"Well, we've both been busy. Hazards of age, I guess. You've got your work, I've got mine, I've got the kids and the family, you know how it is. I'll ask Andy what his schedule looks like. Maybe we'll manage to get a day when Susanna's home and not holed up grading papers—I don't think you've met her yet, but you'd like her, I think."

Susanna was a relatively new addition to the family, within the last couple years, but a welcome one—she'd apparently gone to one of Andy's band's gigs near the university where she worked, which was how they'd originally hit it off. Thankfully she got along with the rest of the family fairly well, and took their general weirdness deftly in stride.

"Maybe Saturday? I'm off that day, people will be home, I'm pretty sure Andy will want to be out of the house at night." Maybe that's what nagged at her; him distancing himself felt at times like it had when Vera had been on one of her self-destructive kicks.