

### Angels Unawares

### by

### Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2014 by Jeffrey Anderson

Smashwords Edition

This story is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Though this e-book is being distributed for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the author. If you like this book, please encourage your friends to download a copy at Smashwords.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:

For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Hebrews 13: 2

### Day One

Joshua Earl dreamed this while sound asleep on his wide bed in the darkest depths of a moonless mid-April night.

He stood alone on the road shoulder at a busy highway intersection beneath a searing and brilliant midday sun. Cars stopped waiting to turn began a chain beside him that snaked off into the glaring distance and disappeared beyond a cluster of pine trees that had somehow survived the assault of highway construction and the daily dose of choking exhaust fumes from stymied vehicles. The sun glinting off the windshields of that chain of cars shaped a diamond bracelet that seemed made just for him to wear in his mind if not on his arm.

He became aware of a denseness in his right armpit and felt before he saw the rough-hewn crutch that originated in his armpit and downward pressed along his right side past ribs and hip and thigh to the pavement at his feet. Well, pavement at his foot, he now saw as he gazed blankly at the spot where the tree-branch crutch pressed into the asphalt. Where his right foot should've been was a void. In fact his whole lower leg was gone, nothing but blank air from just above where his knee should've been to the empty stretch of pavement between the crutch stump and the sparkling new tennis shoe on his left foot. In that void between lower thigh and road there wasn't even an empty pant leg flapping. The right leg of his jeans had been crudely cut at the knee and tied off with a piece of twine pulled tight like a tourniquet, a humble white line of defense against the upward march of loss.

In his left hand he held a steel coffee can. A few coins jangled in the bottom when he shook the can. On a piece of paper taped to the can were the handwritten words—Spare Change God Bless. The handwriting didn't look like his, but he couldn't say for sure.

The diamond chain of stagnant cars called him forth and he began to walk crutch then foot crutch then foot along the road shoulder beside the cars with the waves of heat rising off their metal flanks and mixing with the fumes drifting lazily skyward from their blackened tailpipes. He thought he should've felt discomfort at the heat and choking exhaust. But he felt no discomfort. He thought he should've felt the jarring lurch then impact of each clumsy swing then stop of his crude crutch. But he felt no thump. What he felt was floating past the baking cars and over the searing asphalt in conditioned comfort, neither hot nor cold, no sense of the effort of movement but still no question of movement as the diamonds turned to cars that drifted past—silver, white, black, bronze. Every so often metal would strike metal in the bottom of the can and he would look toward the arm that had tossed the coin and struggle to discern the face he knew must be somewhere beyond the shadow of the car's side window. Try as he might, he could never make out the face. They were all hidden, secret. And he floated past, farther on down the line.

So he focused on the hands and forearms that would emerge from the dark with their offerings—this hand clearly a woman's and young, with red painted nails and a gold ring on her thumb; that hand pudgy with cracked skin and black grease under torn and irregular nails, the hand of an aging auto-mechanic with a few dimes to spare. He created faces for the hands—a red-haired schoolgirl on her way to dance lessons, a bleary-eyed and balding day-worker on his way home to an empty apartment. He knew his creations were false faces, but somehow the process helped assuage the guilt he felt at not being able to see and thank the real ones.

His floating deposited him beside a limousine with dark-tinted windows that radiated black diamonds from the sun. An arm emerged as if through the tinted glass. The woman's hand held a bill, a hundred-dollar bill. The delicate but not young fingers let it fall. The bill floated like a leaf, gently back and forth, till it disappeared into the black round hole of the coffee can. It made no sound.

The arm retracted into its tinted-glass shelter. Somewhere up the line a traffic signal switched from red to green. The diamond chain began to move. That reaction reached the black limo. It began to move past.

Joshua felt sudden fury rise in his throat. He wanted to grab the bill and thrust it back into the woman's hand, back into the shadowy depths from which it had risen. His mouth shaped words—Coins only, coins only! But if the words came forth as sounds, he never heard them.

He tossed aside his crutch and turned to run after the receding vehicle. Then he realized he had no second leg. He would surely fall. He might even die under the wheels of the line of cars now whizzing past in a blur.

But he didn't fall and he didn't move. He looked down at his remaining whole leg. It wasn't a leg at all. It was a trunk of braided woody vines rooted in dark moist loamy earth. And the vines twisted their way up through his pelvis and torso and out his arm sockets and down his now immovable arms. Woody brown vine trunks softened to moist green shoots where his wrists had been, green shoots to tendrils, tendrils to leaves just starting to unfurl. Then from his neck and burrowing through his skull more tendrils thrusting forth in resolute growth, pushing skyward and sunward and out what had been his ears and eyes and nose, his mouth yielding forth not words but all mix of blooms—clematis, wisteria, honeysuckle, trumpet flower: all dangling in a nectar-laden tangle of succulent and fragrant clusters. A hummingbird whirred past, paused and hovered, staring into his eyes turned to flowers, then flew on. A butterfly landed where his nose had been, uncoiled its proboscis and reached into his mouth turned to flower, found some sustenance there.

In the dream Joshua realized—this would be his destiny, his resting place.

Laura Jackson Earl lay in that embracing fog between sleep and waking. The fog would thin and she would see her surroundings as they were, though with the edges softened and the shadows pregnant with a tension between promise and threat; then, soundlessly and suddenly, the fog would thicken, blocking real sight with dozing and prompting her sleep vulnerable imagination to fill the void where the tangible had so recently resided.

The bed on which she lay was firmer than she was accustomed to and narrow, pushed tight to the wall on one side, barely a foot off the wooden floor that her fingers lightly brushed on the other. The room was small but high, with a narrow band of clerestory windows on three sides yielding grainy gray pre-dawn light. The walls below the windows were solid books, shelf upon shelf, their spines glowing shades of silver and beige broken by horizontal and vertical bars of black. Those books seemed the thickened walls of a fortress, spine melded to spine, an edge-grain butcher-block of strength and hardness to keep marauders out. But as Laura's consciousness twisted slowly toward sleep, those fortress walls took on the nature of a prison, not to keep danger out but to keep her in, no chance of escape, no view beyond except those lofty windows, and there only sky—blue to gold to pink to silver to black to gray.

She was reading to young children. They formed a loose circle around her hub, perhaps a dozen in all—seated cross-legged, some kneeling, others lying on their stomachs, heads perched on folded arms. Their faces were featureless masks—no eyes or ears or nose or mouth, just skin drawn tight over chin and cheekbone and skull, the skin of various shades: black, olive, tan, pale pink, luminous white.

She read from a big book with a glossy cover. On the open pages were colorful pictures interspersed with large bold text. She read the words in a firm sonorous voice of deliberate cadence but heard no sound and recognized no words. She'd pause in her reading, flip the book and hold it open for the eyeless children to see, moving it from side to side, giving all a good long look.

Reading to children—what an odd endeavor for her. She was a free-lance soil scientist, gathering field samples for analysis, carrying them to a private lab for testing, evaluating the results and recommending remediation to the client paying her fees. She rarely came in contact with children. Truth be told, children rather frightened her. They tended to be so—well, active: darting to and fro, talking nonsensically, watching, moving some more, flitting about like birds in a cage, like birds out of a cage and she'd been the one who forgot to latch the door, her fault they'd escaped and how was she to gather them all back in, safe and sound. Laura couldn't remember when she'd last read to children, or to a single child, stretching all the way back to when she was a child, being read to, reading to her dolls. What an odd endeavor. What an odd dream.

Yet she seemed fully at ease in this unfamiliar role. Her voice reading the story was expressive and reassuring and all-encompassing. Its tone and its volume spoke the only truth any child ever desired—no harm will befall you in my presence, and my presence will never end. So potent was her offer that the featureless masks evolved features—a nose here, a mouth there, all those paired eyes winking to life: all those eyes, all those famished eyes.

Then there were only two eyes gazing at her. The words of the story fell silent, then the book disappeared, tumbling into the black void beyond her lap. It was only Laura and those eyes, the eyes now faceless, hanging there above her in the pre-dawn grayness, staring down, pinning her like an insect on a foam display board.

Those eyes—first of a child, then a teenager, then an adult.

Those eyes—now long since past their hunger for security, now with a different hunger, now yielding forth something new, something steely blue and unrelenting: now streaming forth the beginnings of blame.

Laura's eyes, that had been open this whole time staring at the high ceiling that disappeared into the grainy shadows, suddenly clenched hard shut, pressed out tears.

Laura carried Josh's breakfast on a tray down the long dim hall leading from the kitchen to his bedroom. The bedroom's open door beckoned her onward with the warm bright glow of morning light. She made it to the threshold without spilling juice or coffee and paused there to let her eyes adjust and the muscles in her face relax. Josh lay on his back in the bed, his graying hair cushioned deep in the pillow, his face turned away from the doorway, his eyes staring out the long picture window to his right. Laura watched her ex-husband for long seconds that seemed like minutes or hours.

His unflinching and obstinate gaze recalled her oldest memory of him. He was a high-school junior waiting beside her locker in a deserted hallway. She'd stayed late to make-up a test; and, though he barely knew her, he'd waited the whole time, at least forty-five minutes—leaning against the wall beside her locker, unmoving, staring at the hall floor. She knew this because she could see his dim figure reflected in the glass of the open door to the classroom. Every few minutes she'd glance up from her test paper and see he was still there, waiting. His patient determination thrilled her but also frightened her a little. Who was this boy who could wait for her like that? Any other boy she knew would've been fidgeting after thirty seconds, and gone within three minutes. Who was this tall figure who could wait like that; and, what's more, would wait like that for her? Only later, in retrospect, did a related question arise—who could bear such waiting? She stepped onward into the room with her tray.

Josh rolled his head to face her and smiled. "A penny for your thoughts."

Laura set the tray on his writing desk and went to the edge of the king-sized bed to help him sit up higher against the headboard. "My thoughts cost more than that."

"Then at whatever cost. Name your price—I'll write a check this minute."

"Viewed your account balance lately? Might not have enough in there."

Josh shook his head. "I've got enough or I'll find it. I've always been good at that."

She nodded to concede the point, then bent at the waist, slid her arms under his armpits, and lifted his startlingly light torso against the pillow-cushioned headboard. She retrieved the tray and set it carefully astraddle his blanket-shrouded waist, the short legs on either side of the tray puckering the plush bedcovers. Breakfast safely delivered, she sat in the cherry armchair with the cushioned seat and back that was normally beside the desk but had been moved to the near edge of the bed.

His gaze hadn't left her throughout these efficient actions and settled on her face now. "Thank you," he said, but didn't move to eat.

She nodded. "You're welcome," she said, then added, "What thoughts you wanting to buy?"

He laughed. This was a new Laura. The old Laura would never have picked up a dropped strand of questioning, never have invited a deeper glance into her workings. "At the doorway—your thoughts while waiting on the threshold. You were waiting there so long I considered dragging what's left of these old bones out of this bed and sweeping you off your feet to carry you over the threshold." His eyes left her face briefly and glanced toward his covered legs. "But that wouldn't have worked very well, would it?"

Laura ignored this latter. "You saw me?"

"Of course."

"But you gave no clue."

Josh's shoulders dipped slightly—a shrug or surrender, she couldn't tell. That small movement seemed to trigger the subtle collapse of his body in on itself. The thin tension of expectation and hope he'd maintained since hearing her footsteps in the hall dissolved in the morning light.

Laura felt this shift—or had she imagined it? "I was thinking of my oldest memory of you."

"Way back."

"Yes, way back. You were waiting for me in the school hallway, unmoving as a statue, for—I don't know? a half-hour, an hour; in any case, a long time. Just waiting."

"How'd you know?"

"I saw you reflected in the door's glass."

"So I'm not the only secret watcher."

She laughed at that, caught in her own accusation. "That was back then. I had to use all the means of discovery at my disposal."

"For what?"

Laura didn't hesitate. "To bear your gaze."

"And now?"

She shrugged. "What's to hide?"

"You tell me."

Laura offered no answer. It was she who now stared out the big window at trees sprouting pale-green foliage against a deep-blue patient sky.

Josh took a few sips of the lukewarm tea. Laura had mixed in a squeeze of lemon and a spoonful of honey. There was a sweetness and comfort to the drink that went beyond mere taste. "My oldest memory of you is stored in my fingertips, not my eyes." He set the cup down, raised his hands before his eyes, and watched his fingers perform a silent line dance in the air. "At least I have these parts," he said, no trace of bitterness or pity, "and their memories."

She faced him again, faced his fingers fluttering in mid-air like tan feathers on a fading breeze. "The memory is stored in your fingers not your mind?"

Josh let his fingers—fingers, then hands, then forearms—fall silently into the down comforter, the breeze that had held then aloft and dancing suddenly dead. "I think so," he said, and that moment believed his assertion. "My left thumb stores the actual memory of the hammer blow when I was fourteen and helping my dad mend the river fence; my right middle finger the deep cut from the razor clam I was digging up the summer I was eight; my left pinky smashed in the car door by Angie when I was thirty-five." His left pinky floated up from the covers and offered itself—its last joint kinked sharply to one side—as living proof of the memory. "The event stored in the fingertips—the only proof it ever occurred."

Laura was truly intrigued by the idea. "And events that don't have enduring physical consequences—say, a touch of kindness or slap or anger—those are there too, in the appendages?"

He nodded, "Yes," then paused and added, "Well, maybe." He couldn't help but think of his lower right leg, amputated just above the knee, and the toes of his left foot—gone also. Where then would be his memories of running, swimming, kicking a soccer ball, brushing the leg of his a lover beneath the sheets in the depth of a shared night? Those memories now residing in a lab somewhere? Turned to ash and smoke in a biohazard-disposal furnace? Just like that—dissolved into thin air, forever gone? Or maybe, just maybe, forever present—inhaled by himself and all living creatures in trace molecules and atoms floating freely across the globe, fixed now in this bush, this insect, then released again to be used again later and later and later, again and again and again. Ahh, now there's a thought, a hope, a dread. Breathe deep the countless memories, hopes, and dreams of a long and full life. Breathe deep all he was or ever will be.

"Tell me, then, please."

Her voice settled over him from afar, from a distant land or different reality, like his mother's firm but gentle voice calling to him through the door to his room to rise for school. "Josh," the voice said softly. "Josh. Time to get up." Time to rise and shine. Time to greet the new day. His mother fully awake and calling, just there behind the closed door, just there out in the dimly lit hall, awake and preparing the way for him to enter the new day. "Josh." His mother with bacon already popping and spitting in the large black frypan, eggs mixed in the bowl, plates set on the table. "Josh." And he still lodged in a different world, in the tangle of sleep and dream and the slow emerging reality of his boyhood room with its dresser and old school desk and braided rug over worn oak floor. His mother waiting beyond the door—real and hard and permanent as a rock, a granite boulder, unmovable and unshakeable. And he caught up in his web of shifting realities and overwhelming fantasies.

"Josh." Laura's fingers archived new memories as she touched her ex-husband's shoulder where it emerged from the covers. "Josh."

He rolled his head to face her. "Sorry. Those pills really work, maybe too well."

She nodded. "I know. It's O.K. Just wanted to be sure you were O.K."

"What were we talking about?"

She laughed. "The memories in your fingers—some ancient and no doubt sordid tale they told about me."

He looked up at her face, so near at hand, her fingers still lightly on his shoulder, as she willed him to remain awake, at least these next few minutes. Was it important for him or her that his consciousness remain with her now—in the morning light in this bedroom with his breakfast on the tray across his lap—rather than drift away to some other world, some safer and softer immersion? Did it matter, really? And if so, why?

Her face was of the girl he'd met when he was sixteen and she fourteen, the girl he'd married the day after she'd graduated high school. The face hadn't changed appreciably for him despite the intervening decades and the wear of all those years and choices. To be sure, there were a few wrinkles, creases around the eyes, slack skin at the cheek and jawline; but beneath those shallow changes ran a deeper radiance that shone through for him—still the first girl he'd fallen in love with, neither young nor old but eternal in his eyes. And he wondered—maybe memories stored in the eyes, permanent and unchanging long as the eyes gathered light. No, longer than that—past when the eyes stopped gathering light, more vivid in blindness than ongoing sight. Memories stored in the sensing organ—fingers, eyes, amputated toes. Was it good or bad that time and disease could nibble away at memories by consuming the sensing organ or appendage? What were the costs of such an equation; what were the rewards?

Laura sat back in her chair. She'd not force Josh to stay with her if the drugs and his fading chopped-up body elected to take his mind elsewhere. She should be relieved at the prospect—dozing, her ex-husband was no threat to her, no risk of opening old wounds or inflicting new ones. Yet just now a larger part of her wished to—no, needed to—engage a conscious and clear-headed Josh, needed to build something new between them, whatever it might be, however briefly it might endure. She understood, with only a faint sense of foreboding, that this new relationship might well include some of the pain from long ago, like the ache stored in Josh's kinked finger.

Yet greater than this fear and risk was a need to affirm their seeming ancient bond, and build on it. She'd not set aside her calm and peaceful other life, flown three thousand miles, unpacked her bags in a strange room, waded through stacks of insurance and power-of-attorney paperwork just to get Josh checked out of the hospital, ridden in the ambulance beside her moaning and doped-up ex-husband and hovered over the home nurse as she got him set-up in his own bed in his own bedroom, then made up the bed in the nursery turned to library beside his bedroom and slept fitfully last night to the sound of Josh's snoring and intermittent yips and moans of whatever dream or nightmare or pain he was wading through—not endured all that just to watch her ex-husband and oldest friend fade away without talk or renewed companionship.

Or had she? Was this what she got for her trouble? If so, could it be enough? Enough for what?—to get her through whatever months or years or decades she might have left, rattling around in her small ranch house in the San Fernando Valley? She'd never thought she was lonely, not once in the three-and-a-half decades since she'd become single—truly single for the first time, detached from her husband of three years and her parents for the eighteen before that. Turns out that she'd taken to single-ness like a fish to boundless open water, breathed it through gills of self-sufficiency ever since. It was a single-ness that did not preclude the occasional love, even a live-in one a few times, as well as several friends and close professional acquaintances. In short, it wasn't a monastic life, nor would she want it to be. But she'd never truly bonded with another after Josh. Had that failed experiment turned her permanently against such a serious relationship? Or had she simply discovered her natural state of alone and become content with it?

Whatever the answer to all those questions, she now felt lonely—hollow through her whole being—for the first time in as long as she could remember.

"These fingers remember the nubbly gooseflesh of your taut stomach." Josh's fingers danced in the air above the bedcovers, revived and somehow daring, taunting.

Laura blushed—at the image of Josh's fingers memory or at being caught in dazed self-absorption: she couldn't say, so flustered she was. And when had that happened last, her flustered and blushing? "My taut stomach?" she managed to reply. "That must've been ages ago." But then of course it was—Josh hadn't touched her stomach, barely touched any part of her body, for decades.

My oldest memory of you—in the absolute dark of the hayloft: no sight or sound or taste or smell but all senses channeled into the tips of my fingers on your freshly uncovered midriff, and your skin taut and nubbly. I know now and probably knew then that you were just cold or nervous or excited or some combination of those, but at the time I thought of it as your skin reaching out to me, and granting me permission to continue."

Laura laughed at that. "Continue upward or downward?"

"You know, I truly can't remember. Probably in both directions—they both held promise." He chuckled softly, a sound more like a cough than mirth. "Or maybe neither direction. Given it's my oldest memory of you, it must've been early in our courtship, and maybe that early it was enough just to touch your stomach."

"And dream of the promise that lay beyond."

Josh nodded. "Something like that."

That promise had brought them to this moment all these years later—where had the chances gone? how had those hopes been squandered? Laura felt a kind of mudslide in her chest, the stable, gentle slope of her life suddenly letting go and racing crashing toward a dark void with no bottom visible. She couldn't breathe; she couldn't speak. She closed her eyes and waited for what was left of her soul to find its bottom, its new resting place. But no bottom arrived, no new home—but quieter now, dissipation into the void, a stasis of free fall.

Josh touched the back of her hand, recorded new memories in old fingertips. "I'm sorry."

She opened her eyes reluctantly, sure he would see the pain and confusion lurking therein. "Sorry for what?"

"Bringing you here. Asking you to bear this."

