I was there when your son ate pizza for the first time, Patrick. I helped teach him how to share. I was there, and I’m still here.

He didn’t look too happy tonight as he dumped his boxes in the back of his pickup truck. He didn’t look like a man who was getting married and having a baby. He looked sort of grumpy and middle-aged, to be honest.

I guess it could have been the fact that he knew I was there watching him. I know my presence infuriates him, but, I don’t know, I sensed there was something else. I know him better than anyone.

When he put the last box in the pickup truck, he came over to my car. I wound down my window and he bent down and leaned in and said, “Hi, Saskia.”

I was taken aback. He hasn’t said my name in such a long time. Or if he had said it, he’d yelled it, as if even the very word “Saskia” was something evil and disgusting.

This time he said it in such a normal way, like I was an old friend.

And for a second I was filled with jubilant, insane hope. He’s leaving her, I thought. He’s back. It’s him again. It’s all over. All I had to do was wait it out.

But then he spoke, and I saw that he was actually angrier than I’d ever seen him before. It was like he was carrying a bomb and he had to walk and talk very quietly and carefully so it wouldn’t detonate. He said, “I don’t want you going anywhere near Ellen again. Do you understand me? Follow me, if you must, but leave her alone. She’s done nothing to deserve this.”

He was going all knight-in-shining-armor, protecting his fair maiden from the dragon. Me. I was the dragon.

“I haven’t—”

“The book.”

“I was returning it!”

“The flower.” He spat out the word “flower.” You’d think I’d left her a dead animal.

“Patrick, I like Ellen,” I said. I wanted to reassure him that I wasn’t any danger to her. The flower was meant to be a sort of friendly, even apologetic gesture. I wanted her gone somewhere far away, yes, but I didn’t want to hurt her.

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Don’t even talk about her. Don’t—Jesus.”

He took a deep breath and puffed up his cheeks to blow out. I remembered how we used to say to Jack, “Deep breath, deep breath,” when he was having a tantrum and trying to learn how to control his anger.

“Do you remember—” I started to say.

“When is this ever going to end?” Now he was using this fake, flat, reasonable voice.

I said, “I won’t ever stop loving you, if that’s what you mean.”

He said, “You don’t love me. You don’t even know me anymore. You love my memory, that’s all.”

I said, “You’re wrong.”

He sighed and said, “Fine, you love me, but what’s the point? I’m marrying Ellen.”

I said, “I know. Congratulations, on the baby too.”

His face changed again, and he said, “How do you know about the baby?” And then he said, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” He pushed himself away from the car and walked off.

I called after him, “Do you remember when Jack ate pizza for the first time?”

And then suddenly he stopped and went still, and he turned around and yelled, “Yes, I remember! We had some happy times! So what? So what?”

He lifted his palms in the air, with his fingers splayed, and I saw his hands were trembling.

“This can’t go on,” he said, and he really sounded quite strange. “This has to stop.”

“I know,” I said, and I sounded and felt perfectly calm. “You have to come back to me.”

The plate Ellen had thrown against the wall was one of her grandmother’s. It was part of a set that her grandmother had received as a wedding present from her own parents. Ellen loved that dinner set. If there was a fire, she’d run back to save it. She couldn’t believe that she’d thrown one of those precious, irreplaceable plates against the wall. And over such a silly, trivial thing. It wasn’t like Patrick had just announced he was having an affair. They’d just had a disagreement over conflicting social engagements!

She did not behave like that. Imagine if her clients could see her!

She knelt down on the floor and regretfully picked up the broken pieces.

“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said out loud. “That was really embarrassing.”

She saw an image of her grandmother in the spirit world (she would be busy helping out on some spirit world committee; she had always been a very civic sort of person), looking up from her paperwork to observe Ellen over the rims of her glasses. “That’s not like you, darling.”

“I know,” said Ellen. “It’s so strange!”

The phone rang. It was her mother.

“I just broke one of Grandma’s plates,” Ellen told her. “The wedding present set.”

“Those plates always gave me such a musty, fusty feeling,” said Anne. “I’d keep them handy for throwing against the wall whenever you have an argument with Patrick. Not that you’d ever do anything like that, would you? I guess if you two have an argument you just meditate together, or chant or align your auras or something.”

“I actually did throw it against the wall,” said Ellen.

“You did?” Her mother sounded impressed.

“Yes,” said Ellen. She was suddenly furious with her mother. “And Patrick and I do not chant or meditate together and I do not believe in auras, well, not as an actual physical manifestation, and anyway, you don’t align your auras, you align your chakras. If you’re going to be cutting, at least get your terminology right.”