“Thanks.”

“You could take a minute and have a cup of coffee,” she says.

Actually, I can’t, Frank thinks. He still has to get back to the bait shack for the sunset rush, then go home, shower, shave, and dress, and go pick up Donna. But he doesn’t say this to her, either. The subject of Donna might cause Patty to kick the coffee over on his leg accidentally, or to try to flush an entire roll of paper towels down the upstairs toilet. Or maybe just to kick me in the balls while I’m vulnerable, Frank thinks.

“I have to get to the bait shop,” he says. But he slides out, sits up, and takes a sip of the coffee. It’s actually not bad, which surprises him. He didn’t marry Patty for her cooking. He married her more because she looked like that movie star Ida Lupino and still does, and he was crazy about her, and, her being a good Italian girl, she wouldn’t let him past second base without a ring on her finger. So Frank did the bulk of the cooking at home when they were married, and they were already divorced when the termcontrol freak came into vogue. Now he says, “This is good.”

“Surprise,” she says, sitting on the floor next to him. “That’s really something about Jill, isn’t it?”

“I’ll find a way to pay for it.”

“I’m not nagging you about money,” she says, looking a little hurt. “I just thought it would be nice to take a moment and share some parental pride.”

“You did a good job with that kid, Patty,” Frank says.

“We both did.”

Her eyes start to tear up, and Frank feels his own eyes get a little moist. He knows what they’re both thinking about-that morning in the delivery room, after the long, hard labor, when Jill was finally born. And it was a busy morning, lots of babies, so the doctors and nurses finished up with them, and Frank was so tired that he crawled onto the gurney with his wife and new baby and they all fell asleep together. She gets up suddenly and says, “Fix the damn thing. You’ve got to get to the bait shop, and I’m going to be late for yoga.”