
“They couldn’t have walked over to the club with my mother, because my mother called me, and she was here, she wasn’t with the boys.”
“Right,” whispered Lu.
“So . . . who’d they walk over with?”
“Maggie.” She watched a small muscle in Jeremy’s jaw clench and unclench.
“Maggie, who you said you weren’t going to use anymore?”
“It’s not what you think,” she said. “It’s not even remotely what you think. It’s not what your mother thinks.” And then she took a deep, deep breath. She said, “It started a while ago, when the boys were little.” It occurred to her that this could also be an explanation for a love affair. Then, in a voice that was so shaky and uncertain it didn’t even sound like hers, she told him all of it.