She closed her eyes briefly, then shivered the length of her body—trembling the chair, the floor, Josh's fingertips. The she opened her eyes. Her face was calm again, her body relaxed, the chill past. "Josh, nobody put a gun to my head. I bought my one-way ticket, packed my small bag." She paused, glanced into the nursery where her carry-on suitcase sat open on the luggage holder, her few clothes neatly folded and stacked within its confines. "I boarded that plane, flew all the way across the country, got a cab and found my way to your hospital room—and not once did I see anyone, armed or threatening or pleading or begging, not anyone forcing me to come. It was my free choice. Please don't apologize again."

Josh nodded. "I'll try," then added, "But can I say thank you?"

Laura smiled. "No more than once every other day."

Josh thought—That may not be many times—but kept the thought to himself. "Then thank you from the depth of what's left of this body and soul—that's today's and tomorrow's thank you." His left hand, still resting on hers, pressed down lightly then retreated to his side, disappeared in the folds of the plush comforter. "But may I ask why you agreed to come?"

Laura considered that a long while, gazing across Josh's bed to the bright morning beyond the picture window. She recalled the soft yet firm and business-like voice of the patient advocate reaching across three thousand land miles and who knows how many atmospheric and space and satellite miles to tell of Josh's grave condition and say that her name was the only one that Josh had given. She'd immediately thought of Josh's more recent wife (whom Laura'd never met) and their child some mutual friend had told her of (a daughter, no doubt grown by now, but where?), and she even asked—"No others?" The voice on the other end of the line had said no, no one else. She'd thanked the woman for the call and the information and even made some vague excuses—busy with work, couldn't possibly get away—and apologized to the woman and asked her to apologize to Josh for her. Then she'd hung up.

But after she'd hung up, she sat at her desk—motionless and numb—for who could say how long, the absolute stillness of her neat empty house roaring around her. Then she picked up the phone, brought up the patient advocate's number on the phone's screen, hit dial and told the woman she'd be there the next afternoon. Then she called her travel agent, booked a one-way ticket to North Carolina, and set about prepping her home and her California life for an absence of indeterminate duration.

But why? The why lay in that numb motionless silence following the first call, and she had no memory of what happened during that time, what she was thinking or feeling. And she'd not thought about the decision since, not till this moment. "You can ask, but I can decline to answer."

"Because?"

"Because I really don't know."

"When you figure it out, will you tell me?"

She nodded. "If you tell me why my name was the only one you gave the hospital staff."

"That's easy—you were the only one I could trust."

"Trust to come, or trust to see this through?"

"Both."

"And why's that?"

He shrugged. "I'll tell you when I figure it out."

"Likewise, then."

Josh's hand rose from the covers. "Deal?"

Laura reached out, touched her fingertips to his. "Deal."

Laura hung weightless suspended in the warm spring afternoon and didn't know if she liked or hated the sensation, but she'd grow used to it soon enough.

The arrival of the home nurse shortly after lunch had bought her a couple hours free time to invest as she wished. She had a mental list of numerous chores and loose ends to tie up—a trip to the drugstore for toiletries (for her and Josh), a trip to the market for groceries, calls to her clients regarding her changed timetable for their projects, a call to Josh's lawyer to confirm filing of his living will and power of attorney. And beneath those pressing demands, there was a larger demand that felt like an open wound in the form of a phone number that Laura'd not written down but was powerless to avoid memorizing.

So in the face of all these responsibilities, Laura'd yielded to the call of Josh's backyard hammock and its promise of weightless suspension. It was a large cotton-rope hammock of the type first made along the Outer Banks of North Carolina but now made and marketed all across the United States, a hammock so large and spacious that it could easily have accommodated four adults (if they worked together and avoided dumping one and all on the ground) or swallowed this one hapless visitor alive. It was strung between two large pine trees at the edge of the lawn, and strung so high off the ground that Laura had to jump to get into it. And once she'd thrown herself into this lofty web, she felt the strands suddenly yield to the point where she felt sure the fibers were tearing and she'd shortly strike the ground with a painful thud. She had a moment's vision of her and Josh in paired hospital beds, each with bandaged legs—the transcontinental caregiver now needing care. But the cotton cords only stretched after a long winter of drying and shrinking, and their yielding halted more than two feet above the ground. Laura caught her breath, then laughed long and hard—at the recklessness of throwing her middle-aged bones into an untested old hammock, at the image of her incapacitated beside Josh, and at the sudden new sensation of weightlessness in the face of so much weight: trees, grass, house, sky, Josh—his truncated body naked (she imagined, though the nurse gently shooed her out before starting her ministrations) and being sponge-bathed in his bed not fifty yards away at this very moment.

She set the hammock to gently rocking with slight shifts in her body's center of gravity. Each pendulum swing brought her briefly into sunlight, then back into a longer interval's pine-needle shade—sun, shade-shade-shade; sun, shade-shade-shade. A mourning dove mourned its mate. A cardinal sang out in rising quickening crescendo of spring hope. Sun, shade-shade-shade. Even with her eyes closed, the contrast of light and dark was inescapable—penetrated her eyelids, pierced her skin.

He was a boy named Steve. He was fourteen, she twelve at a summer camp. She floated suspended on the pond's warm water with his strong hands on the small of her back and between her shoulders gently swaying her from side to side. "Now try," he'd said, asking her to extend her arms over her head in the start of classic backstroke form. But her arms wouldn't move from where they floated, remained extended straight out, cruciform, as weightless as her soul. She wanted the moment to never end—the water, the floating, his hands firmly on the skin of her back. She willed the moment onward, onward. That night in the shadows just beyond the campfire light, she kissed him. She'd waited for what seemed and eternity for him to lean over and kiss her. O.K., maybe it was only a minute or two in clock time; but to her twelve-year-old lovestruck mind's clock, it seemed an eternity. Then she'd risen on one elbow and leaned over and kissed him and that was that. She didn't remember anything else—of that night or if she ever saw him again or even the touch of his lips on hers: sloppy or slippery or moist or dry. She was floating—on the water, on his sure hands, on his lips, on this new sensation the world called love but she knew as Heaven.

The hammock's gentle swing had long since stalled; and the light then shade-shade-shade had settled to persistent shadow, though the spring air was still warm even with the light brush of a breeze. She opened her eyes on the grid of white woven rope; and beyond that grid was the sun-dappled shade of springtime woods cast in an incandescent green, so bright the glow of emergent foliage. And there, not twenty feet from her, was the figure of a deer in profile—dark brown flanks, white belly, head cocked slightly to one side and facing only her. How odd she'd not noticed the statue before, and how odd of Josh to put the yard art in the woods and not on the lawn.

Then the statue's ears twitched. Laura gasped, in surprise and perhaps a little fear. Could this all too proximate wild creature harm her? What were its intentions, anyway? She'd left the east coast decades ago, long before the proliferation of backyard deer herds; and roaming wildlife were not a common sight around her arid and thinly vegetated California home. So the proximity of this calm and curious wood's creature left her both startled and amazed. What would it do? Would it charge (she vaguely recalled some local news story of a rampaging bull elk in a mountain community west of her home)? And if it charged, how could she disentangle herself from her cotton-webbed prison?

Then the deer lowered its head—to eat! It nosed aside some dry leaves and pulled up a tender green sprout. It nosed some more, ate some more. It took two short steps parallel the hammock and the lawn, then grazed some more. Whatever the sight or sound or smell of this newcomer in the hammock, it was insufficient cause to interrupt a good meal.

Then Laura, her eyes fully adjusted to the shade, saw another deer beyond this one, then another and another and another. The woods were full of gray-brown moving shadows. She counted fourteen total—all antlerless (did any deer, male or female, have antlers in the spring?), all no taller than a good-sized retriever and considerably thinner. And where the first, startlingly near-at-hand, had seemed large and perhaps a threat, she now realized that the whole herd was composed of small deer, all thin and appearing frail. Were these some sort of miniature deer? And what were so many of them doing here, anyway—grazing on such sparse offerings?

The herd soundlessly floated away, merging into the denser dark of deeper woods. Once gone, Laura wondered if they'd really existed. Or were they simply the creation of her new weightlessness—in the hammock and in life?

Or ethereal messengers from some world between reality and fantasy—deep-woods fauns probing the edges of their range; or a cherub chorus singing in, of all sounds, silence? And, if messengers, what then their message? She was not, and never had been, given to interest in the fantastic or the abstract. In the old days, Josh—in a mix of frustration and endearment—called her "Literal Laura." And her profession as a soil scientist, who pried loose the secrets of Mother Earth and exposed them under the shrill light of chemical analysis, well mirrored her full embrace of the tangible and the known.

Until this past week. Now, she wasn't so confident in her old beliefs. Now, she wondered about what might lay beyond the edges of rational explanation, all those speculations she'd formerly rejected with a disdainful smirk or a derisive laugh or a dismissive shrug. All those possible something mores that lay beyond rationality—what might be out there? And, if she ventured forth into that unknown, could she ever return?

A breeze swayed the pine boughs far above, the bows slightly twisted the pine trunks at their attachment point, the trunks tilted ever so slightly all the way to the ground and moved the hooks that'd been screwed into the trunks to hold the hammock, the metal hooks grated against the metal of the grommets at either end of the hammocks cotton cords, the metal grinding against metal made a slight creak as it caused the hammock holding Laura to sway ever so slightly. What message this?

Chalk it up to some odd side effect of his pain medication or some delayed glandular reaction to his surgery—whatever the reason, Josh felt himself becoming aroused as Sherri the home nurse sponge-bathed his torso and downward toward his groin and thighs. After stripping off his pajamas, she'd tossed a hand towel loosely over his private parts before starting the bath. Now that towel was relentlessly rising in near miraculous levitation—miraculous not in the towel defying gravity but in his penis springing to life after weeks of total hibernation. But now back, and what was he to do about this? He felt first embarrassment, but that sentiment quickly gave way to humor and a detached amazement. "It seems we have a visitor," he said to Sherri, nodding toward the tenting towel.

"What, that?" she replied, perhaps a little too dismissively (at least she didn't add "little thing" at the end of her response). "Happens almost every time."

"Really? I figured all I had left were fond memories."

Sherri laughed. "That'll be the last thing that goes. You know what they say about Strom Thurmond—had to beat his pecker to death with a stick after he passed!"

Josh laughed heartily. "Never heard that one."

Sherri continued. "My experience would suggest that's the norm. The lights can go out in all the other rooms; but that thing will still be stirring, looking for who knows what."

"Maybe it's you, your magic touch." At that moment, her hands and fingers and that sumptuous sponge did seem to be infused with magical powers—a sorceress's spell woven through touch, a tale ancient as the species.

She shrugged. "Could be. I figure I can always get a job beating dicks if they ever run out of a need for home nurses."

A part of Josh—a part that seemed like it was off on a distant mountaintop, surveying the landscape of his life and circumstances—thought he should be shocked at this ribald turn of this conversation with an employee and virtual stranger. But the rest of him, all those parts near at hand (and now under those magical hands of Sherri), those parts of him that had been so ignobly sliced and diced and bequeathed with a near-term death sentence—those parts of him basked in these golden rays of sensuous touch and playful, and playfully daring, exchange. "Make more money," he said with a wink.

"Sure, but lousy benefits." Her tone was earnest—she'd clearly given the prospect serious consideration (or maybe tried it?).

Josh nodded. "I guess you're right. Besides, where would our friend be without your magic touch?" He nodded toward the towel in his lap, now slowly collapsing, surrendering unfulfilled to the inexorable pull of gravity and context. Josh quickly scanned his mind for sense of loss and found none there, found instead an improbable hint of hope, a glimmer of optimism not in his penile gland's brief resurrection but in the spontaneous and unexpected human exchange between nurse and patient, a humanity that had been all but nonexistent in the past weeks of testing, diagnosis, surgery, and treatment.

"Oh, he'd be fine," Sherri said. She deftly straightened the newly flat towel in his lap. "That pretty wife of yours has plenty of magic left in her fingers."

Josh was briefly confused at her confusion. He wondered if he should set her straight—that Laura was no longer his wife, hadn't been for decades; and that he surely had no claim on the use of her fingers for his pleasure, however therapeutic that might be. But he decided to leave her assertion uncorrected and said only, "How do you know?"

Sherri looked straight at him, her round kind face almost glowing in the late afternoon light. "Trust me," she said firmly, "I know." She resumed bathing him, sponging now his right leg, working downward toward his bandaged stump. Only then did she add, "But you might have to ask her."

After dinner Josh and Laura sat in a spreading pool of early evening silence that was not so much the absence of sound as the presence of—well, what? ancient companionship? condition-free love? or balked questions? encroaching despair? Or perhaps the silence was just an opportunity for the word-less digestion of their supper of tunafish salad, sliced tomato, and an English muffin. Dusk lapped at the large window in shades of pastel green and pink merging slowly into a pale silver, then into a dove gray, a slate blue, finally a gun-barrel black. The pool of silence steadily rose to cover Laura's feet, ankles, calves, knees; it encircled the bed, covered the side rails, began to flow out onto the quilt, puddled around Josh's body. Dusk had become night, quick as that. The bedside lamp cast the room in bands of light and dark, shadows that seemed to shift and dance though the source of light never moved. The silence rose to Laura's waist and up over her torso; it steadily covered the bed, Josh's body, lapped at the pillows couching his head.

For Josh, this silence—which had started comfortably enough: two old friends at ease with one another in word-less dusk at the end of a full day—began to take on the shape of his tomb, intimating his end, perhaps only days or weeks away. He felt a chill wash over his body and could almost taste in the still air the brassy finality of death. He felt suddenly and totally seized by this all too real premonition of his eternal abode—cold, dark, and oh so endlessly silent. Josh was paralyzed with fear, powerless to move or protest or break the spell of the moment. The tomb of silence stretched on and on and on. He closed his eyes, pressing out tears. And there—behind his eyelids, beneath the tears—an image arose: his daughter Angela, Angie always to him, perhaps five years old and bouncing on his knee like riding a horse, her laughter like hiccups exploding out of her chest, changing his whole world.

For Laura, the silence stretched backwards across time, racing like a super-reverse on her life's remote control, streaming images of the years, the decades, the scenes and snapshots of her life merging into a blur, a homogenized warm beige blur with flakes of red and purple and gold. Then, just as suddenly, stopped, freeze-framed on a single instant of real memory—she on her back in the night in bed, Josh asleep beside her, the place their one-bedroom apartment in Boston, the time the night before she would leave for France on what she was describing as a short-term academic excursion but what was in fact (both she and Josh knew, however much they might deny or avoid the subject) the beginning of the end of their marriage, the circumstance of their permanent separation following several trial (and error) separations in the months past.

In this freeze-framed moment, the apartment's high plaster ceiling seemed both suffocatingly near—Laura felt she could lick the chill plaster if she dared extend her tongue—and infinitely distant—swallowing this tiny spec of organic molecules that was her body and life in the universe's massive swirl of inexorable time and infinite space. How could she leave, jumping voluntarily into that void? How could she stay, compressed into a dot by Josh and their marriage, the very breath of life and growth and freedom being pressed from her by the minute, the second?

And the inevitable question, as she lay on her back, a question both from and to that ceiling both near and far—where was God in all this? Why had he put her at this impossible juncture? Where would he have me go? She'd been raised a Roman Catholic, even attended a Catholic elementary school. But the God those nuns described, the God they invoked when dispensing both punishment and praise (and, sadly, more punishment than praise), never seemed real to her, never took root in her heart. And since marrying Josh in his Protestant church, she'd never darkened the door of a church or even thought about God or his place, if any, in her life and choices.

But now here she was, at a crossroad, her first true adult crossroad (her marriage to Josh being her last childhood crossroad), and the question of God's place and purpose in her present actions and choices pressed hard upon her with an urgency even closer than the ceiling she could've licked, heavier than the weight of the anonymous city and the frozen night and the finality of the one-way ticket sitting neatly atop her packed bag within her reach from the bed. But if God was anywhere here present, within or without her frozen body frozen this moment in his time, she discerned him not.

But unknown to her frozen in that crossroad moment—known only to Laura looking back all these years later and to God who had for his own reasons chosen to remain hidden and silent on her occasion of extreme need—there was a cluster of cells embedded in her uterine wall, relentlessly dividing throughout her frozen moment trapped between compression and dissolution, those cells growing toward a future fate that would haunt Laura the rest of her life.

He was still awake. Still awake despite the resolute downward tug of synthetic opiate that left a taste in his mouth like the taste of the brass rail on his crib that he'd spend hours licking while he silently waited for his mother's return. Still awake through the haze of Laura smoothing his covers and setting a tumbler half-full of fresh water on the nightstand and switching off the bedside lamp. Still awake through the sound like a musical instrument of Laura's pee hitting the water in the toilet bowl, her whirlwind brushing of her teeth (hard and fast, so violent he used to—when sometimes sharing the tiny apartment bath—expect to see the foam she'd spit into the sink tinged in crimson, though it never was), the scrubbing sound as she washed her face with a lemon-scented astringent, the whisper (did he imagine this?) of the brush gently ordering her thick graying hair. Still awake as Laura walked past his bed in her striped boy's pajamas in the dark and gently closed the door to the nursery that he'd turned into a library that was now Laura's room as she slept on the daybed built into a notch between the wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling shelves, as she turned on the light behind the closed door, then reopened the door just a crack in case he cried out in the night. Still awake as he heard her pull back the covers to the bed, slide between those folds, and switch off the light with three clicks that took the bulb through two stages of greater brightness before settling on the finality of darkness. Still awake as he heard her exhale a long and almost mournful sigh that he was surely not supposed to hear. Still awake as the big house encasing the two of them—itself an assemblage of mainly organic compounds surrounding and embracing the two humans' bodies of mainly organic compounds—as the big house settled toward a night's stasis, its strong beams and headers and wood and gypsum skin giving back the warmth they'd absorbed through a day long with solar heat in a kind of sigh of its own, low groans and creaks like some large animal trying to get comfortable before sleep.

Still awake; still awake.

"I thank God for your presence." Was the sentence voice or thought, statement or prayer?

The house yielded no response. Even the subtle moans of timbers giving back heat had momentarily ceased, all at rest.

And from the nursery, no clue—no voice in response, no ruffling of bedcovers or creaking of mattress springs, no sigh or gasp.

So unspoken, then—six words that had floated to the surface of his drug-fogged consciousness, formed a simple declarative sentence, and offered that sentence to the deeper dark beyond his consciousness. So more than a simple sentence—a prayer. And if a prayer, surely his first in years or decades. Though he'd always believed in an all-powerful, all-loving, all-watchful God, he'd rarely felt compelled to reach out to this God in plea or thanks. Had he assumed that God saw and already knew his needs, his hopes and regrets? Or was he simply too reticent to trouble the ruler of time and space with his petty troubles and thanksgivings? Or did both these understandings merge into a single belief structure that combined reticence and awe and trust?

"I do too," Laura said finally. She'd tested the response in her mind several times to be sure of its truth before speaking the words.

Josh was startled and confused—had he heard the words or imagined them? "What?" It was almost a shout, echoing off the dark walls, no question of sound waves this time.

"I thank God also, for my presence here, wildly improbable as it still seems to me."

Josh's low chuckle was barely audible through the door. "Fate, I guess."

Laura wouldn't let it go at that. "But I can't thank God for the reason I'm here."

"My illness or my aloneness?"

Laura'd meant his illness but said, "Well, both."

"God had nothing to do with either."

"Then who, or what?"

Josh took a deep breath. "Me. My choices."

"You chose a terminal blood disorder?" She immediately wished she could take back the word "terminal," but there it was—a simple adjective but dense and immovable as a granite boulder, damming the night between them.

Josh didn't flinch at the adjective or her question, but took a few moments to compose his response. "I chose disorder, or perhaps disorder chose me. It's none of God's doing."

Laura suddenly envied his peace. Was it some side effect of the medication? Or the surgery? Was peace some biochemical protective response to radical amputation? If so, she wanted some of those chemicals in her bloodstream, whatever the price. She was furious with his peace, his resignation, his fatalism. "What about me? What about my aloneness? Is it my choice? My fault?" she asked, her voice rising with each question.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were unhappy."

"I didn't think I was."

