Barry sneaked a glance across the table at his mother. Although he avoided it when he could, she had a thing about family dinners. When he was growing up, the evening meal was always on the table exactly half an hour after his dad got home from work—mostly at the bank during the years he recalled. Dad had been gone for eight years, and now it was Barry who came in and met the polite question Mom had posed for more years than he could recall.
“How was your day, dear? Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes. You’ll have time to take off your tie and read the paper.”
From his long observation, he was pretty sure she never heard a word of the answer to her question. She probably really didn’t want to know. Come to think of it, while he had been married, Laurel had followed almost the same rit
