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  “At least you kept your talent.”

  “I don’t think I had it before the accident.”

  “You don’t think? What did your family tell you?” Amy asked.

  “My parents are dead. I only have a sister and she hates me.”

  Faith gave a little grunt. “From my observation, I think all sisters hate each other. Pure jealousy. I think that if one sister is homeless and the other lives in a McMansion on Long Island, if the homeless one has curly hair, the other sister will be jealous and hate her.”

  Both Amy and Zoë were looking at her in astonishment.

  “Just my personal opinion,” Faith said, putting her drink up to cover her mouth.

  “When I first saw you,” Zoë said, “I thought you were the most boring person I’d ever met, but I’m beginning to change my mind.”

  “Is there a compliment in there?” Faith asked.

  “If there was one, I didn’t hear it,” Amy said, but she was smiling.

  “I suggest that we spread dinner out here on the table,” Zoë said, “and that Faith entertain us with her life story. I want to hear the part where you were born on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  Amy looked at Faith with interest. “Is that true?”

  “More or less, but I married the son of the richest man in town.”

  “Is that why you wear a twenty-thousand-dollar watch?” Zoë asked.

  Faith put her hand over the watch, then made herself remove it. “Eddie bought this for me five years ago. I told him not to and I wanted to take it back to the store but he’d had it engraved so I couldn’t.”

  “Why are you frowning?” Zoë asked. “Not good memories?”

  “From Eddie yes, but his mother threw a fit about the watch. You see, no matter that I went to college and got a degree, no matter that I dedicated fifteen years of my life to caring for her son, to Ruth Wellman I was never anything but poor white trash. The lowest of the low. Scum.”

  “So tell us,” Amy said. “We have nothing else to do except listen.”

  “There isn’t anything to tell. I grew up in a small town, fell in love with the son of the richest family in town, and we got married.”

  “Big wedding?” Zoë asked.

  “Tiny, but nice.”

  “Was that because of the mothers?” Amy asked quietly.

  “Yes and no. Actually, mostly yes. Mrs. Wellman, who was, is, an extremely rich widow, insisted that the bride’s family pay for the wedding. My mother was also a widow but her husband, my father, died in debt. My mother worked sixty hours a week just to feed, shelter, and clothe us.”

  “Yet your mother-in-law made her pay for the wedding,” Amy said.

  “And I assume this was to keep you from marrying her son,” Zoë said.

  Faith nodded.

  Amy got up and went into the kitchen to get the carryout food she and Faith had bought that afternoon. She hadn’t planned to spend any time with these other women who had been labeled as “trauma victims,” but the day spent with Faith had been fun. Faith said she had no people to buy gifts for and that had made Amy give a shiver of horror, but then Faith had asked so many questions about Amy’s family that the tension disappeared.

  Since Amy tended to stay with people she knew, she didn’t often have the opportunity to talk about her family. First, she told Faith about her sons, mentioning how smart they were and how good they were at sports. “I’m sorry, I’m bragging,” she said.

  “Go ahead. It sounds wonderful. Tell me more.”

  Amy did most of the talking and Faith helped her choose gifts for both her boys. It was when they sat down to lunch that Faith said that Amy hadn’t even mentioned her husband. There was a tone in her voice that suggested she thought all was not well between Amy and her husband.

  Amy reached into her handbag and pulled out a little photo album, flipped to a picture, then handed it to Faith.

  “My goodness,” Faith said, eyes wide. “Does he really look like that or it is just a good photo?”

  “He looks better in person,” Amy said, then showed the other pictures of her handsome sons.

  “They are all as beautiful as movie stars,” Faith said, smiling. “One time—”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Faith said, looking at her menu.

  “No, tell me,” Amy encouraged.

  “Last night Zoë said some things to me and—”

  “Hateful things?

  “Of course. She’s Zoë,” Faith said with a smile that Amy didn’t return.

  “What happened?”

  “Zoë reminded me of some things that happened a long time ago, and now, seeing your husband brought it all back.”

  Before she could say anything else, the waitress came to take their orders. They both got the lobster salads. When the waitress was gone, Amy leaned toward Faith. “What were you going to say?”

  “Nothing important. When I was a kid I was in love with a young man who looked a bit like your husband, except he had dark hair and eyes.”

  “Really?” Amy said in disbelief.

  “Yes, really,” Faith said. “But I get the idea your husband comes from a good family, and—”

  “Good is how you look at it. Sometimes the wrong people are put into families. My husband has a father and three older brothers who are as primitive as they come. They think tractor pulls are high art. But Stephen is at ease in a tuxedo.”

  “Tyler was more of a tractor-pull person,” Faith said. “He didn’t even finish high school. He usually had grease on him from some car he was overhauling, and he rarely ate anything that wasn’t wrapped in paper. He really was the most crude, most…” Trailing off, she looked down and was silent.

  “Were you in love with him?” Amy asked softly.

  “With all my heart.”

  Amy reached across the table and put her hand on Faith’s wrist. “So what happened to him?”

  Faith laughed and the faraway look in her eyes disappeared. “I don’t know. Nothing. Ran away, I guess. Who knows? When you get down to it, you don’t actually marry the Tylers of the world, now do you?”

  “I guess not,” Amy said with a sigh. “I was lucky that the man I loved had everything going for him. He’s smart and funny and considerate and a hard worker. He’s perfect.”

  As the waitress put their salads in front of them, Faith said, “Come on, there has to be something about him that you don’t like. Even if it’s a small thing.”

  “No, nothing,” Amy said honestly. “I wanted to throw the pots and pans at him when he told me he wanted me to go on this trip, but I’m coming to think that he was right.”

  “You aren’t going to tell him that, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Amy said. “He may be perfect, but I am not.”

  The two women laughed together and finished their lunches. The rest of the afternoon they spent chatting about their lives, but neither of them told anything revealing.

  Now, Amy put the food and plates on a tray and carried them outside. Faith and Zoë were sitting in silence, sipping their drinks, both staring off into nothing.

  This is ridiculous, Amy thought. We can’t spend our time like this. “Zoë,” she said sharply, “go make a big pitcher of iced tea. Faith, help Zoë, then get the knives and forks and napkins and bring them out here.” When neither of the women moved, Amy said, “When we get everything out here, Faith is going to tell us a story about a man named Tyler.”

  “Her husband?” Zoë asked, her voice bored.

  “No. Tyler is the blindingly handsome young man who she let slip through her fingers. It’s a love that haunts her and pulls her back into time. It is the chain that binds her to the past. It is the love that was to be but never happened.”

  Both Faith and Zoë were looking at Amy with their mouths open in astonishment.

  Go!” Amy said as though she were speaking to her young children. They scurried into the kitchen with the urgency of schoolkids. As Amy set out the food, she smil