The house and night were ample to fill the silence that ensued. The walls hadn't echoed a voice raised in passion in—what? a dozen years? that day Vicki'd railed at him as she packed two suitcases then left forever? One might assume the walls preferred silence, or low calm voices, to shouts of passion; but then the walls didn't state their preferences.

Outside in the fast-cooling early spring dark pointed toward a pre-dawn frost that might be the last of the season (then again, might not), countless stars and countable planets sparkled like so many diamonds in the vast blank dome of a dry and clear moonless night, those infinite sparkles appearing motionless but in fact rushing past at unfathomable speeds toward their appointed destinies—the earth itself spinning fast and moving through its ordained space; and the stars and planets also racing through the vast emptiness of space, moving toward the earth, or away, or sideways; everything moving: toward something, toward nothing, but moving, powerless to halt the movement or return from whence it had come. And under this kaleidoscope of motionless motion, of seeing and knowing but not seen or known, an acorn finished its ordered parting and yielded forth its sprout in an imperceptible but inexorable unfurling beneath the moist and fetid blanket of its parents leaves shed last year and the year before that and the year before that. A tree frog peeped once, gained no response, fell silent—too early in the season, too cold for song. A doe bedded not fifty yards from the humans' beds felt its unborn fawn stretch its legs against her encasing womb, nudge its twin, which didn't move. A cardinal huddled in the rough-hewn nest it'd assembled from twigs and pine needles in the fork of the tall camellia outside the kitchen door, the slick calcium shells of the three eggs somehow easing the irritation in its breast muscles, the cold on its back. A barred owl glided across the clearing, beneath the star-encrusted dome.

"Tell me about your daughter." Laura got no response for several slow heartbeats. She wondered if maybe Josh had fallen asleep.

"You want the sordid or the sublime?"

Laura couldn't help but laugh—what an answer to a seemingly harmless question that was in fact not harmless at all, she now acknowledged, a question she would've never ventured in the full light of day but felt safe to wager here in the dark. "Sordid doesn't sound very appealing, but I'll say you choose."

"The sordid was just one moment, but it changed all the rest. Angie came home early from school one day when she was sixteen and found me in bed—this bed, in fact—with one of my grad students. And she wasn't just any grad student. Joan had tutored Angie in algebra, taught her how to play the guitar, and helped her learn how to drive. She was the big sister Angie had always longed for. And there I was screwing this girl in my marriage bed. Sordid enough for you?"

"Oh, Josh."

"I can see Angie's face this very second, etched there in the doorway, her expression a mix of confusion, shock, and the beginning of disgust. It's the only image of her I can ever summon in my mind. I used to get out the photo albums and gaze at photos of happier times in hopes of replacing, or at least supplementing, that single memory. But it always returned, forcing the other images aside. I now accept it as just punishment."

"But why, Josh? How could you?"

"That's easy—Joan smelled better than anything I've ever smelled except you. I can still smell her, though I never saw her again after that day. She smelled like every hope I could ever have. She smelled like I would never die, or grow old, or suffer loss."

"You surely see the irony in that."

"I surely do. I never figured it out. I stopped trying years ago."

"And you still claim there's a God?"

"There'd better be."

Laura could assemble no spoken response to that. For the second time in but a few short minutes, she was furious with Josh's fatalism but felt powerless to release this fury. Her whole body wanted to shake itself violently like a dog ridding itself of the chill effects of a sudden cloudburst; but her body wouldn't move. She felt pinned to the mattress like an insect on a foam board, like some gray-bland aging moth desperate to flutter away to find some dim light to beat its wings against but its wings powerless to move its body, nowhere to fly. She finally said, "You should seek her out."

"Why? She doesn't want to see me." His voice sounded very weary, his words a little slurred.

"You don't know that."

"I know she didn't ever respond to the gifts or cards I sent for years following the divorce, until I finally received a two-sentence response—'These reminders are worse than silence. Please stop.' That's Angie for you—ever the verbal economist."

"Nothing since?"

"No. I honored her request, figured it was the least I could do. A few years ago I heard, months after the fact, that Vicki had died of cancer. If Angie didn't reach out to me then, why would she want to see me now?"

"Maybe her silence then was at your wife's request."

"Vicki was dead—she had no more wishes."

"No, Vicki was dying and had the power of her condition to enforce her wishes. And once she'd died, what was your daughter to do—call and say 'Dad, come and lay flowers on Mom's grave?' It was too late then. Your daughter had few options at that point, none of them good."

Josh was finally losing his battle with fatigue and medication; but some part of him felt the need to finish this conversation, to bring Laura up to date on his other family. "Please understand why I don't see events that way. Angie's a strong-willed individual. She'd make happen what she wanted to happen."

"Josh, I'm in her shoes now. She could've used your help, whatever the complications."

For just an instant, Josh heard Laura's words for what they were—a spontaneous plea. But that brief insight quickly crumbled as his consciousness lost its battle with the night and started to roll downhill toward the valley of sleep. In the midst of that silent tumble, he might've said aloud, "We'll see." Or maybe not. In either case, blank rest fully embraced him now and for the full balance of this clear spring night.

Laura thought she heard Josh mumble something from the room beyond but couldn't make out the words. In the ensuing enduring blank silence that followed, her mind churned, like some creek bed flooded to overflowing with eddies and cross currents in unexpected places—doubling back against the tide, swirling in surprise whirlpools. She thought about Angie, a woman now, a woman she'd never met. She felt sure she'd want to know about her father's condition, but had nothing to base that assumption on. Maybe she wouldn't want to know, wouldn't come if she did, really wanted nothing more to do with her father. Then, in the peculiar nature of late-night ruminations, Laura's mind started to drift. She started to think about Josh's other daughter. Does she need to know? Does Josh need to know her?

Then her mind went blank in self-preservation. The stream of her consciousness that had been flooded and churning instantly calmed and cleared and returned to its restful channel. She floated on its current into blank sleep, her deep and easy breaths merging with those of her ex-husband in the room beyond.

Sister Gertrude (they called her Trudy) sat beside her bed in the Sacred Heart Home for Unwed Mothers in Meridian, Mississippi—at least in her dream, Laura assumed it was the bed she slept in for two months or so nearly thirty-seven years ago. It had the same narrow too-soft mattress with a sheet of plywood instead of a boxspring set on a white painted cast-iron frame with solid brass finials atop the four iron posts. Those brass finials gave it away—they always struck Laura as the sole indulgences in an otherwise stripped-to-the-bone efficiency in her room and the home in general.

But then, in her dream, the finials disappeared, the mattress grew firm and broader and rose off the floor, and she was back home—her bed in Modesto, the room and furniture and sounds of the house exuding a level of comfort and security and peace never present, for her at least, in the Sacred Heart Home. Yet there was Sister Trudy, beside her bed in Modesto, seeming fully at home there also, her quiet presence a steady calm amidst any storm. "You will survive this," Trudy said softly.

"The delivery, you mean?" Laura asked. She was terrified of the prospect of labor. She'd never handled pain well, and the Home's midwife was quite insistent on natural delivery.

"Yes, but also the tearing."

That didn't sound good to Laura; "tearing" didn't sound good at all. Her gut wrenched so violently she thought maybe the baby would burst loose at that very moment, tearing the whole way. But Trudy didn't seem to notice the revulsion she'd triggered in Laura. Maybe she couldn't see Laura lying in the shadows as clearly as Laura could see her.

"And the healing—you'll survive that too."

"The healing?"

"That's the hardest part. You give her away in an instant, then you spend the rest of your life healing from that tear."

Laura's hands cradled the fetus ballooning her belly. There was no question she would put the baby up for adoption. Her marriage to Josh was over—emotionally and practically if not yet legally. She'd not seen him since leaving for France, and even the sporadic letters had stopped months ago. She had no family to turn to, no close friends, no good job prospects. She needed to finish her degree as quickly as possible and there was no way she could do that with a baby in tow. She justified her selfishness with the honest observation that there were countless infertile couples who longed for a child and could provide a stable and loving home and upbringing, vastly more than she could ever hope to give. So yes, she would have the baby; and yes, it would be given up for adoption—a life set free to the world, the only parcel of worth her thin existence had yielded back to abundant creation: then or now, Laura silently acknowledged in her semi-consciousness outside the dream, lying on the daybed in Josh's nursery turned library.

Trudy was still there, beside this bed in Josh's house. "You will survive the healing by becoming it."

Laura asked, "How do you know?"

"It's what I did. It's what you'll do."

"Show me how, please."

"I already will." Then she was gone.

Laura woke gently in darkest night, lying on her stomach, her face deeply buried in the plush down pillow. All her suddenly revived and keenly aware senses tested the night air for hint of harm or threat or foreboding yet uncovered only peace. She didn't recall Sister Trudy's face or words from her dream, but a strong calm settled over her body and soul. The word will danced about her mind and soon outward into the room, like a ballerina with full pirouettes and graceful leaps against the dark. I will—my will—she will—his will—thou will. In a dance captivating, dizzying, enthralling, disarming. And defining. My will, your will, his will, her will. The swirling dance slowed, calmed; stillness returned home to her pillowed head, her resting mind, her peaceful soul.

Yes, Laura both heard and said from somewhere within—I will.

Whatever that meant; wherever that might take her.

Inside his fever, Josh floated on a broad slow-moving river in the dark. Looking to each side, there were bonfires on the river's banks, sending a staccato glow across the calm reflecting water as he drifted past. He heard the fires' crackle, could see their smoke rise gray against the darker night sky. He could hear voices, people talking around the fires, but couldn't make out the words—if they were words at all or maybe just the hoots and hollers and purrs and grunts of onward rushing life. He strained to hear, to understand the sounds, to know what they were talking about, what their plans were. But no words separated themselves from the human murmur passing by on the banks.

He looked downstream and the fires continued along both banks, far as he could see. What were they for? Some attempt to bring fish to the surface, ready prey for pre-set nets? Or an effort to light the whole of the broad river, bank to bank? And if so, then for what purpose? To rescue a drifting child or secure a boat that had broken free from its moorings? Or to celebrate a war hero or a popular leader passing by on the waterway? Or were they just fires of celebration—the summer solstice or Fourth of July or victory in battle or divine deliverance from some strife or plague? The why of the fires both mattered tremendously yet didn't matter at all. It was enough that they were there, lighting the way ahead, far as he could see.

He looked behind and there was only darkness back there—no fires, no water visible. Where had the fires gone? Had he rounded a bend in the river that blocked them from his view? He couldn't tell; he didn't know. There were so many things he didn't know. And he couldn't go back. The water carried him onward.

His second wife Vicki was floating beside him. He wondered how she managed to stay afloat. He looked about for a log or some piece of flotsam he might offer her, but the surface of the water was unbroken by branch or other debris. He was sorry he couldn't help her. But Vicki didn't need his help. She floated beside him without effort or struggle. He waited for some word from her, a word of accusation or condemnation or recrimination. Lord knows she had a bountiful store of such words, and he deserved them all. But no words came from her, and she floated so peacefully beside him that he accepted her silence as a truce. He'd longed for that. Then she raised her hand and touched her fingers to his dry lips. Cool water dripped from her fingertips over his parched lips.

But the fingers weren't Vicki's but Amy's. And he was twelve and in the pool in the dark floating beside a sixteen-year-old neighbor girl whose fingers lightly, almost imperceptibly, traced a line along his lips and all the way around his mouth. Softly, slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly around and around and around his lips till his whole body was on edge, taut with a newfound longing that would never be filled.

### Day Two

Laura woke restless at dawn. She couldn't trace the source of her agitation. She recalled no nightmare or unsettling dream, and felt as if she'd slept soundly the entire night. Yet here she was wide awake on her back in the diffuse gray light of dawn with hours left before Josh was scheduled to wake and now what was she to do? She had no book to read (though there were hundreds, if not thousands, on the shelves surrounding her in their ponderous grayness now, she couldn't imagine taking one up and trying to wade through it). There was no T.V. in the room, not that she would've turned it on anyway for fear of waking Josh. She considered briefly letting her fingers wander her body to seek those concentrations of nerve endings that might lead her first to distraction and eventually to ease. She'd not availed herself of those solitary pleasures for months at least, maybe years. She wondered if it was proximity to Josh that pushed her mind to consider such things.

This was a new place she now occupied—the bed, yes, the room, the house; larger still, the duty she'd accepted, the voids and regrets it'd begun to expose. From whence shall my help appear? A yawning hole opened in the center of her being and she saw herself standing at the edge of that hole gazing calmly into its unfathomable darkness. What other perils lay in there? she wondered. Or worse, what nothing? And still further into the depths, what if nothing? What then? That was a prospect she could hardly contemplate. That was a place she couldn't go. That was a place she wouldn't go. Her mind released her fingers to their explorations. Her fingers might find some semblance of ease, or life at least, on the thin edge of the darkness, hidden on the fringe. Her body all but leapt at the chance.

But before her fingers had barely begun, she sat up suddenly in the bed, threw her arm out to grasp the headboard and steady herself against a wave of dizziness. The room had brightened by several shades (or her eyes had adjusted to the dim light), and she could see well enough to walk without turning on the lamp. She swung her legs over the bedside, slid into her slippers and robe, and walked gingerly to the doorway.

She could make out Josh's figure on the bed. He was on his back, the shape of his body barely visible beneath the covers. His head was deeply cushioned in the pillow, his face pointed straight toward the ceiling. That's how he'll look when he's dead, she thought; then forced the image from her mind as it threatened to expose again the chasm she was fleeing. She took two cautious steps toward him, intent on laying her ear against his chest or her wrist close by his mouth to confirm his breathing. Don't be dead yet, she thought or whispered or said aloud. Not yet.

Then Josh said something—"no" or "woe" or "go," she couldn't be sure. She froze in mid-stride, still more than an arm's length from his side. Had she imagined the sound? She strained to hear. Out of the grayness came the sound of slow, perhaps slightly labored breathing. Imagined word or real, his breathing was concrete proof of life. She need move no closer, disturb him from whatever peace he might be gleaning.

But what about her? What about her peace, or lack thereof? Could she lie beside him now and pull from his prone body some semblance of the rest he now enjoyed. She tried to remember when she last lay beside him and couldn't, or wouldn't. So she tried to imagine lying beside him now. His skin would be cool, his metabolism slowed by the narcotics. His near leg beside hers would suddenly cease at the bulging bandage, while hers would continue on, deeper into the covers, perhaps touching the footboard. She might find his hand beneath the covers, count his fingers, raise them to her lips. By then he'd be awake surely, turn his face to hers. His eyes—dark circles in the dim light—would be clouded by sleep, or maybe tinged with confusion or surprise. But soon enough they would lock on her steady gaze and then calm. And he would find buried in himself the means to quell these new fears and quench this surprise longing. This longing. This longing.

Laura shuddered hard where she stood. She felt suddenly ill and lurched toward the bathroom, striving to maintain silence while striving not to throw up in the middle of Josh's bedroom.

She remembered enough of the layout of the bathroom (or was it instinct, not memory, now, guiding all her movements in the gray dark) to push the door shut behind her and find her way groping to the toilet, where she half-knelt, half-collapsed beside the cool porcelain bowl. She raised the cover and the seat and vomited the part of last night's dinner that remained in her stomach. She heaved several more times but nothing more came up except sour air. There was a brief pause, then twice more she started to wretch only to have the convulsions suddenly stop in mid-contraction, jerking her whole body into a gastronomical skid that was more painful than if the regurgitation had completed its arc and released its poison. Then it was over.

She woke sometime later with her head cradled on her left arm, and her left arm resting on the rim of the toilet. She couldn't see anything in the windowless bathroom. Was it morning yet? How could she know? The powerful smell of her vomit enveloped and nearly overwhelmed her. Her free hand found the handle to the toilet and pushed down. The toilet roared to life in her left ear still resting on her arm on the rim. The roar sounded like a mini-hurricane; and the smell was briefly much worse, then slowly better. She wondered what she'd just flushed away, wondered now too late if she should've turned on the light and examined her vomit for signs of blood, mucous, pieces of tissue. Maybe she should've saved a sample, taken it to the doctor (which doctor? where?) for lab tests. What was wrong with her anyway?

But she was too weak to care for long. She couldn't even lift her head from her arm, couldn't imagine rising to turn on the light. So she let her other arm fall on the opposite side of the toilet rim; its edge, unwarmed by her flesh, was shockingly cold. Then she thought—I hope Josh's housekeeper is as thorough as he says she is. The she remembered what her college roommates called their toilet bowl—the porcelain wishing well. She managed a weak smile in the dark. She'd have to come up with a darned good wish, having purchased it at so steep a cost.

The wish unfolded like this as Laura drifted through layers of semi-consciousness toward a deeper layer of restless sleep. It was the last time she'd thrown up—in the damp and grungy hall toilet shared by twelve other girls in the Paris youth hostel. Though her legs were weak, she'd not let herself collapse in front of the toilet; instead, she grasped her knees and bent over the stained bowl as her stomach rid itself of that morning's breakfast of cornflakes and sliced banana. She was startled by a loud knock on the door followed by Marge's voice telling her to hurry up. Laura managed to croak out a plea for a few more minutes. Marge mumbled something about her hogging the toilet, then her footsteps on the wooden floor faded as she walked away.

This was the fourth morning in the last five that Laura'd lost her breakfast, and she knew what it meant. The French had not yet approved an over-the-counter pregnancy test; but her missed period, her sensitive nipples, and now this morning sickness made her pregnancy a certainty, however much she wished to deny it.

The odd thing is she'd known of her condition for weeks now. The epiphany had come on the long flight from New York to Paris. She'd fallen asleep while upright in her seat with a plump balding Frenchman inches to her right casting the occasional unabashed lascivious stare in her direction and a tiny Italian grandmother with a wrinkled face and intense watchful eyes and a whiny four-year-old granddaughter to her left. She trusted the watchful grandmother to keep the lecherous Frenchman in line and let herself fall asleep.

In her dream on the plane she saw Josh not as she'd last seen him—waving stiffly at the gate as she'd boarded the New York-bound flight from Boston, his gaze inscrutable to her (after all these years), neither sad nor hopeful nor loving nor forlorn but distant and reserved, safe—but alone in a snowstorm searching something in the fast-piling snow. He looked and he looked, kicking at the snow, the brush, the swamp hummocks; but whatever he was looking for, he never found it, continued his search in the deepening snow, the fading light.

She'd woke to Atlantic dawn streaming brilliance through the wide-body passenger cabin. She glanced to her right—the Frenchman asleep with his mouth agape and a bit of saliva drying on his chin (who was the watcher now?)—and to her left—the wizened-faced woman offered a curt nod (her guard duty on Laura's behalf successfully completed) with the granddaughter asleep on her lap. That's when she knew—she was carrying Josh's child. That's how she thought of it at that moment—Josh's child, his only, not hers in any way. It would be months before she began to think of it as her child. By then, she'd made Josh a distant, safely encapsulated memory—no longer her husband and, more to the point, no longer any part of the child slowly ballooning her belly.

Josh was in a kind of free fall now, in his drugged unconsciousness. Not that the rapid descent was terrifying or exhilarating or even characterized by a sense of accelerating downward motion—it wasn't. But with what shred of self-awareness remained within him, buried as it was beneath dense layers of sleep and drugs and fever and pain, Josh sensed that he was rushing past, in headlong flight more than fall, what remained of the world he'd inhabited for fifty-eight years.

Or that it was rushing past him. That, then, is why he'd not sensed movement. It was the world falling past him, not the other way around—a persistent blur occasionally broken by flashing images from his past—his boyhood dog Lady, the hard face of his Grandmother Earl in her coffin, his dad on the ancient Farmall tractor, his Aunt Lucy rowing toward him out of the sunset. They were all dead. The world kept on rushing by—all he'd known and watched and recorded in locked vaults within his brain cascaded by in a blurred waterfall punctuated by glimpses of long-gone people and objects. Surely that blur would end soon—end at darkness or end at light but please God end at something more substantial than the shambles he'd made of this brief and all-too-fragile life.

Then the blur terminated—not at darkness nor at light but at Angie, his only child, still alive (far as he knew—please, please still alive!). What was she doing here, at a time like this (outside of time, as it was)? Josh was torn in two directions—a knee-jerk response wished to flee from her and the guilt she always prompted, back into the blur and the waste; but another part of him desired to race toward her and cling to her against the chaos. He found himself leaning in her direction, the choice not his but some other.

