After our talk, my mother had filled me in on the gruesome details. Apparently the Patty thing had been going on for a while, since even before my mother and Don met. Patty had been married, and the affair had been a series of breakups and makeups, ultimatums and backsliding, finally ending with Don saying if she wasn’t serious enough to leave her husband, he was moving on. Don’s marrying my mother, however, was a catalyst for her subsequent separation, and while they’d tried to stay apart they couldn’t, in Don’s words, “fight the feeling.” My mother winced as she repeated this phrase: I was sure I winced hearing it. It was Patty who’d sent the picture, fed up with waiting. Don, according to my mother, hadn’t even denied it, instead sighing and walking into the bedroom to pack a bag. This, I felt, said a lot. What kind of car salesman doesn’t at least try to talk his way out of things?

“He couldn’t,” my mother said when I asked her this. “He loves her.”

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

“It was unfortunate,” she agreed. She was taking it so well, but I wondered if she was just still in shock. “Everything, in the end, comes down to timing.”

I considered this as I piled the steaks onto a plate, then went out to the fancy new grill, opening it up. After struggling for about fifteen minutes with the high-tech, supposed-to-be-moron-proof ignition system, I decided I liked having my eyebrows intact and instead dug out our old Weber grill from behind a stack of lawn chairs. A few handfuls of charcoal, some fluid, and I was in business.

As I poked at the coals, I kept thinking about Dexter. If once he had been a loose end, now it was a full hanging string, capable of pulling everything apart with one good tug. Chalk it up to another bad boyfriend story, one more added to the canon. It was where I’d intended him to be, all along.

I was in the kitchen, arranging some chips and salsa on a plate, when Chris and Jennifer Anne pulled up. They came across the lawn, carrying her trademark Tupperware, and they were holding hands. I could only imagine how Jennifer Anne, who’d found my cynicism about this marriage to be completely abhorrent, would react to this latest family news. Chris, I figured, would instantly move into protective mode for my mother’s sake while privately feeling grateful to have his bread back, butts and all.

They came in the front door, chatting and laughing. They sounded positively giddy, in fact. As they got closer to the kitchen. I looked up, noticing they were both flushed, and Jennifer Anne was as relaxed as I’d ever seen her, as if she’d had a double dose of self-esteem affirmations that day. Chris looked pretty happy too, at least until he saw the empty space on the wall over the breakfast table.

“Oh, man,” he said, his face falling. Next to him, Jennifer Anne was still grinning. “What’s going on?”

“Well,” I said. “Actually-”

“We’re engaged!” Jennifer Anne shrieked, thrusting her left hand out in front of her.

“-Don’s got a mistress, and he’s left to be with her,” I finished.

For a minute, there was total silence as Jennifer Anne caught up with what I’d said, and I backtracked, clumsily, finally hearing her news. Then, at the same time, we both blurted out, “What?”

“Oh, my God,” Chris groaned, stumbling back against the fridge with a thud.

“You’re engaged?” I said.

“It’s just-” Jennifer Anne said, putting a hand to her face. Now I could see a ring on her finger: a good-size diamond, so sparkly as it caught the light shining from over the sink.

“Wonderful,” I heard my mother say, and turning around I saw she’d come in behind me, and was now standing there, her eyes a bit watery, but smiling. “Oh, my. It’s just wonderful. ”

It says something about my mother, and her utter and total belief in the love stories she not only wrote but lived, that she was able to say this then, not two hours after her fifth marriage had dissolved in a puddle of deceit, bad clichés, and discarded Ensure cans. As I watched her move across the room, pulling Jennifer Anne into her arms, I felt an appreciation for her I would not have been capable of three months earlier. My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.

We ate at the table in the backyard, off paper plates. My mother’s contribution: Brazilian beefsteaks, imported artichoke salad, and fresh Italian bread, baked just that day. Jennifer Anne’s: macaroni and cheese, salad with iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing, and a Jell-O mold with whipped cream. Worlds may have been colliding, but as the conversation began to roll around to wedding plans and preparations, it was clear there was a common ground.

“I just have no idea where to start,” Jennifer Anne said. She and Chris held hands all through dinner, which was somewhat disgusting but a bit tolerable, considering the newness of their engaged status. “Reception halls, cakes, invitations… the whole thing. It’s overwhelming.”

“It’s not that bad,” I told her, spearing a bit of lettuce with my fork. “Just get a folder, a notebook, and get second estimates on everything. And don’t use the Inverness Inn because they overcharge and never have toilet paper in the bathrooms.”

“Oh, weddings are always fun!” my mother chirped, sipping on her glass of wine. And for a second I caught her as a wave of sadness crossed over her face. But she shook it off, smiling at Chris instead. “Anything you two need, help, money… let me know. Promise you will.”