6. Our PPIE in the Sky

I’ll never forget the day after Mim’s wedding. Alexei tried to cheer me up with a jaunt to the Oregon coast for a few days before we returned to Berkeley. Sea stacks and sand dunes. And a bubble bath after dinner. For two.

I was inconsolable. Nothing he said or did could shake me from the dreadful feeling that Mim would let Ephraim take one-third ownership of her father’s print shop. She’d be back in Portland for the rest of her born days, and what would I do?

When Alexei said I had a telephone...