"Acknowledging her," said Dad. "That's all that was needed, maybe. To acknowledge her. That she called him that. And then it's OK."

"Yes," said Mom. "You can call him that, really. It won't bother me now, because I've, because I've spoken of her."

"But you should have spoken of it before," said Mad. "Two days I've been driving you bonkers with—"

"No, no, nothing like that," said Mom, "I just—every time you said it, you called him that, I wanted to speak, to say, 'That's what Lizzy called him,' and it wasn't even going to be a complaint, just a comment, just to say, I don't know, that she still has a place in our home, in our memories. But when I thought of saying it, I just, it just felt like something clamped down inside me and I couldn't speak."

"Well," said Dad, "you're speaking now."

"See?" said Mom. "Quentin was right to just bring things out in the open. We were being on our best behavior a bit too much, weren't we? Why, I'm—I'm almost exhausted with politeness. And yet I really do like you, Madeleine, dear. I just wanted so much to make a good impression, I suppose."

"The main thing," said Dad, "is this: Dinner in or dinner out?"

It was dinner in and now, at last, it was as if his parents had come out of hiding. There was chatter and banter and some catty gossip about neighbors and other church members, and the laughter was genuine and Mad actually got to see what life in his home was like.

And when, about ten that night, he suggested that he and Mad might take a walk around the old neighborhood, Dad yawned and said, "About time we got rid of you for a few minutes, you two. Let these old bones go to bed." And that was that. Mad and Quentin would be alone together.

They held hands walking from streetlight to streetlight. "They used to just be mounted to the telephone poles," said Quentin. "Then when they were building the expressway over the old creekbed behind the house, they buried all the phone lines and put up these aluminum poles. Shame, too. Because Lizzy and I had scratched graffiti into all the old poles. Like marking our territory. No good trying to mark anything on these things." He slapped the pole and it rang metallically.