I refused to meet him at the Brentwood, suggesting instead that we meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called the Hang Chow. I told him that my mother and Nana would be coming with me.

“Sure,” he said. “Bring everyone. Bring your grandfather, too. It’ll be Old Home Day.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That would be better than Old Home Week.”

When dinnertime rolled around, Hunter was nowhere to be found. I was relieved. He’d been particularly erratic of late, getting drunk during the week and missing work. He was only three months from retirement, and I knew Nana dreaded the freedom he would soon have. I was counting the hours myself. I just wanted to get through graduation, get a summer job, and move out of the house before all the constraints of his work life disappeared. I’d received a financial aid package from N. C. State that would be more than adequate to cover my expenses in the fall, but I was still waiting to hear from UNC. Until I did, I couldn’t make my final arrangements, and though my mother had backed off from talking about her apartment plans, I knew she was waiting, too.

Lucky Eddie was late. We’d been in the Hang Chow for twenty minutes and drunk a pot of tea before he sauntered in, Jack behind him, and, bringing up the rear, a woman in her mid-forties with long black hair. She was dressed like the seventies Cher, complete with flared hip-hugger jeans and a fringed pocketbook.

“Frankie,” Eddie said, looking around the table as if trying to spot me in a large crowd. “Ah, there you are. Stand up. I want you to meet Shirley Chantrell. She’s a friend of mine from Parents without Partners.”

“Parents without Partners,” my mother said slowly. “What in the world . . .”

I stood up. “Hi, Shirley. Please, have a seat.”

She gave me a limp handshake and a vague smile. Eddie pulled out a chair for her and she sat down. My mother and grandmother introduced themselves. I avoided my mother’s eye and caught Jack’s instead. He shrugged. There was a story there, but I was going to have to wait to hear it.

“Dinner’s on me,” Eddie said. “Whatever you want. Where’s your grandfather?”

“He’s, um, busy.”

“Working late,” he observed equably. “He’s getting kind of long in the bone to be working those hours, isn’t he?”

“Tooth,” I corrected automatically.

“Yeah.” Eddie examined the menu. “So, what’s good here?”

“Everything except the Mongolian Beef,” I replied. “Too many green onions.”

“I like green onions,” Eddie boomed. “I’ll have that.”

We ordered family style. My mother ate in complete silence. Nana kept up a cheerful patter about absolutely nothing, and Jack nodded and answered my questions about Jane and his plans to join the Marine Corps. Shirley spoke very little, just enough to say that she had two teenaged girls who were spending the week with their father in California, and that she was glad to be able to make the trip to Raleigh with Eddie.

My father, meanwhile, shoveled rice into his mouth like a thirdworld orphan. Food flying, he kept up a running commentary about the drive, how much work was being done on the West Virginia Turnpike, how quickly they’d managed to get from Detroit to Raleigh, and how much the roads had changed, particularly around Research Triangle Park.

“I wouldn’t have known the place,” he said. “Who’d have thought? This used to be a haystack town.”

“Hayseed?” I suggested.

He squinted in a fashion reminiscent of the old Eddie. Then he smiled.

“She might be smarter than her old man,” he said to Shirley. “But we’ll see if she does as well in college as I did.”

Eddie had taken two drafting classes at Henry Ford Community College in the mid-nineteen seventies. He’d gotten an A in both, but over the years this experience had transformed in the telling. First, it became an associate’s degree and then a bachelor’s. Sometimes, he claimed to be an engineer at Ford’s. On other occasions he said he was a computer programmer. According to my mother, when we lived in Michigan he operated a stamping machine that pressed sheet metal into car doors.

“Have you decided where you’re going?” he asked. “You were thinking about N. C. State and Duke.”

“Carolina,” I said. “University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”

“Going to be an engineer like your old man?”

“No, I’m going to be an English major.”

He grimaced. “What’re you going to do with that? Teach?”