It was.
His mother brought the hash and the cinnamon toast to the table and poured three coffees and sat down with them, and for a while it was simply breakfast, simple and warm and loud with knives and forks. Hal Szabo, his mother reported, had already been over at seven to shovel her front walk with his new snowblower, which she had not asked him to do, and he had stayed for coffee and told her about the Yankees for forty minutes, which she had also not asked him to do. She said this in a tone of great forbearance, and her cheeks went a little pink when she said it, and Wes, who had been away a long time, filed this away for later.
Then his mother buttered a piece of cinnamon toast, very slowly, and said, as if remarking on the weather, "Delia, dear. Wesley wrote me that you were a dental hygienist."
Wes's fork stopped.
"I was," said Delia, without missing a beat. "Then I discovered pie."
"And that you were from Hartford."
"Briefly."
"And that you had dark hair."
Delia touched one honey-colored wing with her fingertips. "Once," she said. "Briefly."