"The new-old house is fine," I replied.

Mallory grinned at me and raised her eyebrows. "And how's your mom?" she asked meaningfully. Mallory knows about my mother and Mr. Spier, and loves to hear about them. She likes most of all to hear about when they were in love in high school and what had happened to drive them apart. I'd told her as much as I knew, which wasn't much. Several times I had asked Mom why she and Mary Anne's father ended their relationship. It had something to do with Mom's parents not approving of the Spiers because they didn't have much money (Mom's parents have tons of money), but I didn't know the whole story.

"Honey," she said, "it's not really very interesting."

"I think it is. You two were in love, but you went off to college and never saw each other again. I think it's romantic . . . and sad."

"Our paths just never crossed. Our vacations usually came at different times. During the summers, I stayed inCalifornia and worked. And at Christmastime, Granny and Pop-Pop would take me to theBahamas ."

"Didn't you think about Mr. Spier, though?"

"Sometimes, yes. But we were young. We had new lives and new interests. We were both busy with school. And then I met your father, and Mr. Spier met Mary Anne's mother — and you know the rest of the story."

I sure did. The rest of the story is that my mother and father got married, got unhappy, and got divorced. They just weren't right for each other. Dad is super-organized. And Mom is a crazy person — not nasty crazy, just an absentminded-professor type.

Jeff and I are actually used to finding the mixing bowls carefully put away in the linen closet, or finding her mending clothes we outgrew two years earlier. And although we've been living in our new-old house for several months, there is still a gigantic pile of unpacked cartons in the dining room. Every now and

then I start to go through one, and each time Mom runs in and says, "Dawn, you don't have to bother with that, honey. Let me do it." And then she doesn't do it.