“Ellie, my love,” he said gently.

“You just need to explain it to them.

Right now.”

Jacqueline waved his hand away without looking up, still laughing and crying at the same time.

“I know, I know!

I just, I really did not expect any of this to happen today.” Zachary looked back and forth between his weeping, giggling mother and his furious, terrified wife, plainly at a total loss.

“Mom,” he said, with the strained patience of a son trying to help, “you are really, really not helping your case by giggling right now.” “I am so sorry!” Jacqueline gasped, twisting her wedding band round and round her finger, a nervous habit I recognized.