Angie held her hand up, stopped him cold. Her fingers, part his making, were long and graceful.

So Josh stopped. The free fall stopped, the world rushing past stopped, the fleeting images of once living creatures now dead stopped. There was only Angie, some years older than when he'd last seen her, a beautiful young woman with a depth of wisdom that could only come from suffering. Her stare was intense but neutral, neither beckoning nor forbidding, welcoming nor rejecting. He bore that unwavering gaze for what might have been seconds or centuries, if there was time here.

"So now what?" he finally got up the courage and strength to ask.

She slowly lowered her hand but made no movement to close the gap between them. Her manner made it clear she expected him to hold his place as well. "Tell me about the longing," she said, her voice gentle and familiar, as if asking for help with her homework or a ride to dance class.

He'd not feign ignorance, not here. "It began before I began."

"That's convenient." There was no hint of sarcasm in her voice, but neither would she accept an overly simplistic and self-serving answer.

"Well, then, it dates to my earliest memory. I was lying on my back in my crib. There was this beautiful, dazzling world above and around me, colors and movement and every gradation of light—the mobile of farm animals gently twirling, the endless patterns in the wallpaper, reflected sunlight sparkling on the ceiling: God's creation in all its glory offered undiluted for my full pleasure and eventual use. But amidst and under all that wonder there was this void, this hunger. What's worse, this hunger was not outside me, like all that enthralling color and movement and grace; no, it was somewhere inside me. It was then or soon thereafter that I realized that the center of this hunger resided more or less at the center of my body."

"At your cock."

The word in her voice should've shocked him but didn't. He knew it only as an inaccuracy, or at least an oversimplification. "No, not exactly. For a while in adolescence and beyond, that organ became the central manifestation of the hunger. But both before and after that maelstrom, the hunger lived more peacefully but just as unavoidably further inside, at the center of my body, near the center of my pelvis and radiating outward from there. The longing always started far beneath the surface, wherever it ended up, however it gained expression."

"Inside? From the start?"

Josh nodded. "Of that much I'm sure. It wasn't because my mother didn't nurse me or my father didn't cradle me or the planets weren't properly aligned at the moment of my creation. The longing was made when I was made."

Angie seemed to accept the assertion, or at least accepted that she'd get no further with the inquiry at that moment. "And the fulfillment?"

Josh laughed. "Don't know the concept. Never found fulfillment to that hunger, not in a whole life of searching in every conceivable—" He paused, thought the words nook and cranny but withdrew them as too suggestive. "—hiding place. Every possible hiding place."

Angie laughed. "And a few nooks and crannies." Then she asked, "But why hiding place? Who was hiding fulfillment from you?"

Josh thought that through. "The same one who put the longing there in the first place, the same one who dazzled me with his creation that still wasn't enough—God, I guess. Who else?"

Angie shrugged. "It's your longing, your search, your fulfillment or lack thereof. You can blame whoever you want."

And Josh knew she was right. It was his, belonged to no one else, not even God. He'd held it close from the beginning, hoarded it as his most precious possession, the one thing no one could ever take from him or even share. Then he let it direct his life, lead him down so many misbegotten pathways. He'd held the hunger too close, strangled any chance of fulfillment before it had taken breath of life, given him the breath of life and freedom.

"But no, that's not true," Josh shouted suddenly. "There were moments of fulfillment, the absence of longing—seconds, minutes, even days, whole weeks. Those first weeks with Laura, before we'd even kissed, no need for hope or expectation—everything I'd ever longed for present in her, in the face and arms and legs and heart and soul that was her (and for those first weeks, not a hint of sexual desire). And in the tiny newborn girl with dark hair and fragile eyelids that wouldn't stay open no matter how hard she tried to keep them open to begin her quest to absorb the whole world. That newborn girl was my destiny. She took my longing and returned it as purpose. The fulfillment came from outside me. The longing went away only when I let it go."

He wanted Angie to know this truth, discovered at her prodding—here, at the last. But she was gone. His words, discovered because of her and offered finally to her and for her, rang emptily in his now empty mind.

Laura had given up trying to rouse Josh. When she'd emerged from the bathroom to find him even paler than the pale dawn light, shivering slightly and breathing shallowly in broken groans, she'd tried to wake him by calling his name, first softly then loudly; by brushing his cheek then shaking his near shoulder; finally by lying down beside him, under the covers, hoping her warmth and proximity might at least comfort him if not call him back to consciousness. But nothing worked; his feverish unconscious persisted.

She'd climbed out of the bed and called Sherri the day nurse who answered clear-voiced on the first ring despite the early hour. She'd responded to Laura's inquiry if she should call 911 with a simple fact—"They'll take him to the hospital." Josh'd made it clear to all involved with his care that he didn't want to see the inside of a hospital ever again; he wished to die in his house in his own bed and would pay for whatever care would be required to make that happen. Sherri told Laura to sit tight, that she'd contact Josh's surgeon and call her back soon as she had any information.

"And what should I do in the mean time?" Laura had asked.

"Well, watch over him." In her voice, the task sounded as simple and natural as "Boil water for tea" or "Put the clothes in the dryer."

Laura wouldn't let it go at that. "And if he dies while I'm watching?"

"He won't, not yet."

Laura thought, Easy for you to say, but said, "How do you know?"

But the line was dead. After a few seconds' pause, a dial tone crowded out the deafening silence.

So now Laura, still in her pajamas, sat in the armchair beside the bed watching over her dying ex-husband. The dim dawn became an overcast spring morning while she watched. Her emotions, cast in a jumbled heap by the trauma of her morning and the upheavals of the last few days, were not presently subject to disentanglement—she couldn't conceive of trying to sort through the chaos. So she shoved that chaos into a closet deep within herself and shut the door to it, to be opened later or maybe never, she didn't know.

And she did as Sherri'd directed—she watched over Josh. She no longer tried to will him awake, but neither would she will him to die. She didn't really will anything, not for Josh or even for herself. This march of events was beyond her shaping, had been for days. And years? Decades? That possibility passed across her consciousness like a shadow in some denser dark, then was gone.

She took Josh's near hand, his left, and held it loosely beneath the covers. It was cool but not cold and she thought she felt the pulse of blood in its veins, though maybe it was only her own pulse bouncing off his skin. And then she told him of her greatest loss.

"You never knew her and I barely did but she's us living on somewhere. She's the best of what we had before we threw it all away or let the world take it from us or simply let it die like some hardy seeming plant that suddenly up and dies one day because we'd neglected to water it or give it enough sun. But the thing is it didn't die but is out there in the world in her. Our love lives because it's beyond our control or ability to strangle or starve.

"I named her Brie, partly like the French cheese because I first realized I was pregnant while in France but more so because Brie seemed such a delicate, ephemeral word; and I knew any name I gave her would last only until they took her from me and her new parents would give her their name. So she was Brie for the four days until she was gone.

"They told me not to let her mouth get near my breasts. She would smell the milk and want to nurse and that would be bad for us both. So I kept her away from my breasts while we lay together in the narrow bed but she smelled my milk anyway and nursed the air; and my breasts leaked away, soaking the maternity bra. So to distract me and her from the pain of that, I pulled the covers up over us both and we hid in that dim cocoon for what seemed hours. I'd hold her hand and count the five perfectly formed tiny fingers. 'One, two, three, four, five' then 'five, four, three, two, one.' And I would imagine the two of us lifting off in the capsule under the covers and rocketing to some other planet where all would be provided and we could live in quiet peace and happiness while I took care of her until she grew up and took care of me.

"It's difficult to express just how powerful and sincere that wish was for me then—that God or Fate or some Master of the Universe greater than our humble flawed selves might intervene and lift me and Brie from the path of inevitable separation and transport us to some more just world where bad choices and personal shortcomings were not the final rule. I wish I could recall the strength of that hope and live in it again. It must've been a powerful wish to sustain me through those four days that were a lifetime unto themselves.

"Then the sisters came and took her. They didn't make a big deal of it—just came in the morning before breakfast and took her away as if for a sponge bath but never brought her back. The thing that was different that morning was that Sister Trudy, the youngest sister and the only one to befriend me during my stay, came into my room after the other sisters had left with Brie and sat in the wooden chair beside my bed and watched me in silence.

"'You think I should cry?' I asked her, dry-eyed.

"She stared at me with the softest, kindest gaze I'd ever seen, before or since. If she'd said, that moment, 'You can stay here with me,' I would've never left, locked forever in her gentleness. But instead, she said, 'Some do. It might help, or not. But you needn't cry; there's no cause for tears here.'

"'My baby'—I couldn't trust myself to say her name—'is gone forever. That's not worth a tear or two?'

"Trudy's soft gaze held through my anger. 'Your baby lives forever—in your heart and in the lives of all those she'll touch. She's your gift to the world and to eternity. There's no sadness in that.'

"The eternity part got me, and the tears did rush up then. Somehow I blurted out—'And if she's in pain and I'm not there? If she dies and I don't know?' Words couldn't bear the sadness that opened in my soul.

"But Trudy didn't flinch. She took my hand in her two soft and warm hands. She had long white fingers with nails meticulously trimmed to the skin but no sign of nervous chewing or cracking. It was then that I realized that the only bare skin I'd ever seen of Trudy was her face sharply framed by her coif and those delicate hands that ended at the tight black cuffs of her habit. It was as if Trudy existed only as face and hands, voice and gesture, united in service. So compelling were those body parts and their sacred purpose that whatever other parts connected and sustained them, whatever skin existed invisible, faded into insignificance. I believe Trudy herself thought of her body in these terms—only eyes, mouth, and hands to witness, console, soothe. The rest was only to sustain these members and their holy function.

"Trudy said, 'She was baptized the morning after her birth, so she will never die. And if she hurts, your arms will cradle her pain, rock her till the pain goes away.'

"'Baptized? Why wasn't I asked? Why wasn't I there?'

"Trudy smiled reassuringly. Her whole face participated in the expression. I will swear to this day that her face actually glowed. 'Though it wasn't about you, and didn't require your permission, you were there. You were happy to give her back to God.'

"I've never known if Trudy's words were literal or figurative—if I were truly present at Brie's baptism or present only in spirit. I have no memory of the event. But somehow in that one sentence offered with that angelic glow, Trudy gave me the strength to endure that day and all that have followed. Brie has been in the joint custody of me and God for the thirty-six years since. The day-to-day facts of her physical life have not concerned me for even a second's passing thought. Wherever she is and whatever she's doing, she's safe in the care of our love."

Laura paused. She had no idea how many minutes had passed since beginning her heartfelt monologue that she now realized was a confession to Josh of the existence of a person that was, in DNA at least, half his. And if Brie had been, in some manner, fully hers for all these years, held in union with God outside the bounds of space, how could she presume with any fairness that Josh didn't also hold some sort of ownership in her? At the moment, in this dim room with this comatose man, anything seemed possible. More accurately, everything was possible. The old parameters of her existence had to be abandoned, new order delineated. The soil she was now excavating, if fed into a centrifuge, would not yield a detailed printout of composition parts per million, but might instead yield forth a scent or a song, darkness or light, a window on a glowing new world or an endless spiral into blank oblivion.

She still clasped Josh's hand between hers. Where her skin ended and his began was no longer distinguishable—her skin one with his, his pulse and hers united. She studied his face. It seemed less taut than earlier, his breathing less labored. Had he heard anything she'd said? Everything? Was his apparent ease real or imagined or an extension of her new calm? These questions flashed through her mind then were gone.

She spoke again, this time directly to Josh—willed him to hear and understand. "I received a certified letter shortly before coming here from some Mississippi government agency. My daughter given up for adoption thirty-six years ago wishes to contact me. If I wish to contact her, I should call. I memorized the number without wanting to. But should I dial it? What should I do, Josh?"

Josh gave no sign of comprehension or answer. Laura gently loosened her hands from surrounding his. She stood beside the bed, waited a few seconds for the dizziness to pass, then bent and kissed him on the lips, felt his exhaled breath force its way between her lips and down into her lungs. She stood upright and stared down on him for long seconds, studied his inscrutable expression. Then she turned to find some clean clothes in her suitcase, head for the shower, prepare herself for whatever day awaited her.

Behind her, almost without audible sound, Josh sighed.

That sigh was a fair summation of the trial Josh was passing through and the vision that was passing through him—the two conditions, trial and vision, simultaneous and indistinguishable from one another.

It was a glow that was a fire that was gently warming that was scalding—first one then the other then both. There was no resisting the flame; it was everywhere, inside and out; it was himself, all that he was. How could he escape? Then just as suddenly there was no feeling, no self, only the glow that was the flame. The flame burned on into the night.

He was thrown outward into that night, first only a little ways—the fire near, its warmth licking his skin. Then resolutely pushed farther and farther out—the fire's warmth slowly fading, then even its glow in the dark steadily fading: dimmer then dimmer then dimmer then dimmer till it was the tiniest dot in a sea of black, a lone faint star's light that travelled billions of miles with all manner of hazards in its path to reach his hungering eyes.

Then he blinked and even this mere dot of light that had once been so much heat and brightness vanished, leaving only whole dark, with no end in time or space apparent.

That's when Josh realized he was home—his destination and his destiny. This was the room he had made for himself—stripped bare of all furnishings and appointments, of color and texture, of light and sound, and now finally of dimension, shape, space, time: the nest he had made for himself.

Josh felt no shock or surprise, regret or remorse. He would not struggle against this fate. To the contrary, had he the ability to rise above and look down on the void that was now his new eternity, he would've nodded sagely at the propriety of it, the justice. As it was, his fading thread of self occupied the void, the void him, the two separate parts racing toward union, a final verdict.

Except for the sound, so faint at first he questioned whether it was real or imagined, emanating from the vacuum that had no other aspect. A sound ever so faint, a song on the wind—gone then here, gone again, then back. Growing ever so slowly louder, ever so slightly stronger, a siren's song in the dark, a whisper then a call, something to hold onto when there was nothing else. It hardly surprised Josh that the sound became a voice, and the voice was female.

Sherri stood over Josh with the now empty syringe held aloft between her two fingers like a sorcerer's potent wand. At the doctor's orders, she'd administered a stimulant to counter the narcotic synergies of the mix of powerful painkillers.

The effect of the injection was nearly instantaneous. Josh opened his eyes on Sherri and said, "Remind me not to cross you."

Sherri laughed. "I'm Catholic. I've been crossed a billion times since birth."

"Then you know that commandment—thou shalt not kill." He was still staring at the menacing syringe, his fear only half-feigned.

Sherri followed his gaze to the syringe, gave a small shrug, then dropped it in the bio-hazard bag and sealed the flap. "I know a better one—love your neighbor as yourself."

"Didn't know that'd made the top ten?"

"Hadn't. Stands alone by itself, above all others."

Josh frowned. "Don't guess I'd want the loathing some people have for themselves." He wondered if he could get an antidote to whatever it was she'd given him and retreat to the quiet place he'd so recently inhabited.

Sherri asked, "Where'd you grow up, Mr. Earl?" She began to pack up her nurse's kit even as she waited his answer.

"On a family farm in New England." He paused then added, "I sometimes think I should've stayed there."

From behind him, Laura asked, "Why?"

He rolled his head on the pillow and saw her seated in the chair just inches from the edge of the bed. The skin of her face was pale and taut with worry, her posture rigid and leaning forward, toward the bed. He wondered what'd happened since he'd last seen her, but would save the question for later. "Farm life is the right balance of linear and cyclical. You plant, you cultivate, you harvest; then you do it all over again—a straight line that is also a circle. Academia is just a jumble—no straight lines, no circles."

Laura leaned even closer to the bed and stared at his face. She nodded slowly, but seemed skeptical. Or maybe it was concern or distraction that he read as skepticism.

He continued. "On the farm, the order is God's. In the Ivory Tower of Babble, the order, if you could call it that, is human. I should've chosen God's order."

"You didn't know." Her voice was barely a whisper.

"Oh, I knew—from the start. But that didn't stop me from walking away. That's the perversity of free will—you can know the answers, know all the right choices, and still make the wrong choice just for the sake of making it."

"To spite God." Laura said, still barely a whisper.

Josh held Laura's desperate stare for a few seconds then looked away. "I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe just to rattle Destiny, shake up the order of those neat stacks of chips."

"As if Destiny cares."

"Oh, It does, in Its way. If It didn't, all of our bad and petulant choices would've long since caused the world to cave in on itself."

"Or just the human race."

Josh nodded. "Yes. The rest would've continued in some better order."

"And we would've been long since forgotten, not even a footnote in eternity."

"Mmmm," Josh agreed. "But we're not."

"May be yet."

Josh shook his head once. "Not yet; not ever."

Laura glanced up across the bed. Sherri's back was turned as she jotted something in her notebook. Laura quickly leaned forward, closing the few inches between her face and Josh's, and kissed him fully on the lips. She held the kiss for long seconds, waited for his breath to push back against her mouth, inhaled the air his lungs had stripped of its oxygen, then slowly, reluctantly, leaned back away from him, back into her chair. Through her tears she whispered, clear-voiced and sure, "Welcome back."

Josh nodded acceptance but said, "I never left," though he knew that wasn't true.

Sherri's idle question that morning had shaken something loose in Josh; and as he lay in bed (what else was he to do—lying in bed was his existence now, here on out) in the bright afternoon with Laura in some other part of the house tending to her business, Josh's mind drifted back to his youth on the farm.

He thought of all the hours he'd spent on the tractor plowing the fields that would be planted to corn that would be chopped into silage that would feed the cows that would excrete their waste that would be spread on the fields that would be plowed and planted to corn. He clearly pictured the curls of dark, loamy soil that the plow turned over—the myriad earthworms exposed to sudden unfamiliar and undesired brilliance, the robins following the plow to feast on the worms, the tractor tilted to the left in the previous furrow, the belch of diesel exhaust rising into the clear spring sky, the roar of the engine blurring all other sound into a single seductive drone drawing him into a waking trance.

Where those worms? Where the robins? Their DNA must continue, out there somewhere—their blend of ordered organic compounds disordered by time and chaos but passed forward nonetheless, existing out there somewhere as empirical components or perhaps rendered into new and complex organisms: an oak or a cattail, a raccoon or a dragonfly: but most assuredly out there, somewhere.

Were he to return to that field, might he recognize—intuitively if not scientifically—some trace of that which he'd touched, of that which had touched him, in one instant out of one hour out of one day out of all those days out of all those years that seemed to pass so slowly but were in fact racing past and rushing him toward his future? And if he were to visit that former field, whatever its current condition as house or yard or parking lot or thicket, if he were to visit that field and find in it some trace of that which had entranced and enraptured and encased him in that one instant of that one day so long past, were he to be able to isolate that one bit of matter from that one day so long ago that had survived changed but the same till now, would it make any difference?

Josh leaned into the unknown of that question. One might've guessed that such contemplations would've yielded a free fall into dangerous further unanswerables that might've swallowed him whole. But instead the open-ended and insoluble question not only accepted the weight of his longing without collapse but actually began to lift him gently upwards and onwards. What of the cows whose calves and milk bought his clothes and paid for his schooling? Surely their great-great-great-great-great-great-great great-granddaughters persisted somewhere, lived on in a stall or a pasture on some distant or near farm. The cats in the hay mow or the spiders in the eaves or even the kernel of corn planted in the soil he'd turned grown into the twelve-foot stalk ground into the silage chips fed to those cows collected in the manure spread on the frozen field flooded by the river in the spring carried off to the sea: a straight line sometimes requiring God force to be bent into a circle, but always bent, always a circle, never broken—not by illness or death or destruction or failure. Some trace endured, somewhere. Some trace persisted through every transformation across all these decades and all these miles to cradle him softly into full and secure rest.

The ring of her cellphone (a measure from Pachelbel's Canon in D) jarred Laura from her daze as she sat in the upholstered chair in Josh's den with a book open on her lap but not reading it. She sat upright, picked up her phone, saw an unfamiliar number on the screen, and knew immediately who it must be. She'd not expected the call she'd made to the Mississippi adoption agency to yield such prompt results. She felt briefly dizzy. The room blurred then spun in one slow turn around her. She wondered if her hand would move to open the flap of the ringing phone—could her mind direct the nerves to direct the muscles to complete such a suddenly seeming complex maneuver: fingers to flap, flap to open, phone to ear. Would her arm even budge? Could it resist the inexorable tug of gravity long enough for her to raise the phone?

