But she had never been as good at catching, holding on to things—taxicabs, elevator doors, a husband, slipping closed and past, already on their way to another floor, another life. Her son had nestled into her heart, all tousled hair and awkward elbows, and then he was off to college. Her parents had died. And now Jack had left her, rocketing like a boy down a water slide into the exuberance of his new, defiantly not-middle-aged existence. “I should learn to be slippery,” Caroline said to Marion when they met for coffee a few days after Kate’s celebration in the garden. “I need to be sleek and unobtainable. All silk suits and no commitments.” “You know what silk is made out of,” Marion commented mildly. She pushed her silver hair back from her face and studied her friend. MARION WAS A PERSON who had held on to Caroline. They had met years before, when Marion was writing an article about public yet intimate gathering spots, the modern equivalents of the old woodstove in the general store of pioneer days.
