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that Mallory, ever positive that no situation couldn’t be improved by wine, approached with a bottle in each hand. “I would have gone for the champagne but it would have given you all head…” she trailed off as she saw Tim and Jacquie standing while the rest of us sat.
    “I’m so sorry we can’t stay,” Tim said. “Please give Owen my best. I’ll stop by next week to see him.”
    “But,” Mallory said.
    Tim lifted a finger that appeared to press Mallory’s lips closed from across the table. “I thought it would be good for her, for us, but I think we both made a mistake.”
    Mallory put the bottles down and started to come around to the Neilsens’ side of the table, but then stopped. Tim reached out his hand and shook Carlo’s politely, and Elias’s as well, while Lulu kept her hands in her lap and looked stricken. Jacquie made her little murmuring sounds, an “ah-ha” and a “hmmm,” but now they sounded like tiny verbal uppercuts to someone’s jaw.
    Without saying good-bye to Mallory or the Manwarings, Jacquie said once more, “I can’t,” then turned and walked across the lawn, Tim making her lean against him as she stumbled either because of unaccustomed heels or because her knees were buckling as she walked.
    I picked up Tim’s business card that had been left on the table and turned it over. On the back, along with a phone number, Jacquie had written Help me .

 
    Ten
    Still standing, Mallory watched them go off a little way, then without a word poured wine in our glasses to a level that she would usually disparage. She lifted hers, and when we lifted ours, wondering what the most appropriate Mallory toast could possibly be at a moment like this, she said with a shake of her head as well as the hand that held the glass, “Fuck.”
    It was rude and unfeeling, but I tell you, in that moment it felt like a perfect prayer, and it felt as if we had permission to be real. Lulu gave a mirthless laugh, took a slug of wine, and dropped her face into her free hand in the first sincere gesture I’d seen at the table. Elias raised his glass a little higher and followed suit with a sad “My heart is breaking for her.”
    Mallory fell back into her chair rather than simply sitting down and said, “I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry. Why didn’t I realize? I’m an utter monster.”
    “They accepted the invitation, Mallory,” I said. “They couldn’t even foresee what the effect would be. She wasn’t ready.”
    They took turns telling me, with the Manwarings able to offer much more than Mallory could. Whether it was Christian concern or good old-fashioned gossip didn’t matter to me. I watched Elias and Lulu bat the facts back and forth as we listened and Mallory spurred them on as the need arose, apparently grateful that at least the conversation was flowing.
    “Their son, Joe, died about six months ago. It was horrible.”
    I thought of another person I knew who’d lost his child, and I knew that six months, six years, was nothing. But except for Carlo, I still kept thoughts like that to myself rather than have to answer questions about how I knew all that, about the details.
    “Accident. Drowning. Pool.”
    “Suicide.”
    “Which?” asked Mallory. “I heard both rumors, never knew what they finally decided.”
    “No, it was that thing they do with sex.”
    Lulu said, “No, that’s just another rumor. If you ever talk to Jacquie again don’t even hint that you heard that. At the funeral she overheard someone say he was found with his pants unzipped and she went ballistic right there in front of everyone.”
    “In denial,” Elias said.
    “But why are they upset with you?” Mallory asked. “I thought they left the church because of some crisis of faith, and I thought I could do some—”
    “It’s a whole other issue,” Lulu started.
    “Denial,” Elias repeated. “Tim Neilsen is a goddamn homophobe.” He held out his glass to Mallory for a refill.
    Lulu seemed relieved to