“Greg was the stranger?” Jeffrey said. “He was Tess’s husband. Twelve years they were married.”

“He made her miserable.”

“Did he?” Jeffrey said. Jeffrey’s understanding of Greg and Tess’s marriage—before April Peck—was that Tess had loved Greg with the same ardor and enthusiasm that she loved everyone else in her life. “So you wish you’d… what? Spoken up at their wedding, when the priest offered the chance?”

“He hurt her,” Andrea said. “Last fall, that whole thing? He cut her heart out. And she was never the same. The week they separated? God, Jeffrey. We talked for hours. She was trying to make sense of it. Do you think he lied to me? Do you think he lied to Flanders? Do you think something happened between him and that girl? And the answer is, Yes, of course. Something happened, we don’t know what, we’ll never know exactly what. And there’s Greg, sending flowers and hounding her cell phone and calling the house begging and pleading…”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said. “That was a weird week.”

While Tess was at the Kapenash house with the twins, Greg had taken refuge at Jeffrey and Delilah’s. It was, of all awful things, the week of Thanksgiving, the holiest family holiday, but despite that, or maybe because of that, Tess decided to take the kids and leave. She had meant to go to her brother’s house in Pembroke, to visit her mother at the nursing home in Duxbury, but in the end she had simply sought refuge with Andrea. She slept with Andrea in Andrea’s bed and the kids slept in the guest room. And Greg, although he had his house to himself, slept on Jeffrey and Delilah’s leather couch each night. He never stayed over intentionally—otherwise he would have used the guest room. He came over for dinner and drinks, and he and Delilah stayed up so late talking and he was so drunk that he ended up crashing on the couch. And in the morning he would be awakened by Drew and Barney and SpongeBob SquarePants. He would eat Delilah’s delicious breakfasts, talk about going home to grab a shower, but then there would be college football and lunch and Barney begging him to play the guitar… and he just stayed on and on. A few of those nights, Greg and Delilah worked at the Begonia and came home absurdly late. Jeffrey was busy at the farm market—the kitchen had orders for three hundred fresh turkeys and six times that many side dishes—and if he didn’t catch every nuanced detail of what was going on, could anyone blame him? Delilah was the head paramedic of this particular train wreck; she was in charge of tending to Greg. Jeffrey noted Greg’s attempts to reach Tess, but she was not taking his calls. He heard about a bouquet of flowers sent, and returned to the florist by Tess. Jeffrey wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole thing; what he wanted was to stay out of it. This was, no doubt, what the Chief was doing, and this was what Addison and Phoebe were doing. The prizefight was between Tess (and her trainer, Andrea) and Greg (and his trainer, Delilah) in the opposite corner. Jeffrey did not love it that his house had inadvertently become Greg’s camp; he felt like he was harboring a fugitive.

There had been one night in particular that bothered Jeffrey. It was four-thirty in the morning and Jeffrey was rising for the day when he noticed that Delilah was not in bed. He tiptoed out to the kitchen for coffee and he heard Greg’s voice. Greg was murmuring to someone. Although Jeffrey was the last person to eavesdrop, he couldn’t help it—and goddamn it, this was his house. Jeffrey thought, If he is talking to Delilah like that, I am going to throw him out. Because, really, Jeffrey had had enough of the Greg and Delilah confidante thing. Greg was not good for Delilah, or for Jeffrey and Delilah’s marriage.

But when Jeffrey reached the kitchen, he saw that Greg was on his cell phone. Greg noticed Jeffrey and said quickly, “I’ll call you later.” And hung up. And then, despite the fact that Greg had seen Jeffrey and Jeffrey had seen Greg, Greg closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

Delilah, as it turned out, was upstairs sleeping with Barney, who tended to wake up in the middle of the night and want his mother.

Jeffrey did not say anything to Greg about the phone call, but he knew it wasn’t Tess on the other end.

Then there was Thanksgiving itself. Tess had ceded a little ground and allowed Greg to see the kids in the morning. Greg had hoped for a family reconciliation for the holiday, and learning that he was only gaining custody for four hours like the divorced man he was sure to become depressed him. He had nothing planned. Delilah suggested that he take the kids to breakfast at the Downyflake, or for a walk on the beach, but Greg seemed eager to avoid quality time when the twins might have a chance to ask him questions he was ill-equipped to answer, such as Why is Mom so mad at you? or Why are we living at Auntie’s house?

Instead Greg took the twins over to the Drake house, and this, in combination with the overheard phone call, led Jeffrey to understand that Greg was lost, hapless, and in possession of the maturity of a twelve-year-old boy. Jeffrey therefore took over. He rescued the kids from the PlayStation by driving everyone to the farm, where they went for a hayride. Jeffrey drove the tractor, and Delilah and Greg sat in the back with the kids. The kids liked the bumps, and Jeffrey obliged them. The day was sunny but cold. Jeffrey took the long way, all the way around the edge of the property. Time and circumstances were suspended. Everyone had fun, and at the end of the ride they drank apple cider and ate moist pumpkin muffins, and then suddenly it was one o’clock. Delilah had to get home to check on the turkey, and Greg had to get the kids back to the Kapenash house.