“Stay for dinner?" Jane offered. "Nothing spectacular.”

Sharon shook her head. "I've got Chinese carryout ordered. In fact, I better get home and watch for it. Sure you don't need napkins, tablecloths, silverware, or something else I don't have to cook?”

When Sharon had gone, Jane fixed the kids and herself sandwiches and macaroni and cheese for dinner, went on with her baking, and started the first of many loads of washing that needed to be done. Todd put a new bag in the vacuum cleaner, which he insisted on calling "the Big Suck," in preparation for a marathon session of cleaning the next morning. Katie pitched in by devoting a full phone-free hour to cleaning every inch of the guest bathroom. This kind of cooperation and thoroughness was so astonishing to Jane that she was tempted to stand and admire the miracle of it.

Jane's mother had once told her that daughters don't get to be a pleasure to have arounduntil it's almost time to lose them and Jane was starting to see the truth in that. After a couple years of constant tears, arguments, and raging hormones, Katie was gradually turning into a very nice young woman. And in less than two years, she'd be going off to college.

Pull yourself together, you sap, Jane told herself briskly. You always turn into a blubbering wimp at Christmastime.

It didn't help that Billy Joe Johnson had his music back on. The volume wasn't nearly so deafening, although Jane could hear every lyric distinctly inside her house and suspected that outdoors it was probably intolerable. Still, she hummed along with the familiar melodies as she finished up the last batch of date-roll cookies and started packing the day's culinary output into lidded plastic containers that were intended for shoes and sweaters but were perfect for cookie storage. The floor was still sticky. She had inadvertently added some flour to the icing in her hair.