“Um, no, she didn’t.”
“I just feel you-all might have the answers.”
“Oh, well, answers,” Reverend Emmett said. “Actually, Mrs.—”
“Bobbeen.”
“Actually, Mrs. Bobbeen …”
Ian grinned.
He was halfway down the stairs when he felt a kind of echo effect — a memory just beyond his reach. He paused, and Danny stepped forward to present his firstborn. “Here she is!” he said. But then the moment slid sideways like a phonograph needle skipping a groove, and all at once it was Lucy he was presenting. “I’d like you to meet the woman who’s changed my life,” he said. His face was very solemn but Lucy was smiling. “Your what?” she seemed to be saying. “Your, what was that? Oh, your
life.” And she tipped her head and smiled. After all, she might have said, this was an ordinary occurrence. People changed other people’s lives every day of the year. There was no call to make such a fuss about it.