Turns out it could and would. Fingers and hand and arm moved in coordinated action that seemed beyond Laura's conscious intending. That moment, her linked appendages had a mind of their own, or an instinctive predisposition beyond her knowing. That moment, her body acted out a scene her mind (and heart?) were reticent to engage.

"This is Laura," she said. Even her voice, her vocal cords, seemed separate from herself, vibrating in coordination to produce sounds that were words she barely understood, from afar.

"Laura Earl?"

The woman's voice on the other end was calm and sure, comfortable with emotional situations, maybe a policewoman or doctor or pastor. "This is Laura Earl."

"My name is Devon Atwater. The files at the adoption agency indicate that you are my biological mother."

A lawyer, then, Laura thought. "Devon."

"Yes?"

"Your name. It's pretty. Like the county in England."

"Or the deserted island in the Arctic Circle." The woman laughed.

"I've never been there."

"Few have; but they tell me it's nice—for about two hours in late June." Another laugh.

"We'll have to go there someday."

"Let's."

There was a long silence. Each wondered if the other had ended the call, terminated this nascent relationship on a laughing positive if frivolous note. And each felt momentarily relieved at the prospect. Could further interaction improve on this light-hearted opening?

Devon finally broke the spell of silence. "Do you want to see me?"

"Yes, very much." Laura's voice was calm and clear.

"Then where, how?"

"If I could, I'd gladly come to you, wherever you are. But I can't leave right now."

"That's O.K. I'll come to you. It's how I'd planned it."

"Planned?"

"In my head, since the day my mother told me I was adopted."

"And when was that?"

"Twenty-nine years ago."

"That's a long plan."

"More like part of me."

Laura paused. "Me too, I guess."

"A good part?"

Laura shrugged, as if the gesture might be visible over the phone. "Just part of me—like my feet or eyes. Attached."

Devon laughed. "Like a mole or wart."

Laura could laugh with her. "I'm in North Carolina, near Raleigh."

"I'm in Austin, Texas. I'll check into flights and call you back, quick as I can."

Laura said, "No rush. I can wait."

Devon said, "I can't," then hung up.

That night after dinner Laura sat in the chair beside Josh's bed and watched the sky beyond the picture window fade from turquoise to slate gray. The change in color prompted a gentle melancholia deep within her, a feeling she was dimly aware of and not entirely uncomfortable with. After her emotionally tumultuous day, gentle melancholia was the best she could hope for. Anything lighter, happier, would've been artificial, a lie—like dancing at a funeral or joking at a wreck. Such incongruity would've produced its own painful fall sooner or later.

Without looking down, she extended her arm across the few feet of space and brushed Josh's hand lying atop the covers. His skin was so cool she faced him quickly in mild alarm.

He felt her touch and rolled his head on the pillow from where he too had been staring out the window. He smiled. "There's something reassuring about the sky changing color. It's the same sky and yet it changes in a way that we, in all our limitations, can record and react to."

"And mourn." She immediately regretted the verb. It was stronger than she felt or intended.

"I'm sorry," Josh said. "It's been a long day for you."

Laura shrugged. "And for you."

Josh shook his head on the pillow. "Not for me—wherever I was during all the excitement, it wasn't painful or frightening."

Laura grinned. "Lucky you."

Josh nodded. "I'm well aware of that, and grateful." He then added, "Laura, know this—whatever happens from here on out, I'm at peace. Part of that's due to your presence, and for that I'm thankful beyond words, gratitude I'll carry with me from this moment forward, wherever that leads. And part of it is trust in the One who is in charge of this show."

"I wish I could share that trust."

"One day." He turned back toward the window. The sky had fallen beyond gray to black.

"Josh, I think you should contact your daughter."

Josh faced her and winced, the first glimpse of pain he'd shown all day. "Angie?"

Laura smiled. "Unless you have another daughter I don't know about." The unintended irony of her retort made Laura flinch beyond her grin.

"She won't come."

"Don't you think that's her choice to make?"

"I reached out to her for years after the split."

"She's older now. Hurt fades."

"For me or her?"

Laura gazed at him calmly. She well understood his reluctance to open the closet within himself that had long been closed and locked. "Josh, forgive me, but where is that peace you just mentioned. If it's strong enough to carry you through the challenges of this illness, then surely it can risk contacting your daughter."

Josh looked away. "She won't come."

Laura sighed. "If you won't contact her, may I try?"

Josh faced her again. She thought she saw him blink away a tear. "I never said you couldn't."

Laura nodded.

They sat together in a pool of unbroken silence that expanded outward from this spot to fill the whole house, this young night.

Then Josh said, "My address book is in the top right-hand drawer of my desk, though the address there is so outdated it's probably useless."

"There's always the Internet."

Josh nodded. "Can't hide anymore, can you?"

But Josh did hide, at least for a little while, under multiple layers of sleep then rest helped along by a mix of drugs that was both subtler and smoother in their effects than the earlier mix, more in balance with his physiology than the previous night's whipsaw highs and lows of dazzling images (which he didn't recall) and deep dark caverns that nearly enclosed him permanently. Tonight he passed gracefully through multiple layers of ease that felt like neither falling nor rising but more like floating through a space he didn't recognize but knew to be safe. Some part of him felt a desire to record this slow but inexorable drift, document the feeling and the sights that were surely passing by, but he could discern no particular sight or sound or smell or touch or taste (except the taste like that of cold steel lodged in the back of his throat, which he knew to be the flavor of one of the drugs). Yet he knew he was moving, felt it with an inner gyroscope if not a concrete sense. And it was easy movement—almost narcotic in its numb comfort, yet he felt fully alert despite his lack of sensory ability.

Then he was seated directly opposite Vicki, his deceased second wife. The distance between them might've been inches or miles, if distance mattered here (it didn't). Her expression was clear-eyed and calm, the skin under her eyes and over her high cheekbones unfurrowed by time or age or worry. Was this how she'd looked when he'd last seen her, signing the papers at the lawyer's office? Or some earlier memory of her, in some happier time? He couldn't remember, had no clear memory of her from any moment in their nearly twenty years together. How could he not remember Vicki, the single person he'd been closest to the longest of any of his numerous loves? How could that be?

His selective amnesia didn't matter to Vicki or the moment. She had him now; his movement through unseen time and space was suspended. Josh was powerless to escape her gaze.

Yet she seemed in no rush to seize her advantage. If she'd waited all these years to have him frozen before her, captive at last, she gave no sign. She simply sat there, calmly staring at him. Josh began to wonder if she were alive, if this really was his second wife or some long-delayed memory of her, some surprise gift to him in his waning moments.

Then she said, "I remember you inside me."

It was Josh who was frozen now. If he had power of speech, he was too shocked to use it.

"From the first time and all the times thereafter. It was like you were an extension of me—a six-foot-two, two hundred and ten pound appendage. You filled a void I hadn't known I had; and once you filled it, it could never be empty again.

"The pregnancy was a further filling, a filling beyond capacity. I was glad to have that come to an end, glad to once again have only you lodged at my center. I could've left it at that; that was enough for me.

"Then later, when the tumor lodged at the very place where you'd once been, I blamed you. The void you'd left had been filled by something far more rapacious than anything I'd ever known. I was certain it was your fault; if you'd not left the void, how could the cancer have taken root?

"It was only in my last days that I'd realized the mistake, and of course by then it was too late. I tried to explain it to Angie, tried to get her to promise to pass my apologies on to you. But I could see in her eyes that she'd have none of it, could see her shake her head and dismiss my words as delusional, the result of the morphine. She wasn't ready to forgive you, even if I was. I went so far as to try to call you, dialing our old number and hoping it still worked; but the phone fell to the floor before anyone picked up at the other end, and the hospice nurse came in and set the phone on the stand, beyond my reach. She'd patted my hand, shushed my protests, and dialed up the morphine drip.

"And that was it. I never had the chance to tell you I was sorry, that it wasn't your fault—at least not in a timeframe that would've helped. And now look at you—far gone as I'd been and so weighed down with loss. What are we to do, Josh? What are we to do?"

Josh stood before her in shock and guilt that gradually evolved into sadness and longing—longing for those lost days when they were a family with purpose and direction. Each of Vicki's words struck the very heart of his being as objects with mass and velocity, leaving dents in his soul, marks that would never fade. And he didn't want them to, desired that proof of her honesty no matter how much it hurt. He wondered now at how thoroughly he'd compartmentalized his regret at wronging Vicki and losing Angie, how the day after he'd been caught in adultery he'd set all the memories and emotions he'd had for his wife and daughter in a mental strongbox, closed the lid tight and double and triple secured it with unyielding psychic bands—a box sealed so tight not even the most violent of emotional tempests could wrench it open.

But open now it was, by his deceased wife sitting right there in front of him talking of forgiveness and compassion.

"The three of us were at the beach," Vicki said. "It was one of those rare perfect beach days—neither hot nor cold, a gentle breeze but not windy, the sun warm but not scorching, the water turquoise clear, the sand like the softest carpet ever made. Angie, who was maybe seven or eight, was doing handstands—her newest skill and she was so proud of it. And during one of her handstands, you caught her feet and held her there for perhaps ten seconds while I snapped a picture of the two of you. I have that picture still—Angie with her arms extended, her body ramrod straight, you hand holding those feet, your face out of the frame of the photo. It's a picture that makes more sense upside-down—Angie's arms holding up the white sand, a young god carrying the world."

Josh remembered neither the moment nor the photograph.

"Find her, Josh."

### Day Three

Devon dropped her overnight carry-on beside the table and stood opposite Laura across the narrow laminate top at the airport coffee shop. Laura was glad she'd arrived first and was seated, because she couldn't have trusted her legs if she'd been standing. The woman across from her was the exact image of Josh as a young adult—a female Josh with numerous ear piercings and blond highlights in her coal black hair, but unmistakably Josh. Or Josh's, she corrected herself as she caught her breath—not her dying ex-husband reincarnated as a woman but their thirty-six-year-old daughter standing there before her.

"You're Laura," the woman said—a statement, not a question.

Laura nodded once.

"I'm Devon." She paused a moment, perhaps waiting for Laura to make some move; then she extended her hand across the table.

Laura reached out and took the offered hand in hers, held it for just a second longer than would've been normal for a casual introduction, then let it go and slowly withdrew her arm.

Devon remained standing and the two stared at each other in a spreading pool of silence till finally Devon broke the spell by sitting, waving to the waitress, and ordering a latte.

Laura asked, "Is it how you imagined?"

"Meeting you?"

Laura nodded.

"I don't know yet. You?"

"I've only had four days to even contemplate it. I've barely caught my breath from the agency's contact, let alone hatched a scenario."

Devon smiled. "Hatched?"

Laura could laugh at that. "Mother hen, I guess."

"Did you not ever wonder—before the agency's contact?"

Laura shook her head. "I couldn't let myself. I understood when I signed the papers that I was surrendering all rights of communication, and that I should not expect to ever see you again. To imagine such a meeting would've doomed me to a hopeless longing."

Laura spoke these words while gazing out the window at a plane being towed from its gate by a tractor. When she was finished, she looked back at Devon. A single tear leaked from her daughter's right eye and coursed slowly down her cheek, glinting in the sunlight. Laura stood suddenly, moved around the table with two quick strides, and kissed Devon lightly on the cheek where the tear was now drying. Then she retreated and sat down, calmer now than she'd felt all day—all three days, really; since leaving California. The taste of Devon's tear and the texture of her cheek hung on her lips.

Devon brushed her cheek quickly. "You're older."

Laura laughed. "Than the hills."

"No. Than I imagined. But you need to remember that the idea of meeting you started for me nearly thirty years ago. It hasn't changed since then. And you were younger then."

"Yes. All of us."

Devon nodded then smiled.

Her latte arrived and they both let that excuse for a pause in their conversation extend forward. Laura calmly watched her daughter as she sipped her drink and stared out the window at the tarmac. She smiled at the froth of cream that left a moment's white mustache on Devon's upper lip before she swiped it clean with a flick of her tongue. Only then did Laura feel the first stomach-wrenching gasp of regret at having missed this girl's childhood and adolescence. How could life have been so cruel? How could her choice have been so dreadfully mistaken?

Devon faced her with a calm gravity that, for the moment at least, called her away from the pain of regret. "You need to know why I've contacted you now."

Laura nodded slowly, almost reluctantly, unsure she was prepared for what would follow.

"We want to have a child. I want to carry the child." Devon hesitated, took a deep breath, then continued in a rush. "All the forms ask about my parents' medical history. The clinic needs to know what the genetic risks might be, if there are any."

Laura's expression revealed her confusion.

Devon's composure faltered and she blurted out the rest. "I'm gay. My partner has no interest in carrying a child. I could be implanted with her egg, but I said, 'If I'm carrying it nine months, it sure as heck is going to have my DNA.' So that's when Jocelyn—my life partner—said, 'Then we need to find out if your DNA is A-O.K.'" She spoke the last sentence with an accent drawn from the deep south, and laughed to herself at the memory. Then she looked up at Laura. "So here I am."

Laura leaned back in the metal chair. She felt as if she were falling into a dark chasm, the bottom of which was invisible, somewhere far below. Her thighs tightened in the beginnings of a movement that would lift her out of the chair, across the room, and out of the restaurant, the terminal, this woman's life. But instead, in unabashed desperation, she locked her gaze on Devon's eyes, which were Josh's former eyes—healthy and hope-filled, not dying—and let those eyes arrest her free fall, her instinct to flee.

It was Devon now who could offer forth kindness and calm across the table. "I'm sorry Laura—." She paused at the awkwardness of using Laura's name at such an emotional moment. It seemed simultaneously presumptuous and impersonal. "Could I call you Laura-mom? It's a name that came to me on the flight here. I have a Mom—she's alive in Louisiana and I love her. But I don't have a Laura-mom."

Laura could smile at that. "I've been Laura to everyone I've ever known. The 'mom' part might take a little getting used to."

"You have no other children?"

Laura shook her head.

"Someday I'd like to hear about that."

"It's not a long or particularly interesting story—but sure, someday (soon, I hope) I'll be glad to tell you."

Devon nodded. "I'd like that." Then she laughed. "Where was I, before the 'Laura-mom' part?"

"You said you were sorry."

Devon nodded vigorously. "I am sorry, to land in the middle of your life for a selfish reason. It's certainly true that I've wanted to contact you for almost as long as I can remember. But at the same time, I was frightened—at what I might find in you and, I now realize, at what I might uncover in myself. So I put it off. It took Jocelyn to force my hand." Devon grinned. "She's good at doing that. She thinks it's her main job in life, and I'm happy to let her think that."

Calm at last, Laura bore all these charged revelations stolidly. Somewhere beneath the tempest of information and emotion, she saw clearly that this was her biological daughter, and that this daughter had grown into a fine woman—perceptive, kind, open-hearted. She followed this realization with an obvious corollary, the words actually spoken in her mind if not aloud—No thanks to you. That stark reminder hurt more than she would've guessed. To pull her back from that precipice, she returned her focus to the harbor of her ex-husband's young and playful eyes in the face of their daughter. Those eyes were waiting now, watchful, maybe a little frightened, wondering what these recent revelations might prompt.

"A month ago," Laura began, "I didn't believe in destiny. I'm a soil scientist, and dirt doesn't have destiny. But I'm starting to think that maybe humans do." She paused and laughed at herself.

Devon's eyes relaxed, but were still waiting.

"Devon—." Now Laura paused, then added with a smile, "Devon-daughter, I'm deeply grateful to you—and your Jocelyn, and maybe to destiny—for this chance to finally meet you, whatever the reason or cause. I can only hope to give you what you need."

Devon could smile now. "Your DNA?"

"That part's easy."

"And my father's?"

Josh lay in the bed with his head rolled to the right on the pillow watching the fluffy clouds march across a silver-tinged pale blue sky behind the branches at the uppermost reaches of the poplar trees with their nascent leaves giving a green glow to their tips and edges. He imagined vividly (but couldn't see) the ecosystem springing to life at ground level where the sun had warmed the soil and humus, where grasses, weeds, flowers, and seedlings of every type were bursting forth in riotous life, all racing to absorb and transform the new unadulterated sunlight into chlorophyll and more growth to produce more chlorophyll and more growth before the leaves higher in the canopy unfurled and stole that sunlight long before it reached the ground. Ahh, life, he thought. Another cycle started, and hurtling headlong toward that pre-dawn this fall that would see the frost slash it like a scythe. Or the deer tooth nip it in the bud. Or the hailstorm beat it flat like King Billy bomb-balls. So it's Yeats, he thought, and at such a late hour. Who would've guessed that?

With his meds in balance, his day passed by in a clean and smooth mix of dreamy semi-consciousness and dozing soothing dreaminess. He could, when called upon, raise himself to a moderate level of alertness, could focus on the real world and converse with Laura or Sherri or the doctor when required. Even now, he heard the dull drone of the T.V. in the den, remembered that Sherri was in there watching her soaps and Laura was off running errands and it was early afternoon on a Wednesday. And always at the fringes, three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of horizon, was the pain—a forest fire banked at the moment but ever threatening to flare up and consume him.

But in the meantime, he could float, like those clouds beyond the window, pushed resolutely forward by the jet stream of time toward a certain denouement. And he could think calmly, riding those clouds—Bring it on. I'm ready.

"Not yet," Vicki said to him from her hiding place in a vast field of daisies.

He was calling her name, looking for her across the endless field. How could she be invisible in the calf-high flowers? Where could she be hiding?

"Not yet," she said. "Not yet."

Then he found her, right where he'd left her (he thought)—fringed in flowers, her face gazing up at him, her young body (from when he'd first known her) naked and open, beckoning. So he lay down on top of her, seemed to melt into her, made together a single new thing, neither one of them left but just this new entity.

"Where is Angie?" Vicki asked out of the darkness.

"I just found you; now you want me to find her?"

"Where is Angie?"

Josh paused before the question. It seemed a physical presence before him, a new obstacle to his future. He waited for it to move or disappear, but it wouldn't budge. So he said, more to move the moment forward than with any degree of commitment or certainty, "She's on her way."

Vicki said out of the dark, "Don't wait too long."

Josh said, "I won't."

With that, Vicki's body reformed beneath him and he was steadily working atop her in their old best selves, each of them moving to and for the other's pleasure. A part of Josh wondered when he'd last had such a blatantly erotic dream. But the rest of Josh surrendered to the allure of Vicki's warm and pliant skin, fell fully into her embrace then beyond, into dreamless rest.

Angie for her part was, at just that moment, preserving the life of a young Iraqi boy as her left thumb and forefinger held closed the nicked artery in his neck while the field doctor—Jacob was his name, a Jew saving the lives of Muslims who might one day return the favor by blowing him up—swiftly removed the forceps and replaced them with a surgical clip. All around the three of them life and death swirled together in a haze of blood and mucous and excrement and torn clothes and surgical supplies and the staccato orders of corpsmen (and women) and the screams and moans and cries of the injured and the dying.

It'd been a quiet evening with a beautiful sunset and she'd been reading (rereading, for the third time) Pride and Prejudice in the orange-tinted dusk when the radios and alarms jolted to life with the now familiar news of another bombing in the town two kilometers east. The calm matter-of-fact voices of the Army dispatchers belied the chaos that Angie knew was unfolding at the blast site, a chaos that would momentarily engulf the world of this field hospital. She'd set her book down on the plastic lawn chair and half-walked, half-jogged into the large tent to prep for what she'd known was coming.

And now in the thick of that chaos, surrounded by more instances of heroism, courage, and tragedy than the average person would witness in a lifetime, Angie felt amazingly calm, almost detached. Her responsibilities didn't suffer in the least—if anything, her actions were surer for this detachment, more clear-headed. But at a complete other level, both above and surrounding her real world's demands and commands and confusion, Angie felt cradled by someone or something that would keep her safe from the very real threats and chaos that surrounded her, would keep her whole and intact even as her world was in danger of being blasted into tiny bits like the body of the suicide bomber—a woman not much older than she was, though you wouldn't have been able to determine that from the pieces that were left of her—she'd had to help gather as evidence last week.

