THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Dotty settled in the booth across from her grandsons, who jostled each other as they staked claim to half the bench each. A challenge, given their ever-increasing heights and wingspans, but they managed with far less fighting than in previous years.

Dotty had brought them for lunch on a Friday, a day off from school. She had barely seen them all summer, what with camp and work and her travels and theirs, and they were two weeks into September now. The leaves were turning and she finally had a minute to take a breath, and she'd realized she missed them.

"She's real," Jamie was muttering under her breath. "I'm tired of you teasing me about it."

"Okay, okay, I'll stop," Phillip said, with a wry grin that Dotty knew meant he would not stop. "But you have to admit, she was pretty good at hiding."

"Who's good at hiding?" Dotty asked, curious. Someone was always hiding something in this family, it seemed. It had started with handsome spies in the garden and spiraled from there. She'd hidden things herself, come to think of it. None of them were immune.

"It's not important," Jamie said, flipping open his menu.

Dotty studied her younger grandson. He looked different. His hair was a little longer and shaggier than when she'd last seen him, the first week of school, and he was wearing a t-shirt she'd never seen before. Black, with "Metallica" across the front. She remembered Amanda saying something about his taste in music changing dramatically, and she knew who Metallica was because Jack's granddaughter had played it far too loud in her bedroom their entire visit to Montreal. He'd shot up since school had started, too, and he folded himself into the booth as if unaccustomed to his height.

But Dotty gave a start as she realized what was really different about his appearance.

"Jamie," she said, "what happened to your glasses?"

"I got contacts," he said. "Finally."

"Lee did him a huge favor on that one," Phillip said, chuckling. "Mom was all ready to buy him another set of frames and Lee suggested she, you know. Not."

"Actually what he said was that I was less likely to get stuffed in a locker without them," Jamie said. "And then Dad seconded it, and she was outnumbered, so she caved."

Dotty hid a smile. "Well, I think you're handsome either way."

Jamie rolled his eyes. "You have to, you're my grandmother."

"I don't have to. Some grandmothers are terrible to their grandchildren, but mine happen to be almost perfect."

"Almost?" Jamie prodded, laughing.

"Nobody's absolutely perfect, dear." She sipped her coffee. "What else is new?"

"He has a girlfriend," Phillip said, drawing out the last word. Jamie elbowed him.

"You said you'd stop."

"I didn't say she wasn't real."

"You're implying it."

"I'm implying she's not your girlfriend," Phillip said, laughing. "That's totally different."

"Boys." Dotty sighed in exasperation. "Where did you meet her, Jamie?"

"On vacation with Dad and Lee," he said, "when we were on the beach."

"Tell me all about her," Dotty said, casting Phillip a pointed look that he had no trouble interpreting.

Jamie shrugged. "Her name is Nicole," he said, reluctantly. "She's fourteen, too."

"Does she live nearby?"

"She lives in Canada," Phillip said, laughing.

"Phillip. People live in Canada. Jack's daughter lives in Canada. It's very nice."

The visit hadn't been very nice, but Dotty wasn't going to go into that with her grandsons.

"I know people live in Canada, Grandma. But it's where you say your girlfriend is from when she's, you know, fake."

Dotty blinked. "What?"

"When she's never around and you're telling your friends how you met a girl on vacation, you tell them she's from Canada."

Dotty nodded, sipping her coffee. Kids hadn't changed so much over the years, she thought, remembering her cousin who'd written long love letters to a boy in California — someone her sister, Lillian, had insisted was purely fictional. Her mind wandered for a moment as she pondered that memory. They never had found out if he was real — Elsie had married Horace, who was a car salesman from Delaware. Dotty wondered why none of them had teased her about having a boyfriend from Delaware.

"But I did meet a girl on vacation, and she is from Canada. Specifically, a place called Fredericton," Jamie said. "And I don't care if people don't believe it. I know it's true."

"You didn't meet her?" Dotty asked Phillip pointedly.

"Nope," Phillip said, leaning back in the booth and shutting his menu. "Oh, look, I believe you, Junior. You just need to understand that other people won't."

Jamie shrugged and flipped to another page in the menu. Dotty knew his mind was elsewhere because he was likely not ordering a "lite lunch" and he hadn't gotten angry about the condescending nickname. Mind you, the two rarely had real squabbles anymore so perhaps Jamie had started to take it as the joke it was meant to be.

"Have you written to each other?" Dotty asked.

"Yeah, and we're going to call on Sunday nights, when long-distance rates are cheaper. I cut a deal with Mom for one call a month, and Nicole cut a deal on her end for the same." Jamie flipped past the light lunches to the desserts, then closed the menu altogether.

"That's lovely, dear," Dotty said. "Maybe one day you'll get to visit, too."

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Well. I can't believe this, both my grandsons have girlfriends. It wasn't that long ago you were both telling me how the girls in your class were, and I quote, 'disgusting.'"

Phillip fidgeted with his cutlery, the way Lee often did when he wanted to avoid a subject.

"Not both of us," Jamie said, and now Phillip was doing the elbowing. Dotty set down her coffee cup in surprise.

"Phillip! Did something happen with you and Libby?"

