Free Acts of Love by Emily Listfield

else’s time. Ann went back to school and to her part-time job in the hospital gift shop, and Ted took a job with a local construction firm.
    During those first weeks of marriage, Ann used to drive almost every morning to Jonathon and Estelle’s house, park a few blocks away, and slip round to the back windows. Sometimes she caught sight of them reading the paper, wandering about the kitchen, loaded plates in hand—still eating and dressing, the lights still on—and she was bewildered by her past conviction of indispensability. Who had been fooling whom? Confused, she put off the moment of re-entry.
    It crossed her mind, too, that she would be unforgiven for her elopement, for her desertion. She knew that they held feuds—with grocers they thought had once tried to cheat them out of two dollars, with parents who had dismissed Jonathon—clutching them, embellishing them for years. After all, they never gave anything away.
    When she tried to talk to Ted of her concern, he brushed it aside. He had written to tell his family of his marriage only at her insistence, and the letter had come back with no forwarding address.
    â€œWe’ll be orphans in spirit if not in fact,” he told her as he took her in his arms.
    But that was a sort of freedom, untethered, bereft, that she had never sought, and she shrank instinctively from his brusque readiness to excise any cord that might cause him to trip.
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    O N HER NEXT DAY OFF , Ann made a Sacher torte and drove with it resting carefully by her side to Jonathon and Estelle’s. This time, she parked in front of the house and rang the bell, something she had never done before.
    Jonathon opened the door. “What’s the matter, did you forget your keys?”
    â€œNo, I just thought…”
    â€œWell, come in.”
    She did not kiss him hello. He had never been physical with his daughters, though he reached often and tenderly for Estelle, and a kiss would have embarrassed him, or, worse, become an excuse for his ridicule. They walked in silence past cartons of books that led like a mossy stone wall into the living room, where Estelle sat watching a game show on television.
    She turned, smiled briefly at Ann, and went back to her show. Ann, the Sacher torte on her lap, had no choice but to watch along as a woman guessed the meaning of the puzzle and won $4,700. When the theme music piped up, Estelle turned to Ann. “Why don’t we go in the back? I’m a little tired.”
    Ann followed her mother to the bedroom and waited while she settled onto the edge of her bed.
    â€œSit,” Estelle said, patting the bed beside her. She took Ann’s hands in hers, which were remarkably smooth and unmottled. “Is he good to you?” she asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Estelle nodded. “I’m sure there’s advice I’m supposed to give you, but I can’t think what it might be.”
    They sat in silence, hands entwined, the cake beside them, while Estelle tried to remember.
    â€œYour father and I have always been very happy. He is”—she paused, rummaging for the right word, the right explanation for what was essentially inexplicable, that she could literally not imagine herself without this man—“indispensable.” She pursed her lips, dissatisfied with what she had found. “But that’s fate, of course. There’s nothing you can do about that. Like a cat, it never comes when you call it.” She sighed and leaned back against the headboard. “Maybe you and Ted will have fate, too.”
    It sounded like a disease to Ann.
    â€œLuck is almost as good,” Estelle went on, closing her eyes. “You are our luck, you and Sandy. My beautiful little girls.” Her lids fluttered sleepily. “I suppose we should give you a party. Who shall we invite?”
    Anne slipped out of the room while Estelle, carried along on a tide of long-forgotten names, Ann’s classmates from