The regimental shrink—a balding middle-aged man from Kansas so desperate to preserve the illusion of the practice he'd left behind in the States that he'd rigged speakers to pump Muzak into his tent—asked her if she experienced sudden outbursts of anger or fear. And she'd always answered honestly, "No." She'd never told him about these moments of profound peace and security in the midst of chaos and danger, but she worried more about them than she would outbursts of anger or fear. How could one find peace amidst severed limbs and dwindling arterial spray?

But gradually she'd grown to accept these moments of calm without trepidation or analysis. For better or worse, they'd become a part of her response to stress. And as she'd held that boy's pulsing life between her latex-coated fingers, she'd said aloud though softly, "Thank you, Mom." She'd come to attribute this peace to the spirit of her dead mother watching over her.

Jacob glanced up as he finished setting the clamp. "Holding you again, is she?"

Angie smiled, gave him a quick nod, then hurried off to find a unit of plasma to replace what the boy had lost to the dusty street and the floorboards of the car he'd been delivered in.

But her mom's spirit offered her no protection whatsoever as, some hours later, Jacob rose above her as she lay naked on her back on the cot and together they found a primal release that was, in its own way, as jumbled and chaotic as the field hospital had been earlier in the evening. They surrendered to that risk in panting yips and moans muffled against discovery by pressing each their mouth tight to the other's ear, screaming their compressed shrieks of life directly into the other's ear, straight to the brain, to minds simultaneously numb and hypersensitive.

After a few minutes of gradually slowing gasps of cooling night-time desert air, Jacob wrapped his arms and legs around Angie's torso and carefully rolled them over on the cot, leaving her on top, free to rest her head on his chest and curl her legs into his lap. He was most of the way into sleep when Angie whispered into his right ear, "It wasn't only Mom tonight."

Jacob pulled himself back from the threshold of sleep. "Then who?"

"Josh." She'd stopped calling him Dad after the split. She avoided talking about him at all, but would title him "my father" when required to refer to him. And in the years since she'd hardly thought of him, and couldn't recall the last time she spoke of him. But just now, in this distant desert dark, his informal first name came as naturally to her lips as "Mom" had earlier in the evening.

"Josh?" There was a hint of jealousy in his tone.

"My father."

"I didn't know he was alive."

"Nor do I. He may not be."

"You've never spoken of him."

"I've not thought of him for years, at least since Mom's funeral."

"He was there?"

She shook her head into his chest.

"Then why tonight?"

"Then why anything, Jacob?"

He couldn't argue with the empirical honesty of that statement in this setting, instead let that truth emanating from voice and breath and warmth of the body on top of him ease him back toward the sleep that had been briefly forestalled, sleep that descended so quickly and completely that he didn't notice the warm tears slowly pooling on his chest.

That night after dinner Laura sat in the chair beside Josh's bed and listened to the ebb and flow of his shallow breathing. To distract her from her worry over his fast-fading strength, she tried to imagine where his consciousness went during all these hours of unconscious. Did his apparently still clear mind hatch a steady narrative out of his unconscious, one that was paused during his occasional waking only to be resumed upon his return to sleep? Or were the dreams staccato bursts of disconnected images, voices, and scenes—a random slideshow played by the subconscious? Or was it all just dark, a foreshadowing of the permanent shadow to follow? She wanted to ask Josh where he went, but wondered if he recalled the place on waking. And if he recalled it, would he tell her the truth? She didn't feel she had the right to ask. She'd grown quickly comfortable with emptying his bedpan or wiping his butt, but something blocked her from asking about his dreams. That still seemed too personal.

But she might not have much longer to ask. The doctor was steadily raising his morphine dosage to bank the ever-raging fires of pain, his minutes of consciousness were growing fewer by the day, there was always the risk of a crisis like yesterday that might prove terminal, and tonight for the first time she'd had to cut up his food as his right hand no longer had the strength or dexterity to perform the task. Was it sadness or relief she felt at this silent awareness of Josh's accelerating and inexorable decline?

Josh's younger eyes in Devon's smiling face suddenly filled her mind and Laura was both consoled and unsettled by the image—consoled by the fact that after all these years she finally had a flesh and blood reality to replace the hollow void that had existed deep inside her, unsettled by her daughter's request for Josh's DNA. She could acquire the DNA easily enough—Josh's blood, mucous, and epithelial cells abounded in this room: who would miss a vial full or a swab's scraping? But to take Josh's DNA without his knowledge or permission was not only illegal, it struck Laura as the height of treachery. What's more, it highlighted the debate that had been churning, quietly in her subconscious, for decades: should she tell Josh of their daughter? It was a debate forced to the forefront of her life by the twin realities of Josh's dying and Devon's appearance. Laura, normally clinical and decisive, was at a loss as to how to proceed.

To avoid thinking about the issue, she opened her laptop, accessed the Internet, and typed "Angela Earl" into the search engine. The query returned the normal tens of thousands of responses, but only a handful appeared to refer to real women named Angela Earl. After travelling down a few dead-end cyber alleys (a soccer star at a Tennessee high school, the newborn daughter of Buck and Sandra Earl), Laura clicked on a blog titled "a.earl.inthedesert."

The page that opened was devoid of the typical slew of quirky photos and jazzy designs, loud logos and hidden hyperlinks. It was a simple white page with a narrow black border enclosing chronological journal entries in a small black generic font. The most recent was dated four days earlier:

descending desert's darkness danger

daring dissolves disaster's distance

Though not a religious person, I now understand why this god-forsaken region is home to three of the world's dominant religions and who knows how many lesser cults and sects, why this spot on earth is thought by billions to be God's home or at least the spot on the globe where God chose to touch humans. And the reason why is that the landscape is so massive, the sky so all encompassing, and the darkness—the huge voracious desert dark—on a scale (or off the scale) beyond any hope of comprehension. I no longer leave my tent after dark. When I used to sometimes go to the toilet in the middle of the night, I would never let go of the rope guide strung against the prospect of sandstorms or nocturnal power loss. I would hold that rope tight as if against a gale even when there was no wind. Even in the pervasive silver-orange glow of the base's vapor lights, I felt the desert dark pulsing beyond these frail human attempts to hold it at bay. I felt that darkness tugging at me, pulling my frail soul toward its bottomless vortex. So I clung even tighter to the rope. But now I no longer leave the tent at night. I've got a small plastic bucket under my cot and some Kleenex to wipe me dry. And I've got the canvas walls and roof of the tent to help me pretend that the desert darkness isn't out there waiting, waiting, waiting.

Though Laura had never met Angie or her mother, she immediately knew that the one writing these words was Josh's daughter, recognized his irreverence and his sensitivity and his fatalism as surely as she'd recognized his eyes in Devon's face earlier in the day. She scrolled through all of the earlier entries to the intro of the blog.

Hi. I'm Angela Earl, called Angie, 1st Lieutenant in the Reserve Medical Corps of the United States Army, a Nurse Specialist called to active duty and stationed now somewhere in Iraq. I'll be using this blog as a combination journal and therapist's couch. Sit in on a session or two, as you see fit. The entries may be entertaining. They may be amusing, tragic, or boring. Whatever these entries are or aren't, they will be honest. They will be me, Angela Earl.

Laura looked up at the sleeping Josh. She felt strangely guilty at what she'd just discovered, that she was somehow betraying him by accessing his daughter's journal, that she now knew more about his daughter than he did—about his two daughters, she thought, then winced.

She set the laptop on the nightstand, still opened to Angela's journal. She slid off her slippers, quietly lifted the covers to Josh's bed, and slipped in beside him. She laid her head on the extra pillow and watched his face in the pale light of the nightstand lamp to see if he might rouse to meet her approach. But his profile, deeply cushioned in the down pillow and facing the ceiling, gave no sign of stirring. She reached back over her shoulder and turned off the light. Thick dark closed around her, then slowly loosened to reveal the twin silver glows of the rising moon beyond the window and the backlit LED screen of her laptop.

Again, Laura waited, watched Josh's profile (now just a dim silhouette against the lighter background of the pillowcase) for any sign of waking, movement, or welcome. Still nothing.

She leaned over, kissed his cheek and the shut eyelid, then spoke in a firm whisper directly into his ear, "I now know the whereabouts of your two daughters. Twelve hours ago, I didn't know. Now I do. I need to tell you.

"Your older daughter, the one you don't know you have, is named Devon Atwater. She's thirty-six years old and at this moment staying at a motel near the airport. She lives in Texas with her lesbian partner Jocelyn. She wants to have a baby and needs your DNA to help safeguard her and the baby from possible medical complications.

"Your younger daughter, the one you had but lost, is indeed alive, or at least she was four days ago. She is an Army reservist serving in Iraq, a nurse in a medical brigade.

"Neither one of them yet know of your condition. I am certain in my heart that they would both like to see you, and soon. What do you want, Josh? Tell me what to do, please."

Laura waited and watched in the new silence for any sign Josh had heard. Behind her, the computer silently shifted into suspend mode, the screen suddenly going black, robbing the room of one of its sources of pale light. The moon shined ever brighter through the large window, casting gray shadows of shivering branches and limbs across the bed and floor and walls, the shadows dancing like skeletons in this tomb, on their graves. "There's danger aplenty in this full close dark, too," Laura said aloud to the faraway Angie whose spirit was suddenly perilously close at hand. Laura thought that—perilously. But then added, in her mind at least, But perilous to whom?

Her confession delivered, Laura considered reaching behind her, turning on the light, sliding quietly out from beneath the covers, and moving to prepare for sleep in her own bed in the adjacent converted nursery. But instead of reaching for the lamp, her hand as if with newfound intention all its own reached toward Josh, found his cheek in the silver dark, brushed gently across his lips, then over the stubble on his chin, then down to the hollow of his neck and the depression where his neck joined his shoulder. She felt there his pulse, faint and slow but at least regular—proof of life (this minute, anyway). Her hand slid under the covers and past the open collar of his flannel pajama tops. Her fingers brushed the cool dots of his nipples rising above his chest hair. The three large buttons of his shirt yielded easily to her fingers as her hand slid across his stomach, paused briefly at his naval, then slid under the elastic waist of his pajama bottoms.

Though Sherri took care of bathing Josh's groin—a token gesture toward Josh's privacy and Laura's dignity—Laura had glimpsed Josh's penis and testicles several times since arriving. And at those glimpses, those organs had seemed just pieces of flesh, shrunken and frail like most of Josh's flesh now. But as Laura's fingers explored under the covers beneath the waist of his pajamas and found his penis and testicles in their cradle of pubic hair, they seemed not so much imperiled appendages as the very core of Josh's life and the conduit of his legacy. The organs beneath her fingertips had yielded the sperm that had fertilized the eggs that had grown into Devon and Angie. Cupped in her one hand was the source of what would, one day soon, be all that remained of her ex-husband.

Her mind drifted back to those long ago nights—in potent dark not unlike that which embraced them now—those nights in the car or the hayloft or the cot in the shack when Josh's penis seemed simultaneously the source of ease (for them both) and an entity unto itself, full of need and threat (to her, anyway; and maybe to Josh as well). Had she only more fully understood and accepted the core procreative purpose at work within the pulsing gyrations of this modest sack and humble tube of flesh, had she only been able to communicate this understanding to the enslaved-by-his-cock (at least periodically) Josh, then maybe, just maybe, they could've made a life together; then maybe, just maybe, Devon would have her real parents and she'd be lying in this bed beside her dying husband as a true wife instead of a stopgap interloper.

Then, in desperation that was perhaps something like the hunger that long ago powered Josh's libido, Laura's mouth began to kiss and lick its way from Josh's neck down across his chest and stomach and naval and groin, on downward to his penis and testicles exposed now under the tent of the covers as her hand held aside his pajamas. There she smelled a faint whiff of urine, but also the heady odor of potential life, a smell not far different from the familiar smell of rich soil stirred up in the spring. She kissed first his penis and then his testicles, then licked them lightly with her tongue.

Laura rose from beneath the covers. Josh still hadn't stirred. She turned on the light and slid quietly out of the bed, then went to her room to get ready for bed. Later, after brushing her teeth, putting lotion on her hands and face, and peeing, she returned to Josh's bed, slid quickly beneath the covers, and turned out the light. This would be where she slept—beside him, now till the end.

The sleeping Josh perceived rapid movement, a kind of meteor's rush across the sky trailing sparks and globs of fire, black space above, a blur of mottled greens and browns below, endless blue to either side. And the rushing racing fire-fed motion unfolded in the roar of absolute silence, a vacuum of silence so complete that it seemed both the end and the inclusion of every sound he'd ever heard, every sound ever made. And in that roaring rush of silence, he wondered if this were the travel to the end; and if it were in fact the end, that in the end and for all eternity your whole life played as a single sound that wasn't sound, in ears that weren't ears, in a place where nothing was heard? If so, then play on.

But then the roar of silence was replaced by true silence, and the meteor's rush across the sky was replaced by absolute stillness, suspension in a blank void. This surely must be all. Josh either spoke or thought or maybe heard or felt a simple "thank you."

But then music out of the dark void—choral music, all women's voices in a perfect blend of sopranos, no words but tones only, each syllable perfect in its beauty: a siren's song from some invisible shore. God, just where are you taking me?

"Not God, Josh," Vicki said, standing within arm's reach before him.

"You?"

Vicki laughed. "Since when did I have any say over where you were headed?"

"Maybe now."

"That's your guilt talking, Josh. There's no payback here. This is way beyond payback."

"What, then?"

"The absence of longing."

"You must fit in perfectly."

"After a spell."

"And I don't stand a chance."

"Chance has nothing to do with it, Josh. You're drawn into it, into wholeness. It's what you've been seeking your entire life—with Laura, with me, with Joan."

"Joan was sex."

"We all were sex, at least at first. Sex was your glimpse of wholeness. You just weren't ever able to make it permanent."

"And now it's too late."

"Never too late, Josh. But time to look in other places."

"Where?"

"You've got Laura there. You've got me here. Summon Angie. Find Joan. Welcome the other. She's the one you've been missing the most."

"The other?"

"The one you've longed for from the start."

### Day Four

Josh woke to discover Laura's sleeping face not a foot from his own on the extra pillow. For a moment, he was convinced that he was either dreaming or dead. If he were dead, then God was generous and good and had fulfilled one of his oldest longings, cancelled one of his deepest regrets. If he were dreaming, then they must be back at their old apartment in Boston and Laura would rise any minute, awake in an instant, and slide out of bed to get dressed for her job as a receptionist at an investment firm.

But then he knew he was neither dead nor dreaming—he needed to pee, so he couldn't be dead; and Laura's hair was graying at the temples, so this couldn't be a dream of their long-ago life. To confirm the truth of both assessments, he slowly slid his hand down his right thigh till it came to the void just above where his knee should've been.

Suddenly free of delusion, he unabashedly studied his ex-wife's sleeping face in the clear honest light of the bright April morning. Part of what he saw there was the beautiful young girl he'd fallen in love with in high school. This sleeping face still held locked inside the magic that had contained the answer to all his hopes and dreams. But layered atop that young innocence and beauty was a hard shell of not so much old age as pain and loss and regret, much of which he'd caused. He'd seen that coating of loss and regret begin to cloud her features those last months together. He'd seen it and done nothing about it, seen it and only accelerated it with his selfishness. A self-justifying part of himself had always hoped that she was better off away from him, might find herself outside of his sphere of influence. But he saw now that'd been wishful thinking on his part, simple avoidance of responsibility. She'd given herself wholly to him and he'd failed to honor that gift. And, he now realized, he'd failed to honor his own stake in the relationship, his own sacred commitment. He wondered what sort of shell he'd see coating his own face, if he dared look in the mirror.

Still, beside the loss (real or imagined) he perceived on his ex-wife's sleeping profile, he also had to admit a confidence and an independence that had evolved since their distant parting. This face would no longer turn to him for fundamental affirmation, wait expectantly for his approval or rejection. This face had made its own way in the world, would from now on. This face knew its needs and how to fulfill them. This face knew its likes and freely chose its environs. And where it chose to be this minute was a few inches from his failing body and his, momentarily at least, absolutely clear mind. The few tears that rolled down his cheeks and stained his pillow were of simple thanks.

Laura opened her eyes, instantly awake. "I look that awful?" But she smiled, closed the few inches to his face, and kissed his streaked cheek.

"Pure beauty," Josh said.

She laughed again. "Not a chance."

"In my eyes."

"Then I thank you." She leaned over again and kissed him chastely on the lips. "Now I'd better get up before Sherri comes in and calls the morality police."

"Morality police?"

Laura smiled as she swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood. "Don't want to disillusion the young gal."

"That's probably not possible."

"You never know," Laura said. She was all the way to the bathroom door when she turned suddenly and said, "Josh, I've found Angie."

Josh stared at his ex-wife for several long seconds then said, "Good."

Josh asked Laura who asked Sherri who asked the doctor (hardly more than a boy, really—almost young enough to be Josh's grandson who invited them to call him Joe and who had a tattooed bracelet round his left wrist) if he could dial down the morphine long enough to let Josh read his daughter's blog journal in its entirety and relatively clear-headed. Doctor Joe didn't like the idea, saying that the short-term mental clarity would be dramatically offset by the mid-term pain combined with mild withdrawal (from the narcotic) symptoms; but he concluded his phone call with Josh by saying, "Your life, your pain, your call."

Josh thanked him for his honest assessment, hung up the phone, and instructed Sherri to turn off the morphine drip but leave the shunt in place and the tube connected—"Just in case." Then he took a nap to let the drug already in his system dissipate.

When he woke he didn't have to look at the bedside clock to know that it was early afternoon, instinctively knew that fact by the height of the sun outside the window and the length of the shadows of the trees on the bedroom floor. He also knew that Sherri was in the den watching T.V. and that Laura was either outside in the yard or off in town shopping. Their routines granted each their moments of personal time and space, each their moments of privacy, all three understanding the unspoken truth that they should store up such time against the looming prospect, perhaps only days hence, when a round-the-clock vigil would preclude such privacy and personal time.

It took Josh a few minutes to contemplate fully just how good he felt and how alert he was. He felt so good that he considered rising from bed to gaze out the window at springtime unfolding in the familiar woods, to stroll into the den and give Sherri a shock that might strain her under-exercised heart. Then he remembered his truncated right leg and confirmed, with a quick glance around the room, that Laura had stowed the crutches in the hall closet and Sherri had rolled the wheelchair into the laundry to give them more space in the bedroom. So he was prisoner in this bed unless he wanted to relearn how to crawl after having abandoned that mode of movement some fifty-six years ago. He'd stay put and spare Sherri's heart this time. He took the urinal off the bed stand and relieved the pressure in his bladder, hiding the action under the covers. His pee smelled like turnips, a vegetable he'd been forced to eat while growing up but never since. He winced at the odor, no doubt the side effect of one of his drugs. Then he realized with a peculiar satisfaction that this was the first time he'd noted the odor of anything in days. This fresh alertness was almost intoxicating.

He carefully placed the half-full urinal on the bed stand, then picked up Laura's laptop and set it on his stomach on top of the covers. He opened the cover and waited for the screen to come to life as it booted up, then waited a few more seconds as the wireless signal linked to the computer and connected him to the boundless world of the Internet. He scrolled through the list of recently visited websites, found a.earl.inthedesert there near the top (where Laura had told him it would be), and clicked on it. It was only then that he noticed his hands were shaking.

Angie's simple site of journal entries opened almost instantly. Josh took a deep breath, scrolled to the start of the blog, read the matter-of-fact (and a little bit "in your face") introduction Laura had read earlier, then began to read the journal entries in the order they were written.

January 18

I'd thought I loved sand—you know: digging in it at the beach, making sand pies and sand cakes and offering them to your mom like you some kind of amazing precocious chef then watching the surf reclaim your efforts and cleanse the beach and your body with rolling warm sea foam and sweet salt water.

But that was then. And this is now—sand under your fingernails, sand under your toenails, sand in your socks, sand in your panties (and you can guess where else), sand in your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, throat; sand pulled up from between your teeth when you floss in the morning (or at night or midday or whenever it is you floss), sand in shampoo, sand in food, sand in the bottled water, sand on surgical instruments even before you tear off the wrapper, sand on catheters (OUCH!), sand on sponges swabs gloves masks.

