Later, when Christine is looking into the convenient plane crash, she remembers Obadiah standing there: with the light in his face, she couldn't make out whether he had been smiling, but of all things, he did not sound like a father, and he did not sound surprised.

Gahhh. Man, this whole story is just flat-out excellent, and it's the little touches -- Maria being a child prodigy, Obie and Christine at the cheap deli, Andy (!!!) -- that make it simultaneously deeply warm and really not at all. I love the way you play Obie in this: he's like the shark in JAWS, swimming around, not always at the forefront, and yet his villainy's always there.

And Christine's opening question at the end. Fantabulous.