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little secret exchanged in public, right there on the dance floor.
    They were still marching in circles to “Strangers in the Night.” Rachel saw that most of the tables were beginning to be served their salad, and she hoped Jerry might allow them to sit down soon. She was starving, and of course the dinner would be excellent—Winnie and she had pored over faxed menus and finally decided on the roast beef and a chicken Kiev, which was Waugatuck’s specialty.
    “I’ve asked him plenty of questions about his head,” Jerry said, determined to continue. “And he seems all up to snuff.”
    “Actually the doctors say—”
    “I’m no medical expert, but seems to me he’s healthy enough, now. Dodged a bullet, is what I’d say.”
    “Maybe,” Rachel said. “But he doesn’t remember much, in any case. The accident, the surgeries—nothing. It’s all a blank.”
    “You mean he doesn’t know how he—”
    “It’s just gone, is all,” Rachel said. “Or that’s what they tell me.” Listening to this old man, a near stranger, voice every one of her own doubts was unfolding a surprising, slow warmth inside her, the sense of… finally!
    “Let me get this straight,” Jerry said. Rachel noticed his breathing was a bit labored. “Your husband quit his job, for all intents and purposes…to write a whole book about a day he can’t even remember?”
    Rachel stifled a smile. Not bad, she thought. There were two tiny medical bandages taped to the side of his head, near his ear. “It’s your wedding day,” she said. “Let’s just enjoy it.”
    “One last. Thing,” huffed Jerry. They had slowed considerably, although the song was now a Motown classic, designed to get the floor jumping. “The house.”
    “Hmm?” Surely the entrées would be out by now.
    “Your mother won’t want to do anything substantial. She has a notion it will bother me. But I told her you’d help—you ladies can fix it up all you want. Encourage her. Good for her.”
    “The house?” Rachel followed Jerry’s stiff gait off the dance floor. She waved back— hi there! Just one second! —distracted, to several friends who beckoned. “What are you talking about?”
    “Scotch and soda,” Jerry said, and sat heavily. Not his table, but close enough. “Someone move my drink?”
    “Jerry,” Rachel said, “What house?” Though a sharp little awareness now bloomed inside her. The time she’d teased her mother about having to clear out closet space, make room for a man’s things, in her tidy one-bedroom apartment. The way Winnie, hemming and hawing, avoided her eyes.
    “Fifty Greenham, of course,” Jerry said. He squinted up at her, annoyed. “Closed yesterday. Is that the waiter?”
    She couldn’t have.
    Rachel stumbled through a conversation with Marilyn French, who’d played the piano during cocktail hour, and excused herself suddenly, rudely. Then she was caught by Sandy Hinton, who fretted lightly in the form of a joke that no one from Hand Me Down, the children’s clothes consignment store where Rachel worked, had called her back yet about a double stroller, hardly used. If they weren’t interested, surely she could find…Rachel promised to pick it up on Monday, and broke away. Her cheeks were burning. No. She couldn’t have—Jerry had it all wrong. Not that business-mogul Jerry could make a mistake about something this substantial. Not about that property—the one everyone in Hartfield talked about, a true 1920s Tudor right on Greenham Avenue, a stately oak-lined street that arched high above the center of town. Rachel shook her head, dumbfounded. A part of her had to admire the sheer craziness of this endeavor. He bought that place? For two eighty-year-olds to live in? It must be falling down, now nothingbut the shell of a once-grand property—a structure people slowed down to point out as one of Hartfield’s eccentric oddities.
    “My God, Mom,” Rachel muttered to herself, in the hallway leading to the