“Of course. You can call me anytime. I’d love to hear all about it.” Then, “I love you, Kevin.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

She hung up the phone, feeling both happy and sad, which was how she usually felt whenever they talked on the phone when he was with his father.

“Who was that?” Deanna said from behind her. She had come down the stairs wearing a yellow tiger-striped blouse, red shorts, white socks, and a pair of Reeboks. Her outfit screamed “I’m a tourist!” and Theresa did her best to keep a straight face.

“It was Kevin. I gave him a call.”

“Is he doing okay?” She opened the closet and grabbed a camera to complete the ensemble.

“He’s fine. He leaves in a couple of days.”

“Good, that’s good.” She draped the camera around her neck. “And now that that’s taken care of, we have some shopping to do. We’ve got to get you looking like a new woman.”

*  *  *

Shopping with Deanna was an experience.

Once they got to Provincetown, they spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in a variety of shops. Theresa bought three new outfits and a new swimsuit before Deanna dragged her into a place called Nightingales, a lingerie shop.

Deanna went absolutely wild in there. Not for herself, of course, but for Theresa. She would pick up lacy, see-through underwear and matching bras off the racks and hold them up for Theresa to evaluate. “This looks pretty steamy,” she’d say, or, “You don’t have any this color, do you?” Naturally there would be others around as she blurted these things out, and Theresa couldn’t help but laugh whenever she did it. Deanna’s lack of inhibition was one of the things that Theresa loved most about her. She really didn’t care what other people thought, and Theresa often wished she could be more like her.

After taking two of Deanna’s suggestions—she was on vacation, after all—the two spent a couple of minutes in the record store. Deanna wanted the latest CD from Harry Connick Jr.—“He’s cute,” she said in explanation—and Theresa bought a jazz CD of one of John Coltrane’s earlier recordings. When they returned to the house, Brian was reading the paper in the living room.