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list them off for you? Tick them off on my fingers like this?” She held up one hand and flicked the tips of each finger with the other. One of her nails felt like the edge of a saw, and she realized with a start that she hadn’t resumed her regular manicure schedule.
    “He was my son, Jack.”
    “He was mine, too,” Jack said. “But that’s what you can’t seem to get. He was my son; he was Macy’s husband. And no matter what you think of her, she loved him. They shared a life.” He rolled onto his back and sighed. “Did you even come close to apologizing to her?”
    Magda rolled onto her back as well. She and Jack stared upward at the ceiling, its water stain a murky eye above their bed.
    “I didn’t have a chance,” Magda said after a span of silence, during which she tried, and failed, to match her breathing to Jack’s. His breaths were too deep, too far apart. “She hung up on me.”
    Magda nearly added, “But I don’t think I could have,” but she stopped herself.
    As if Jack had heard the words rattling around inside her head, he took a long inhale, as if he were going to say something else. Instead, he exhaled, blowing air out through his nose. They turned onto their sides, then, almost in unison, backs to each other and facing opposite walls.
    Magda watched the moon’s light dance over the tree branches outside their window, plating each leaf with a shadowy silver. She couldn’t see the moon, but she knew it hung somewhere in that night sky. Kind of like Nash, she thought. She could sense him sometimes. Even though she knew he wasn’t there with her, really, he was somewhere. Somewhere out there.
    And then came the vapor-thin dreams of Nash that she conjured every night on the border of sleep: nursing him in the wee hours of the night, his little eyes focused on her and his tiny hands impossibly soft and warm against the skin of her breast. His first day of school, when he ran back to her from the bus stop, placed a hand on either side of her face, and said, “Don’t cry, Mommy. I’m going to have a great day!” Watching him shoot free throws in their driveway. Coming downstairs late at night to find a high-school-age Nash, head capped with thick waves of orange hair, hunched over his homework, lips moving silently. His senior state debate performance—how handsome he looked that night in the navy blue suit they had bought him from JoS. A. Bank especially for that occasion. His graduation from college, and how Magda had been struck for the very first time, seeing him in his cap and gown, by how much like a full-grown man he looked, and how surprised she was, all of a sudden, that he barely resembled the freckled, glasses-wearing little boy of only a few years before.
    Somewhere, on the outer edges of those memories, Jack’s voice floated in and said, “I’m flying out to visit Macy next week,” and Magda settled deeper into Nash, not much caring any longer what the hell Jack did.

Chapter Three

    “ANOTHER DRINK, SIR?”
    Jack consulted his Beam and Coke and waved the flight attendant off with a half smile, so as not to seem rude. He had finished more than half of the drink, but had sipped it so slowly that the melted ice kept the glass nearly full.
    He had never been a big drinker, not even in college. But Magda still had a thing against Jim, Jack, Jose, or any of their kin. Not because she had a problem, or because she was the wife or daughter of someone with a problem. No, it was purely on principle. As long as he had known her, Magda had maintained complete control over every aspect of her life. Her sobriety was no different.
    Another flight attendant was already standing over him with latex gloves and a garbage bag, motioning at his drink. Jesus , Jack thought, they sure don’t give you any time to leisurely enjoy a drink anymore . Then he realized it was probably just another moneymaking ploy by the airlines. It wasn’t enough that they sold you a box lunch for the price of a