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  “I’ll let you try later.”

  “What?”

  “To put your finger on it.”

  Stephen blinked at her a couple of times. “You didn’t just make a sex joke, did you?”

  “Maybe,” she said, smiling enigmatically.

  He seemed to be so shocked that he was silent, watching the road with intensity.

  Was I such a prude before? Amy wondered, and the idea that what she’d been through had changed her made her smile. She remembered how shocked Faith had been at the state of William’s bedroom. Bedbugs, head lice, fleas. When Faith told Amy about them, she’d expected her to be outraged. Now Amy remembered saying something about there being a problem, but she certainly hadn’t been shocked.

  “Are you laughing?” Stephen asked.

  “Just at something one of the women I stayed with said.”

  “You got along with them then?”

  “Yes, very well.”

  “The last time I saw you, you were acting like I was sending you to the guillotine. You didn’t want to stay in the same house with a bunch of strangers.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever again worry about meeting strangers.”

  He glanced at her in puzzlement, then turned back to the road. The boys started yelling that she had to look at what they’d made, so she gave her attention to them.

  When they got home, the boys tore into their other presents and Stephen took the fishing rod she’d bought him into the backyard to try it out, while Amy walked around her house. It was the same but it was wondrous to her. She ran her hand over her huge cookstove. Stainless steel burners that turned on with a knob. No one had to clean it, or keep the fire going all day. Her oven even had a rotisserie and she remembered the fire dogs they’d had at Tristan’s house. They were iron cages that were powered by little greyhound dogs that ran around for an hour at a time. When Amy had first gone there, the dogs were made to stay in the cages for many hours. She had liberated them, and, like everyone else, they were given proper working hours.

  Dishwasher, big mixer, food processor. She looked in wonder at an electrical socket, and turned the blender on and off a few times. Marvelous.

  “I’m glad you came home, Mom,” her oldest son said and threw his arms around her waist.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I had a bad dream,” he said, his face buried against her stomach.

  Kneeling, she pulled him to her. “Were we in a strange house and was I searching for you and telling you to get up, that we had to get out of the house?”

  He nodded against her shoulder.

  “I had the same dream, and you know what? It was just a dream. You woke up and I’m here. Right?”

  He nodded, but still wouldn’t lift his head. “I love you and I’m glad you didn’t stay there.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  He grinned at her, pushed out of her arms, and ran away to go yell with his brother.

  When she stood up, Stephen was standing at the end of the counter. “He sees it too. Something about you is different.”

  “Maybe it’s just that I’m clean,” she said. “How long has it been since those boys had a bath?”

  “How long were you gone?”

  “Oh, Stephen,” she said in mock disgust, “I expected more of you. Really! This is too much.” She had her hands on her hips as she started out of the kitchen to get the boys.

  He grabbed her about the waist and pulled her to him to give her a thorough kiss. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  His hand wandered down the back of her. “Did Davy tell you about his dream?”

  She nodded, her face buried in his shoulder. She’d nearly forgotten the smell of him. No one smelled like him.

  “We were in the tent and he woke up screaming. He said that you were telling him to get up, to get out of the house. Even after he woke up, he kept saying that Mommy was lost. He hasn’t been the same until now when he saw you here with us.”

  He pulled back to look at her. “Did something happen up there in Maine?”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “Nothing bad. I heard the life stories of some other women, and I realized that I like my life as it is.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “I’d hate to change it just because of something that happened at some summerhouse in Maine. Why are you laughing?”

  “Because I’m glad to be home. Now let me go so I can get those boys in the tub. I’m going to have to use lye soap on them.”

  “Lye soap?” he said. “Where did that come from?”

  “It’s great against fleas and bedbugs,” she said as she grabbed one boy and ran after the other one.

  Amy was searching for Stephen. It had taken over two hours to get the family fed (Chinese takeout) and the boys scrubbed, then she’d had to wrestle them into pajamas. It took forty-five minutes of reading to get them settled. But after they’d at last fallen asleep, she’d spent thirty minutes just snuggling with them, holding their sleeping bodies. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them.

  When she went downstairs, Stephen was nowhere to be found.

  “Stephen?” she called.

  “In here.”

  She heard his voice but didn’t know where it was coming from. It seemed to be coming from outside the dining room, but she didn’t think he’d gone out.

  It wasn’t until she called him again and heard his voice a second time that she saw a door in the dining room that wasn’t there before she went to Maine.

  Tentatively, and a little bit concerned about what century waited behind the door, she opened it. She saw a large room, a study, that was done all in dark green and maroon. On the walls were photos she’d never seen before, of Stephen with people she didn’t know.

  Her husband was standing behind a huge, carved desk that looked as though it would fit in the White House, and he was going through a pile of mail.

  “Sorry, babe,” he said. “I promised myself I’d wait until tomorrow to do this, but it piled up while we were away.”

  Amy walked across a thick-piled Oriental carpet and looked at what he was throwing away. Every envelope was addressed to Dr. Stephen Hanford.

  She picked up an envelope, sat down on the leather chesterfield, and looked at it. “Stephen?” she said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  She looked about the room more carefully. There were plaques on the wall, the kind that are given as awards. “What do you do for a living?”

  “That’s a funny question.”

  “Humor me,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “You know what I do as well as I do, since we married right after I finished my internship.”

  “Internship?”

  “Amy, what’s wrong with you? Okay,” he said, but shaking his head at her. “I’m a cardiologist and you know that as well as I do. You’ve been with me every step of the way.”

  “A cardiologist,” she said. “What about your father’s trucking company?”

  “Trucks? Amy, what were you girls smoking up there?” He put the mail down and went to sit beside her. “Okay, I’m game. What is it that you don’t remember? My father is retired, but he was once the best cardiologist in the state. And no, being a great doctor didn’t mellow him. He’s still a pain in the neck. However, whenever I run into a problem I can’t figure out, I still call Dad.”

  “Your father is a doctor?”

  “Amy, you really are acting very strange. All of the men in my family are doctors. It’s sort of a family tradition and has been for, oh, a few hundred years now. I can’t vouch for what kind of doctors my ancestors back in England were. They probably did bloodletting and used lots of leeches.”

  “Your brothers are doctors?” she whispered. “Your beer-drinking, thrill-a-minute brothers are doctors?”

  Stephen gave a sigh. “You know all this. Okay, so maybe it’s like one of your books. My three brothers are all doctors and they travel all over the world. They h