"In Paris," said Delia, at the very same moment.
Angela considered this with deep suspicion. "That's not a real place to meet," she said, and went off to find more pie.
They sat together on the swing for a while after that, not saying anything, her head on his shoulder, the chains creaking gently overhead, while the party went on behind them through the open windows. Wes could feel the franc on its chain, a small warm weight against his arm where she leaned on him. Somewhere inside, the band was playing the song about the street, the whole thing, bridge and all, and Ozzie was getting the bass line wrong in exactly the same place he always did.
Through the front window, past the lace curtain, Wes could see his mother. She was standing in the front room with a cup of punch in her hand and Hal beside her, watching them, and her face in the late gold light was the face he remembered from before his father died, unguarded and at rest. She caught his eye through the glass. She did not give him a thumbs-up. She only smiled, and lifted her cup a little, and turned back to Hal.
The guests left a little after dark, in twos and threes, calling goodbyes down the front walk. The newlyweds left last, in the Valiant, with JUST MARRIED written across the back window in Delia's red lipstick and a string of tin cans that Delia's brothers had tied to the bumper and that clattered all the way down Juniper Lane.
Barbara stood on the porch and waved until the taillights turned the corner by the Petersons'. Then she stood a while longer in the soft April dark, with the tulips nodding in their chicken wire and the smell of wet grass and woodsmoke in the air, and the house warm and loud with dishes behind her, where Hal was already, unasked, running the water in the sink.
She reached inside the door for the switch, out of long habit. Her hand rested on it.
She did not turn the porch light off. But she did not sit up in the front room watching it, either. She left it burning over the empty walk, where the snow had been in November and where her son had come up the steps behind a girl with a pie, and she went inside to help with the dishes. The light shone out into the dark all night, steady and gold, not for anyone who was lost now, but for anyone who might someday be on their way home.