She was happy.

“What shall we speak about?” Wales said.

“My family,” Jena said. “Is that all right?”

“I’ll make an exception.”

“I mean my parents,” she said, “not my husband or my daughters.” Jena had been married twenty years, though her two children were young. One was ten, he could remember, the other possibly six. She liked her rich husband, who encouraged her to do everything she wanted. Take flying lessons. Spend summers in Ibiza alone. Never consider employment. Know men. She needed only to stay married to him—that was the agreement. He was older—Wales’s age. It was satisfactory. Merely not perfect.

She put ten slender fingertips onto the cold window glass and held them there as though against piano keys, then looked back at him and smiled. “Where are your parents?” she asked. She had asked this twice before and forgotten twice.

“Rhode Island,” Wales said. “My father’s eighty-four. My mother has, well … ” He didn’t care if he said this, but still he hesitated. “My mother has Alzheimer’s.”

“Would she recognize you?”

“Would?” Wales said. “She would if she could, I suppose.”

“Does she?”

“No.”

“And do you have siblings?” This she hadn’t asked before. She often chose unlikeable words. Siblings. Interaction. Network. Bond. Words her friends said.

“One sister, who’s older. In Arizona. We’re not close. I don’t like her very much.”

“Hmm.” Jena pulled her fingers away, just barely, then touched them back to the glass. Her legs were crossed. She was barelegged and barefoot and no doubt cold. She was being polite by asking.