Well, I guess you get the idea—a new world order defined by and infested with sand. They say it's the most plentiful substance in the world—I believe it's all right here. They say the new millennia will be defined by silicone (instead of carbon), but I had no idea it would take over so fast or so completely. A brave new world indeed.

January 27

What a mess. Our company commander told us blogs were O.K. but to never disclose deployment intel and to be "prudent when offering opinions about the war." Well, while prudence has never been my strong suit, I don't have any strongly held beliefs one way or the other about this war. The way I see it, we have an intractable enemy and we're going to be fighting him (and the occasional her) in one place or another for a long time. At the moment, the battleground is Iraq. Next month or next year or next decade, the battleground will be somewhere else.

But forget about the war. The joke is the delusion about "rebuilding Iraq." Now I don't doubt that the civilian command structure is sincere about their desire to rebuild Iraq, and the sooner the better. And I'm willing to believe that the average American on the street thinks rebuilding Iraq is a good thing, perhaps even a moral obligation given that we destroyed most of the country's infrastructure, both over the last three years and fifteen years ago. So we feel obligated to fix what we blew up (take that to the great shrink in the sky and see what she has to say about it!).

But somebody forgot to ask the freaking Iraqis!

How the hell are we going to rebuild anything when our engineers fix it by day only to have it blown up or looted by night?

When we arrived in country, they brought us to base along a heavily guarded military corridor that was devoid of any signs of damage or destruction. It could've been the beltway around D.C. or I-70 outside Kansas City (that is, if those smooth roads were travelled only by military vehicles and guarded by bunkers with fifty-cals sweeping 360 every quarter mile or so and Apaches sweeping both sides out two miles). But today for the first time I was dispatched to a bombing site in Baghdad and travelled there in a convoy that used a civilian highway. What a mess! Charred vehicles along both sides of the road, some still smoldering; black oil smoke hanging like fog over everything from a bombed oil pipeline that'd been hit last night; a pond of black crude from a pipeline that'd been breached weeks ago; houses and businesses with gaping holes in their sides and blown away roofs.

How can you rebuild anything in an active war zone? Why would you even try?

January 30

Then there are the children. They are all clean, well-groomed, and neatly attired (even if the clothes are sometimes ill-fitting or heavily worn) despite the fact that almost all of them live in houses without running water or electricity. But even more amazing than their appearance against the backdrop of chaos and destruction is their playfulness, their happy shouts, their laughter in the midst of constant danger. Where do they find this enthusiasm and resilience?

When I was about their age, I woke one morning to find my cat dead beside the road. I carried Sammy up the drive to the house, with his body still limber though cool to the touch. My dad dug a hole outside my bedroom window and had me gently lower Sammy into it. I remember being startled when I looked up to see tears running down the cheeks of both Mom and Dad. I'd not seen either of them cry before. And while I don't remember saying anything, both my parents later claimed I looked up at them, smiling the whole time, and said, "Don't worry. Jesus will make Sammy alive again." But despite my reassurance to my parents, I was haunted for weeks by nightmares of violence, danger, and injury to loved ones. I would walk into my parents' bedroom in the middle of the night and lie down on the floor beside their bed. After the third or fourth time, they pulled out a sleeping bag and left it unrolled for me to slide into in the middle of the night. To this day, I don't know if I went there out of my fear, or out of a desire to protect and watch over them.

And this reaction to the death of a pet! Many of these Iraqi children have lost parents, siblings, relatives, friends. All of them have had to endure hours cowering under beds or in closets as bombs rained down and bullets zinged past. Most have been injured, some gravely—missing limbs, severe burns, lost eyes, lost hearing (from blast shockwaves). Yet always a smile, laughter, and (if we let them close enough) a hug around the legs.

If my previous entry was abjectly pessimistic, then this one is cautiously optimistic. If anyone is to rebuild Iraq, it won't be on concrete and steel; it will be on the spirit of the Iraqi children. If any of them survive.

### February 2

Groundhog Day! In the few years I can remember before beginning school, my mom would make a big deal over this day. Every other day (except when she was sick or "tangled up in blue"), she'd wake long before me, be dressed in her day clothes, and have breakfast on the table by the time I made my way to the kitchen in my pj's and sleepy eyes.

But on this day of the year, February 2nd, she'd stay in bed, pull the covers over her head, and wait for me to find her. The first time, she didn't tell me she was doing it; and I ran all around the house calling for her and crying before I finally noticed the lump in their bed, approached slowly, and touched the mound. Mom's head slowly appeared from beneath the covers; she rubbed her eyes, glanced at the bright sun, then let out a frightened shriek and disappeared back under the covers. Without showing her face, a hand came out from under the covers, grabbed my wrist, and tugged me into the cave of blankets and sheets. There, in the blanket-filtered light, Mom told me about Groundhog Day—how some woodchuck in Pennsylvania would stick his head out of his burrow on this day and, if he saw his shadow, would retreat back into his hole, leaving the world to endure six more weeks of winter; but, if he didn't see his shadow, would remain out of his burrow because winter was over.

So, whenever the sun was out on the morning of February 2nd, we'd hide together under the sheets, telling each other scary stories about being lost in a blizzard or crashing through ice or getting stabbed in the heart by a falling icicle. We'd stay there till the morning sun was above the eaves and the shadow of the roof made it safe for us to come out.

I understand now that winter was tough on my mom, and February the hardest month of all. In these pre-SAD days, when the deleterious effect of sunlight deprivation was not well documented or treated, my mom endured her depression without much help. I guess her peculiar celebration of Groundhog Day was her way of acknowledging the affliction and, in some small way, treating it.

And, thanks to her, the legend and tradition of Groundhog Day lives on in me. But what if I'm 6000 miles from Pennsylvania, and the winter here means wet sand, and the clouds blocking the sun this morning are of oil smoke from a well burning to the west, raining down black droplets of crude, smudging the world? If the woodchuck can't see his shadow here, does that mark the end of winter? Or just the beginning?

Maybe I'll mark this Groundhog Day with a new tradition, Biblical in its roots and scale. If Pharaoh can have his raining frogs, then Angie can have her plague of raining oil, with noon dark as night.

But Pharaoh had ten plagues visited upon him by God. Where is Angie in her list? I know of five. I told you about the loss of my cat, Sammy. Then there's the day my best friend Judy moved away. Then the loss of my father. Then the loss of my mother. Now this blackness at noon on Groundhog Day.

How many more, God? Am I halfway through my list? More? Less? Have I known more plagues, too painful to remember? Or do some of these not count? Tell me God! Where am I in my journey? How many more plagues before you relent?

### February 8

Sorry about that previous. Raining oil with the associate stench burning the lining of my sinuses—on top of sand in everything, on top of short days and longer nights, on top of all the wounded and the dying, especially the children, the children worst of all. It can get to a girl, even one hard-hearted as old Angie.

But today the sun is out, temps in the 80s—beach weather! (And plenty of sand, but where's the water and waves?) And I'm actually right this minute in a bikini lying in a chaise lounge behind my tent as I type these words. And my reflection in the laptop screen looks SO SMOKING HOT with my too cool for school reflector aviators I bummed off one of the chopper geeks. And given this hot bod in this hot outfit, I've taken some pains to shield myself from the eyes of horny enlisted grunts and the fundamentalist (with the emphasis on mental) Islamic contractors that work on base. I've got tarps hung on zip cords strung from the tent poles of my tent and the next one down the line. I can't see out, and I guess that means they can't see in. But lest I begin to feel too secure in this illusion of privacy, I just paused to wave at one of the drones that make regular passes around the base perimeter, scanning for terrorists or hot nurses sunning themselves in bikinis. Did I imagine it, or did the drone actually rock its wings in response to my wave?

Yesterday, we got a local shredded by shrapnel—maybe from one of our bombs, maybe from one of theirs. You can always tell if you remove the shrapnel and rinse it off. Ours is always shiny and perfectly round—stainless steel spheres constructed for durability (while stored inside the bomb heads in armories and munitions facilities scattered around the globe) and maximum velocity (after the bomblets explode at around shoulder height after being released from the mother bomb). Theirs are all manner of sizes, shapes, color, and condition—rusty nails, zinc-plated bolts, nuts with their edges rounded over by the wrench that took them off the wheel lugs. I pulled out one odd-shaped piece from the leg of a cabbie that I couldn't figure out till another nurse told me to compare it to the blades in the blender we use to mix our margaritas. But now it's getting harder to distinguish ours from theirs, as some of their bombs are yielding the same perfect spheres of surgical stainless as our bombs—Ali the Bombmaker is getting state support. (I wonder if that will get past the Censor?)

But lately I just pull the metal out, throw it in the tray, and don't even bother to look at it, much less rinse it off. What's the point? A bomb is a bomb and a catastrophic wound is a catastrophic wound, whichever side it comes from. Let Forensics (who confiscate every piece of blast fragment, every last one!) worry about who initiated the mayhem. I'm just here to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Or Mrs. Dumpty (to continue the allusion—and hope I don't sound too callous). The victim this time was a woman. Once we cut away her burka and the many layers of blood-soaked black muslin, we discovered that she was far-along pregnant. Dr. J (not the basketball player but the lieutenant I work with most often) gave up on trying to revive her after a few pops with the defibrillator produced no hint of a pulse, and turned his attention to trying to save the fetus, called for the scalpel and performed a C-section right then and there (no need for anesthesia or prep) and pulled a full-term son from the deceased's uterus. He gave the slick baby a couple chest compressions and told me to give him a hit of O-2 (the mask was way too big, but O-2 is O-2 and primes the lungs, mask fit or not). And damn if the baby didn't cough up some fluid, then let out a wail loud enough (and unusual enough) to cause all the surgical staff to pause and look up. Dr. J. raised the baby above his head like maybe he thought he was the basketball player, ready to make a flying dunk. But instead he just beamed from behind his mask and everybody who could cheered. For once, life was brought forth from death.

He gave me the baby to clean up, and I had the honor (I mean that with all my heart) to cradle him in my arms and keep him warm till one of the other nurses lined an amputation tray with a blanket and placed it under a heat lamp (no incubators in this field hospital). And we set the little guy in his makeshift cradle.

Word of this unorthodox birth travelled fast, and very soon the liaison officer from Iraqi Social Services arrived with a camera crew to film the miracle baby and his American guardian angels (me, J., and our CO). Then they whisked the baby away, bound for whatever remained of his family.

I can't help but wonder how the baby's father will react—a living son in exchange for a dead wife: a trade as old as birth, I guess. If the father survived.

February 15

I don't know where it came from, but last night a rabbit tripped one of the sensors on the base perimeter and all hell broke loose. Sirens wailed, flares went off automatically, searchlights beamed, and tracer rounds from the guard towers' fifty-cals streaked across the desert. We were herded into subterranean bunkers in all manner of dress and undress. They tell us to sleep in our underwear and keep a robe handy just in case an alert is sounded in the middle of the night. But as we gathered in the long, narrow reinforced bunker, it became apparent that some of us had forgotten one or more of those steps. Some of the female nurses and doctors had hastily thrown on (and not Army-issued) sheer bras and panties, thongs, and even one frilly crotchless model. And many of the men were naked beneath their robes, a fact that became awkwardly obvious when we sat on benches facing each other and the men eventually grew tired of keeping their legs held tight together. A chivalric doctor offered his robe to a shivering nurse clad in one of those sheer lingerie sets, only to reveal his polka-dot boxer shorts. To his credit, he didn't blush and said, "A gift from home." We all nodded understanding.

I at least—ever prepared Angie—was safely encased in full-coverage tanktop and cotton panties under my knee-length blue terrycloth robe and Crocs plastic clogs on my feet. It wasn't exactly dinner attire or church clothes, but it spared me the added burden of self-consciousness (not to mention shivering) that clearly afflicted some many of the other women in that bunker. A part of me sympathized at their plight, while another part of me wondered at the persistence of our modesty. At any second a mortar round could make a direct hit on this bunker and we'd all be shredded into hamburger, skimpily clad and well-clothed alike, the perky breast in that lace Victoria's Secret bra sliced away just as brutally as the testicles dangling over the edge of the bench across the way. What place does modesty have amidst such potential carnage?

Maybe out here we cling to those vestiges of our old lives to keep from being swallowed whole by the awfulness of this new world disorder. Maybe the mundanity is even more important here than at home. Like those polka-dot boxers, these ill-suited emotions aren't very practical, may even be counter-productive in a crisis, but they remind us of home, help us feel that at least some small part of the old self remains, is intact, may even get back in one piece. And I don't know where we would be, who we would become, if we let those little pieces of ourselves slip away.

Above us the machine-gun chatter continued, and at least three Apaches roared past with turbos in full burn. We waited there for nearly three hours, some of us dozing off while seated upright, most of us staring blankly at the person directly across, their faces gray and ghostly in the silver-tinged LED lights. At some point, an infantryman from above used his four-digit key code to unlock the blast doors and tossed in a few dozen shrink-wrapped blankets. He looked like an alien invader with his helmet and mounted video camera and flack collar and communication mike and hinged up night-vision goggles and charcoal painted skin. But his piercing eyes revealed a hint of desperation and, I think, a will to protect. Protect who? Well, us I guess—his comrades, his regiment, his country. Who knows? Then, quick as they'd appeared, those eyes and all that high-tech gear disappeared down the tunnel and into the night and the doors closed with a resounding thunk as the steel bars thrust into their concrete sockets.

They let us out at dawn. There was no announcement, no official explanation for the alert. But a grunt who trades me bittersweet chocolate hearts (from his girlfriend back home—though he says chocolate gives him hives ever since arriving in-country) for condoms by the gross (don't worry—not costing you a dime; they're donated by Trojan and I'm in charge of distributing them "as need demands") told me about the rabbit and said a sniper killed it at first light "at 600 yards!" (the grunt's exclamation point, not mine).

And I guess it was a good shot, given that thousands of rounds of machine-gun bullets and all those flares and roaring helicopters had failed to do the job. One wonders how much that rabbit cost the American taxpayer (not to mention lost sleep among the medical corps)? A few dozen Osama bunnies could bankrupt the world's greatest power, given their rate of reproduction and their ability to find their way through, around, or under any fence.

### February 20

Most of the time our hospital tent is like a production line, or so it has begun to seem to me. Bodies enter through the front door (a makeshift loading dock) on stretchers, mattresses, plywood, car hoods, or simply in sagging blankets with each of the four corners glued together with sweat and blood and grime. Then, after passing through our production line, the bodies exit out the back (through surgically clean stainless steel doors opening onto a helipad) on gurneys or in body bags, to be whisked off by waiting choppers to the morgue or the nearest hard-topped hospital. Nobody, living or dead, stays with us for more than a couple hours, most not more than a half hour. Stitch 'em and pitch 'em. Dead or alive, they're going to a better place.

But on rare occasion, despite all my training state-side and here, I get hooked. Can't say why. Maybe some intangible in the patient, maybe some loose wire inside of me. But once hooked, I can never shake that face, never forget the touch of that skin or the smell of that breath.

Sometimes it's their last breath I smell and remember—no different than the one before except that none will follow. Then I'm left hooked to a corpse. Not much future in that, but since when did future benefit ever have a say in why someone gets hooked? I've been hooked that way three times so far— an Iraqi boy with his head crushed by Humvee tire blasted into the air only to come to earth right where he was playing ball, an Air Force mechanic with a sniper's bullet in his skull who somehow survived long enough to die, eyes suddenly wide-open, under my gaze, and an Iraqi woman impaled by the coffin cover at a bombing during her uncle's funeral.

Then there are those that hook me but still manage to stay alive, at least beyond my care. All of them (three so far) were men. Each was grievously wounded, their long-term survival in serious doubt. But each left alive, breathing (on their own or with a respirator), on gurneys with multiple IV bags and pumps dangling above, like an elaborate float in a holiday parade, rushed out those steel doors to choppers with their rotors whirring to be whizzed away to some high-tech trauma center in Baghdad, Kuwait City, or Germany. Each taking a little piece of me with them.

### Today it was Jim (not his real name). He was logged in at 1:18 PM. From the waist up, he looked perfectly normal—sweaty and a little dirty, like a college kid taking a break from a hard-nosed game of touch football. His eyes were open but they gave no sign of seeing, no hint of recognition of me or the hospital. His buddy, who was holding Jim's right hand up to the second I pried his fingers loose one at a time, said Jim hadn't spoken since the blast ripped the Humvee apart and he thought maybe his eardrums were popped. I thanked him, told him we'd be sure to check that, then wheeled Jim back into trauma.

Once back there, I lifted the standard issue Army medic blanket to check below his waist and—well, there was no below the waist. I'd expected severed legs. The void beneath the blanket was all too familiar. But in this poor boy the blast had not only torn away his legs but pretty much everything from his belly button down—his hips and pelvis, his buttocks, anus, rectum, colon and lower intestine, his penis, scrotum and testicles. What existed in place of these organs and body parts was a tangle of over two dozen surgical clamps hanging like a belly dancer's belt of ornaments (I thought of that comparison the minute I raised the blanket—no doubt some perverse self-defense mechanism) from the void of what used to be his waist.

The field medic had done a great job of clamping all the major arteries, and he was in no danger of bleeding to death. So my job at that moment was to trim away all the shreds of clothing, try to clean away any shards of metal, plastic, or bone, and in general try to clean him up and prep him for the surgery that would happen far from here.

I was in the middle of doing just that when I cut the elastic waistband of what was left of his underwear and exposed the neatly healed scar from a long ago appendectomy. Next to the scar was a tattoo with the words "God's Stitching" in beautiful cursive script, and under those words "Mom." Something about that thin scar inches from all that mayhem took my breath away. I glanced up and saw Jim staring at me. I thought he was in shock, but he said in a firm whisper—"Please." Then he closed his eyes and his head fell back on the stretcher.

Well, that did it. This soldier was no longer just a jumble of shredded tissue but now a young man with a past and a mother. He'd stayed too long under my hand; now he'd stay forever in my head and in my heart. And of course my eyes clouded and my hands began to quiver.

I turned away and tapped another nurse who was prepping a plasma bag. She saw my tears, glanced at Jim, and nodded understanding. We swapped patients and she finished what I'd begun. I couldn't help listening for Jim's voice, but didn't hear another word.

A short time later I found him on a fresh gurney beside the discharge doors waiting for an evac chopper (it'd been a busy day and the choppers were running behind). His face had been cleaned up, his uniform cut away and replaced by a medical gown, and he was resting under a clean and brilliantly white sheet. His eyes were closed and his face now had the slack-muscle droop of coma—whether trauma or drug-induced, I couldn't tell.

Without pausing to reflect on its implications, I jotted my name and serial number on a prescription pad, folded the slip of paper into a tight square, and pressed the note into the palm of his loosely clenched fist. He never opened his eyes, but I'm certain his hand grasped my fingers for the briefest of moments and pressed them lightly. Was it acknowledgement of my note and the care behind it, or simply some meaningless reflex of pain or delirium. I don't know; never will. Just then the Air Care Team burst through the doors and raced him off to their chopper and out of my realm (but not out of my care).

I don't know if he survived the trip or where he was taken. I don't know if when his mother next touches that appendectomy scar—God's Stitching—the skin will be warm or cool. I do wonder how many more faces God will ask me to carry home from this place.

(I just printed out a page of business cards with my name, rank, and serial number in simple black print on white stock. I'll keep them at the hospital. Twelve to a page, one page. That's all I'll ever print.)

February 26

It's hard enough for a Christian—even a long-lapsed one like yours truly—to navigate the ethical minefield (a "loaded" metaphor in this setting, to be sure; but an intentional and accurate one) of serving here, a predominantly Muslim, and hostile, country. Whatever our short-term means or methods might be (and the U.S. Army, not to mention our civilian administrators, have caused plenty of mayhem in their quest for stability), I genuinely believe that all of the in-country servicemen and women (not including the occasional Section 8 psycho) want to improve the situation in this country and the plight of its long-suffering citizens. And we want to do this perhaps in some small part because it's the right thing to do, the moral thing to do; perhaps to some slightly greater degree to make amends for the harm our country has caused to the Iraqi people. But chiefly we want to improve the situation here because such action is the quickest way for us to get home. The logic is simple—if conditions on the ground deteriorate, we'll have to stay longer, pull longer and more frequent tours. Conversely, better conditions, shorter and less frequent tours. Now, of course, this isn't guaranteed (given the often illogical machinations of the U.S. Army and its command structure). But servicemen and women live on a diet of hope; and hope would hold that if we improve the situation here, we'll get to go home earlier.

