"Okay," Tom said. He didn't argue. She had thought he would. "Okay, Renee."
* * *
Later, in the parking lot, in a rain that had gone soft and fine as a mist off a florist's spray bottle, Nora caught up with her by the side of her car.
They stood there. Renee's flats were still wet. The bouquet, which she had never given her, which she had left on Ingrid's chair two hours and a lifetime ago, was lying on the passenger seat where Pete had put it, a little crushed, the ranunculus browning at the edges.
"I looked right through you," Nora said. "When I walked in. I did it on purpose."
"I tore up your mother's seat," said Renee. "On purpose."
"I know. I saw." Nora looked at her shoes. "You went and got her."
"She was already here. She'd been standing by the side door with her ear to the crack. I just—" Renee's voice caught. "I just held the door."
Nora was quiet. Then she stepped forward and put her arms around Renee, hard, the way she had not done since she was eleven, and put her face against Renee's wet shoulder, and Renee held on to her in the parking lot of Astoria High School with the gulls going over and the bouquet browning on the seat, and neither of them said anything at all for a long time, and it was enough. It was the most anything had ever been.
* * *