Hope followed Ian, wearing a frown of annoyance unusual for a summer morning. For Hope, a summer morning was as close as she ever expected to get to heaven: the prospect of a day in her pony cart, filling the cart with good food and her head with good talk from her friends, was a tonic she waited for during the entire school year. In her first summer of retirement, and perhaps with Ian’s company—although she would not admit how much she looked forward to the time she spent with him—Hope was grown younger. From Eden and Marty, just last week, had come welcome news. There would be a grandchild, or, as they were graceful enough to refer to it, “another” grandchild, not long after Christmas—a plan that simple arithmetic proved had apparently been in place for some time. “Did you tell him he was going?” Hope said. “I didn’t tell him that he was going.” “Did you tell him he was not going?” “I didn’t tell him he wasn’t going either.” “Nice,” Hope and Claudia said together.
