Loreen dried her hands on a dish towel and sat opposite him. “It’s not such a bad fife,” she said.

Tom gave her a long look. It was the kind of bald statement Loreen was prone to, couched in the slow Ohio Valley cadences of her youth. Her life here, she meant; her life with Tony: not so bad.

“I never said it was,” Tom told her.

“No. But I can tell. I know what you and Barbara thought of us.” She smiled at him. “Don’t be embarrassed. I mean, we might as well talk. It’s all right to talk.”

“You have a good life here.”

“Yes. We do. And Tony is a good man.”

“I know that, Loreen.”

“But we’re nothing special. Tony would never admit it, of course. But that’s the fact. Down deep, he knows. And maybe it makes him a little mean sometimes. And maybe I know it, and I get a little sad—for a little while. But then I get over it.”

“You’re not ordinary. You’re both very lucky.”

“Lucky, but ordinary. The thing is, Tom, what’s hard is that you and Barbara were special. It always tickled me to see you two. Because you were special and you knew it. The way you smiled at each other and the way you talked. The things you talked about. You talked about the world—you know, politics, the environment, whatever—you talked like it mattered. Like it was up to you personally to do something about it. I always felt just a little bigger than life with you two around.”

“I appreciate that,” Tom said. In fact he was unexpectedly grateful to her for saying it—for recognizing what Barbara had meant to him.

“But that’s changed.” Loreen was suddenly serious. Her smile faded. “Now Barbara’s gone, and I think you have to learn how to be ordinary. And I don’t think that’s going to be real easy for you. I think it’s going to be pretty tough.”