Phillip huffed out a breath. "Nah," he mumbled. "I mean kinda. I guess we broke up."

Dotty watched his brows draw together and felt her heart twist. He was clearly upset, though in his usual way he refused to acknowledge it. Instead, he smoothed his features and took a gulp of water.

"I'm sorry, darling," she said.

"It's fine," he said, shrugging again. "We're too young to be tied down anyway."

Dotty knew he was parroting something someone else had said to him. Not Amanda, she was sure — Amanda liked Libby's calming influence on Phillip and fully approved of her dedication to schoolwork. She wasn't sure how Joe felt about Libby because she never spoke to Joe anymore — not out of animosity but because they were on opposite schedules, it seemed (Jack didn't like him much for some reason but wouldn't elaborate). Dotty knew Lee would never in a million years meddle in Phillip's love life, and while she knew he'd played the field before he met Amanda, she couldn't imagine those words coming out of his mouth.

"Who on earth told you that?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

"Libby," Jamie put in, before Phillip could answer. "I told him it probably just means she met someone else."

Dotty's brows knitted.

"I also told him it was her loss," Jamie went on, lest he be in for a lecture.

"Of course it is," Dotty agreed. She pushed her menu to one side. "Well, that's a shame."

"I guess," Phillip said. "Can we stop talking about it?"

"Of course."

They all fell silent, then, and it would have been awkward if Cherry — bless her — hadn't stopped at their table to take their orders. And in typical Cherry fashion, she was back with their drinks before the conversation could get going again.

"I had an idea for a new cookie," Jamie said, eating the cherry off the top of his milkshake.

'You do?"

"Yeah. Nicole sent me these maple candies and I thought, what if you made, like, maple toffee? And put little bits of it into an oatmeal cookie with walnuts?"

Phillip smirked then. "You're just trying to offload the maple candies because you didn't really like them."

"Well they're kind of intense. But smashed up with something else they might be good." Jamie seemed unoffended by Phillip's observation, which led Dotty to believe it was probably true. "If anyone can make something taste better it's probably you, Grandma."

"I don't know about that," Dotty said, though she was touched. "But we could make a test batch if you like."

They hadn't made cookies together in ages, she realized. She'd assumed they'd outgrown it and they'd politely decline, but Jamie straightened in his seat and treated her to a grin, his dark eyes twinkling.

"This afternoon?"

She hadn't thought they'd want to hang around after lunch. She'd assumed they both had other things going on — that they'd want to meet up with friends, that they'd need to study for a test or get ready for a party. And she hadn't been hurt by that, not at all. She'd raised a teenager and she knew how they operated.

Dotty looked at Phillip, expecting him to beg off. He liked cooking now and then, but his interest had waned in the past year or so, and she expected him to scoff at Jamie's idea. But he nodded. "Sure. I mean, if you're free."

"I'm very free," Dotty said. Normally she spent Saturday afternoons with Jack, but he had a friend in town and they were spending the day on the golf course. Dotty knew dinner that night would be a swing-by-swing recap of their two rounds, thirty-six tall tales.

"Then can we?" Jamie asked.

"We'll have to stop at the grocery store on the way back. I don't think I have the ingredients and I'm not sure your mother does, either."

Phillip gave a soft snort. "Remember that time we ate all the sugar and she had to make brownies for the ball team?"

Dotty chuckled. The boys had snuck spoonfuls at a time and neither she nor Amanda had noticed. They'd both been busy with their own things — she'd been seeing someone, that nice Fred Bain, maybe, and Amanda had — well, she realized with a start, Amanda had been running all over the place helping Lee.

At the time Dotty had been sure her daughter had a secret lover. Someone married or completely unsuitable. She'd learned since then that Amanda's secrets had been bigger than she'd ever dared imagine.

She wondered if secrets carried over generations. Would her grandsons be straightforward, or would they turn out to be more complex, like their mother? She had thought Amanda was straightforward once. Come to think of it, she'd thought herself straightforward but if Jack or her sister or, God forbid, Edna Gilstrap ever heard about some of the things she knew, they wouldn't find her straightforward at all.

The boys were not going to be straightforward, she realized. They already weren't. Canadian girlfriends were just the tip of the iceberg. (Dotty gave an inward chuckle at how affronted Jack's daughter would be that she'd use an iceberg as a metaphor for anything Canadian.)

"This Nicole," she said, with discomfiture, "is she a regular person? Are her parents regular people?"

Phillip laughed. "Grandma. She's Canadian."

Dotty straightened in her seat. "Phillip, they have spies too."

He dragged on the straw of his Coke, still laughing. She'd have been more annoyed if she hadn't been pleased to see his mood lift.

"They aren't," Jamie insisted.

"You can't be sure, darling. That's all I mean."

"I know," Jamie insisted.

"Grandma, you sound paranoid," Phillip said.

"Well honestly, you just never know with this family. That's all."

"That's what Mom said." Jamie stirred his chocolate shake. "And that's how I do know."

"What do you mean?" But she knew the answer before Jamie even spoke. Their family might have secrets, but nothing ever remained secret for long.

Jamie grinned. "She made Lee check."