All of which is a convoluted preface to my main question for the day—if it's morally complicated for a Christian to do good in a Muslim country that doesn't want them there and where they may be called by their god to destroy the infidel (either now or later), then just how morally complicated, if not outright illogical, is it for a Jew to serve here and strive to save its citizens?

There are a handful of (quietly) observant Jews in our regiment. And me being me, I've gently prodded them on this point. How can you labor, day in and day out under the most challenging of conditions, to save people who are indoctrinated to hate you, to kill you, to wipe your family and your religion off the face of the earth?

Most respond with a version of "they're all just injured men and women, boys and girls, to me; I don't see religion or hatred in their faces, just pain and suffering."

But one devout Jew, a doctor in my unit, offered me a fuller and more delicately nuanced (a rare combination of adverb and adjective in this setting) explanation. He said, "To cancel the sins of our fathers." When I looked at him with some doubt and confusion, he explained by saying, "It's in Exodus, chapter thirty-four, verse seven—'God punishes the children and their children for the sin of the father to the third and fourth generation.' The scripture writer just understated the persistence of this punishment by a factor of about a hundred." He laughed. "Or maybe they just translated it wrong."

I said, "So you think that by bandaging your sworn enemies you can make atonement for a cycle of sin and punishment that began more than three millennia ago?"

And he looked at me with these beautiful and kind dark eyes of bottomless depth and said, with only a tiny hint of irony, "What is time and intractability in the face of love?"

I knew a little about the different world religions from a survey course I took in college, so I challenged his theology. "That's not a very Jewish response."

"Oh, but it is—the most progressive of Jewish responses, finding its basis in the visions of Isaiah and the promise of the restored kingdom."

"Sounds like Zionist propaganda!" I immediately regretted the joke.

But he just smiled and said, "One life at a time."

His smile and honesty gave me the permission I needed to push my line of questioning one step further. "Do you think for one minute that any of your acts of kindness and love will sheath the executioner's sword in the event your Islamic patients should manage to turn the tables and get the drop on you?"

"No." His smile never faltered.

I must've looked confused, or maybe even a touch desperate, for a more uplifting answer—some promise of justice and a completion of his circle of love.

He shrugged. "I offer unconditional love to my enemies in a blind leap off the cliff of hope." He paused then added with a wink, "And I keep a loaded M-16 under my bed."

Warzone wisdom.

March 6

No special day on the Roman calendar; but on the Calendar of Angie, a day of great promise, hope, and beauty. You see, for me it marks my self-designated first day of spring—at least in the Piedmont of North Carolina, where I grew up. And though I've not lived there for a long time, this day still holds special meaning for me.

Right now, this very minute in central North Carolina, the millions of imported Bradford pear trees planted there over the last half century are in full bud and ready to burst into magnificent bloom at the invitation of the first warm and sunny afternoon. Charleston may have its azaleas, Washington its cherry blossoms, Michigan its lilacs; but in central North Carolina, spring is inaugurated and indelibly marked by these gorgeous trees.

It wasn't always so, as Grandma told me every spring till I was ten and she died. In "dem olden days" the dogwood was king, and spring officially started in early April when the native dogwoods would bloom. Some towns still have their dogwood festivals on the first weekend in April. Trouble is, most of the native dogwoods were killed off by a blight years ago.

But someone somewhere sometime discovered that the ornamental Bradford pear loved the Piedmont climate and soil and would grow almost anywhere it was planted, including in the postage-stamp-sized islands of soil sprinkled around the prairies of asphalt parking lots. So when zoning boards began mandating vegetation to break up these asphalt expanses, developers began specifying inexpensive, easy to maintain Bradford pears to go in these tiny islands. And voila—a new spring was born, weeks earlier than the old!

When I was five, my dad and I (my dad worked, I watched) planted a dozen Bradford pears along the drive to our house—six on each side, paired directly opposite each other. They were little more than sticks with a couple leaves when we planted them; but Dad dug the holes deep, conditioned the dense clay with lots of peat and humus, left a shallow basin for summer watering, then mulched them good. It was my job to drag out the hose and keep them watered during dry spells, and we lightly fertilized them each spring.

And darned if those trees didn't grow! By the time I reached high school, they were maybe twenty-feet tall and their crowns almost touched across the drive. And each had this perfect, slightly tear-drop shape to their branches, as if they'd been cloned. These beautiful, lush trees greeted our every return to the house, a grand welcoming mat! Give Scarlett O'Hara her avenue of live oaks, I'll take our Avenue of Bradfords any day.

Oh, how I miss the promise of spring when those pear trees were paused just before erupting in riotous bloom. On March 6th each year, as I walked up our drive after being dropped off by the bus, I'd closely examine the lower branches of the trees. The buds were always tightly sealed on that day, still guarding against the threat of frost. One year on March 6th, the buds were dusted with snow. But regardless the weather or the temperature, by March 6th I could always feel the promise of spring vibrating in those buds, a vibration that seemed almost a sound, almost a shrill pitch of expectation, maybe not audible to the woods or the fields or the sky but screaming in my imagination. It occurs to me only now, having written these words, that the intensity of feeling I imputed to those buds was no doubt an externalization of my adolescent tornado of physical and emotional changes. But better to be directed toward Bradford pear buds than some other vibrating storehouses of teen passion.

So where has that hope and expectation gone? It would be easy to blame my despair on my current situation. The regiment shrink is forever reminding us of the toll living in constant tension between boredom and emergency, not to mention the ever present threat of attack, has on one's psyche. And the shrink can't give us a pill to negate this stress (even if he could, it would keep us from doing our jobs); so he tells us to exercise, get rest, talk to each other, scream if we have to. Well, I'm screaming here, in this journal, in my own understated self-pitying kind of way.

Screaming out for the promise of spring. Screaming out for real seasons. Screaming out for trees or bushes or shrubs or anything vertical that isn't a guard tower. Screaming out for GREEN, for life that doesn't bleed red. Screaming out for the potential held in a tiny white bud, potential that will, if left alone, unfold according to a natural order—bud to flower, flower to leaf, leaf to fruit (though the fruit of the Bradford pear is tiny and inedible to humans, but much loved by robins!), fruit to dormant twig. Here, there is no natural order. Here, potential is thwarted. The best we can hope for, with all our training and technology and will and desire is to return the wounded to some prior condition of stasis. Potential or hope or the natural unfolding of life has no place. That's all been forced out by ugliness. Stitch and stabilize. If hope and potential and the promise of spring still exist, it exists somewhere other than here.

Can I ever find that again?

Josh felt suddenly free of his body, free of his bed, his room, his house, his illness. He was decades younger, digging those holes along the drive in the warm spring sun, intoxicated (as farmers, and farmers sons, always are) by the hope and promise of planting, a hope and promise made incarnate in the enthusiastic little girl playing and babbling along beside him. She'd examine every shovel full of dirt he'd excavate, using her plastic shovel and pail and sieve to sort and study the dense red clay.

"What's this?" she asked, holding up a tiny plant bulb the size of a marble with a frail green shoot extending like a tail from one end and fine white roots hanging from the other.

He took it from her hand, studied it closely for several long minutes, then handed it back to her. "Looks like a baby sea monster."

"You're silly," Angie giggled. "We're nowhere near the sea."

He grabbed her hand and looked closely at the bulb. "An outer-space alien then, got to be." He nodded with satisfaction.

Angie shook her head. "It's an onion-grass bulb, starting to come to life." She scratched the bulb with her fingernail. "Here, smell."

Josh bent over and sniffed the bulb. It was onion-grass, alright. "How'd you know that?"

"I know a lot of things."

"So why'd you ask me?"

"To test you."

"Did I pass?"

"You said it was an alien."

"Onion? Alien? Almost the same."

Angie shook her head.

"Do I get another chance?"

"We'll see."

Angie went a few yards into the field and spent perhaps ten minutes scratching at the hard clay with her plastic shovel. Then she carefully planted the onion-grass bulb in the loosened soil, leaving the green shoot barely projecting from the dirt. Without a word, she walked back to the house, filled her bucket with water from the spigot, then returned and gently poured the water on the ground around the bulb.

Josh kept digging the holes for the remaining Bradford pears, and pretended not to be watching his daughter; but the few tears that trailed across his face were of pure joy and thanks.

Those sprigs of trees they'd planted that day, so fraught with promise, had indeed grown tall and shapely, becoming the dominant feature of their drive. But the devastating ice storm a few years back, which came in the late fall while the Bradford pears still had most of their leaves clinging to their branches, had decimated those beautiful trees, tearing off limbs large and small, leaving lop-sided canopies and, in one case, nothing more than a trunk pointed like an accusatory finger at the sky. He'd cut up and disposed of all the fallen and dangling branches, and pruned the canopies best he could. But several times over the years he'd come close to calling the tree man to come take them all down—looking at their scarred trunks and lop-sided canopies, and recalling their former beauty and gracefulness, was almost too much to bear. But each time something had caused him to pause, to renege on issuing his death sentence. And the spared trees had rebounded, in a fashion. In a kind of time-lapse movie of nature's resilience, the trees had concentrated new growth to fill in what the storm had shorn away. And even the stump, which surely should've died for lack of photosynthetic capacity, had sent forth new sprouts in all directions that had grown into modest strong limbs, and created a new, though shorter, full canopy, a dwarf sister to its taller kin along the drive and across the way. The Bradford pears were making do and getting on, claiming water and nutrients from the ground, sun from the sky, apparently unaware of the shape they sketched for their bipedal and metal-encased neighbors passing below their branches. And on each trip up or down the drive in the years since the storm, Josh had recited in his mind or aloud—until it became a kind of mantra, conscious and unconscious both—the last lines of a Frost poem:

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

And he had wondered at each recitation the antecedent of the pronoun in the first line—for Frost, and, more importantly, for this reciter.

Even in his fast blurring consciousness, Josh perceived the complex web of symbol and foretelling, metaphor and allusion, that these trees cast over and around his current fate, their literal and figurative shadow, a shadow cast even before he knew of its existence—before Angie's blog entry, before Laura's selfless care, before the blood disorder and amputation, before his howling loneliness trapped in this house, before the ice storm, even before they'd planted those twigs: the shadow had predated it all.

There—he'd said it (in his mind, at least), finally framed the truth. It wasn't his fault. This fate had been there from the start. Her smell enveloped him as he fell backward far, far into the abyss.

Laura sat in the motel room's one upholstered chair and leaned toward Devon, who sat on the room's one bed facing her across less than two feet of dimly lit (the room's drapes were drawn to shield against the prying eyes of strangers walking past on the breezeway outside) motel-room air. The impersonal setting—with its pale-green walls, nylon floral-print bedspread, and unremarkable landscape painting hanging over the bed—somehow made the moment all that much more intimate. The two might've been adulterers paused before a mid-afternoon merging—so poignant the moment, so insubstantial the setting. Instead, they were suddenly what they had been over thirty-five years ago—two souls hungering for different reasons, locked in a moment devoid of past and future, clinging to each other in the fleeting present.

Laura reached across the small space between them and took Devon's hands. She needed to tell her about Josh—about both his ignorance of her existence, and about his fast-failing health. But something about the touch of Devon's skin balked her words. She recalled holding these same fingers in the convent bed, counting them off as piggies to market or seconds to lift-off in those few hours they'd had together. That Devon's hands had grown and changed so dramatically in the ensuing years struck Laura less intensely than the appearance of her own hands—wrinkled and splotched and loose-skinned: the hands of an old woman. She'd never seen herself as old before. She'd never even paid attention to her hands, long as they were able to gather and bag and label the soil samples she collected to earn her living.

But now those hands she'd taken for granted looked pale and weak, especially when contrasted to the tight skin and slender fingers of her daughter. Though Laura'd never been big on physical touch (she spent far too much time alone for that), she just now couldn't imagine letting go of these hands she now held, felt as if she'd shrivel to a husk—hands first, then arms, chest, heart—if she let go.

Devon looked up from their joined hands and smiled. "Still have all ten."

Laura nodded. "I counted, many times."

"I figured. Who knows, maybe I remember—at some level."

Laura studied her eyes. "Really?"

Devon shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. Sometimes in the middle of the night I'd wake and think I'd smell your breath or hear you humming. The sensations were like something from a different world, totally unfamiliar but safe. The next morning I'd label the feelings my 'imagination' and get on with my real life. But in the dark, before waking to that real world, those feelings seemed true memory. I guess I had to have something to link me to you."

Laura nodded. "My coping worked in reverse. My memories of those few days with you were and are very real and vivid, still this moment. But I had to keep them locked away in some buried compartment in my mind. I just had to."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"Sure, insofar as I can. The weight of living with a loss has to be at least as great as the weight of not knowing what was there."

Laura stared at her, this full-grown woman that was simultaneously stranger and most intimate of kin—maybe savior, maybe curse. "That's more than I can say for myself."

Laura's cellphone rang, its ring like an alarm in the room, breaking the spell. She dropped Devon's hands and rooted around in her purse till she found the phone and answered.

Even in the pale light, Devon could see the color drain from Laura's face as she mainly listened to whatever voice was on the other end of the line. Finally she said, "I'll be there in thirty minutes."

Laura closed the flap of her phone, then looked quickly around the room as if lost. Her mouth opened but uttered no sound, then closed, then opened again in a gasp for air. Her eyes focused on Devon. "Josh has taken a turn for the worse." She stood up but seemed unsure about where to go or what to do.

Devon remained seated on the bed, but reached out and took her mother's right hand. "Who is Josh?"

Laura turned toward her. "He's your father. He's gravely ill and dying. That was his home nurse. He was fine when I left; now he's in a coma."

Devon gasped.

Laura pressed her hand. "Can you drive?"

Devon nodded. "Sure."

Josh sat on a rocky dry hillside in full and brilliant sun that neither felt hot nor seemed too bright. Below him in a shallow ravine was a line of people walking, all in the same direction, two or three abreast, most walking in a slow, purposeless fashion, heads down, eyes fixed on the dry rocky soil, no voices audible. The line stretched far as Josh could see in each direction, disappearing to his left (the direction they were walking) where the ravine curved out of sight perhaps a quarter-mile distant; disappearing to the right (the source of the endless line) a mile or so away where the ravine fell below a hill or the horizon, it was hard to say which. Josh watched the silent migration pass below.

He watched intently, feeling an urgent need to document every passing face, fix them in his memory, as if after a moment each would continue to exist only if he could recall their face in every detail. They were of all ages—infants carried on shoulders, toddlers dragged along by the hands of parents or siblings, children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged, old timers—all shuffling along in front of him. And they were in all manner of dress—jeans and t-shirts, shorts and tank-tops, suits and evening gowns, hospital smocks and overalls. Josh counted them off in his head. He wanted to call out, get at least one to look his way, reveal their features in full frontal pose. But he couldn't speak, and none of them looked his way.

From behind, a voice said, "They're all going up."

Josh nodded. "And none coming back down."

That seemed a plain enough truth, yet somehow important, somehow a defining fact.

"They're all going up," Josh repeated, in his mind if not aloud.

The line continued to pass by. Josh continued to watch and record every passing face, counted them off—one thousand two hundred sixty-seven, eight thousand thirty-two, twenty-three thousand five hundred sixty-four. He never grew tired of watching or recording or counting. This was his life now. This was his purpose.

When Laura arrived, the doctor was waiting for her in Josh's spacious and bright living room with its vaulted ceilings and sliding glass doors on either side of a massive stone fireplace.

The doctor glanced at Devon then turned to Laura with a questioning look.

Laura said, "She's family."

The doctor nodded. "As I told you and Josh this morning, discontinuing the morphine was a risky choice. His body had grown accustomed to that powerful drug and wouldn't adjust easily to its withdrawal. That said, I'm at a loss to explain this extreme downturn. His blood pressure is dangerously low, but stable. His other vitals are O.K., given his condition. I've sent some blood to the lab for testing. Maybe the infection has spiked. I'll know later today or tomorrow."

"He's in a coma?"

"Let's call it unresponsive unconscious. There's brain activity there. We just can't rouse him."

"Sounds like too much morphine rather than not enough."

"We checked that. The drip is off; the unit levels are where they were this morning."

"Then why?"

The doctor shrugged, a gesture that made him seem more human than at any time since she'd met him. "Laura, your ex-husband is very ill. He's on a mix of powerful medications to ease the pain and attempt to slow the infection. But we all know where this is headed. It's just a question of when."

"My husband."

The doctor looked perplexed.

"He's the only husband I've ever had; I'm the only living wife he has. I guess we can drop the 'ex' part, at least in this house."

The doctor nodded. "O.K."

"Can we see him?"

"Sure. He's beyond any risk of harm or shock."

"Or help?"

"I'd never rule that out."

"Who can say, right?"

"Who can say."

Laura turned and walked slowly down the long hall leading to the bedrooms, their daughter trailing two steps behind.

Devon felt like a tumbleweed being blown across the west-Texas desert. She was suddenly all hollow inside—just a jumble of dried sticks and twigs in a tangled lopsided ball, held together more by chance than intention, the prospect of being blown apart by the wind ever present. She'd known when she stepped on the plane in Austin that she was taking the biggest risk of her life, was stepping off the solid terrain of her former life out into the dark unknown.

Jocelyn had tried to reassure her by saying it couldn't be any worse than her coming out—revealing her homosexuality to her parents. But that was a poor comparison and Joce knew it, was only trying to put the best spin on things. Uncovering her homosexuality had been a gradual and largely painless process. She'd mainly been surrounded by girls in her childhood and had no sense that she was more attracted or relaxed around them than with boys. Then in adolescence—with her breasts slowly swelling, her pubic mound sprouting fuzz, and her vulva becoming hypersensitive—her physical attraction to certain female friends steadily grew even as she developed platonic friendships with a few boys (though it did take her awhile to understand why some of these boys were always trying to kiss her or slide their hands under her shirt).

Then she had the great good fortune of falling in love her first time with another lesbian. She was a sophomore in high school when the focus of her desire fell on Abby, a senior who appeared to be in a serious relationship with the school's basketball star. But whatever the public appearances and private experiments of Abby and her guy-doll Don, it turned out that Abby really liked girls—really, really liked girls. And the girl it turned out she liked the most was Devon—a fact she demonstrated first in the bathhouse during a school beach trip, and then many times thereafter in secret moments and places known (even now) only to the two of them.

After that undeniable confirmation of her sexual identity, the biggest challenge for Devon was fending off the unwanted advances of males (a defense that became much easier after she left home for college and could simply utter "I'm a lesbian" at the first sign of hanky-panky from a male acquaintance—though that phrase didn't stop them all, seemed to actually arouse some, at which point she'd show them the strength of her swimmer's arms or, if needed, her powerful kick).

The second biggest challenge, which became the biggest once she'd figured out the first, was determining how to tell her parents. When she finally decided it was time to tell her parents, her stomach was in a knot for weeks. She planned to tell them over Christmas break her junior year in college. She was deeply in love and months into a physical relationship with her black roommate Jocelyn, and they'd grown tired and ashamed of maintaining a ruse every time Devon's parents would visit. (Once, early in the semester, Devon's mom commented how neat and tidy Jocelyn's room and carefully made bed looked in comparison to the tangled sheets and disarray of Devon's bed and room. After that, each time her parents were due to visit, Devon would go into their guestroom and "toss" the bed to make the room appear occupied.)

But, as it turned out, telling her parents was as easy and painless as the anticipation had been frightening and stressful. She sat across the kitchen table from her mom one afternoon a few days after Christmas (her dad still at work), and said in as firm a voice as she could muster (which probably wasn't firm at all, but her mom didn't let on), "Mom, I'm a lesbian."

Her mother said, "We know."

"You know?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Darling, I've watched you like a hawk since the day we got you from the convent, more than any biological mother ever could or would. On top of all the normal maternal instincts, I feared you'd leave and try to go back to your birth mom. So I kept a very close eye on you. But I had to be discreet about it, so as not to make you feel smothered and push you away."

"So when did you know I was gay?"

"I suspected far back as grade school. You were extremely gentle and attentive to your girl friends, not competitive or manipulative. I figured it might be just your kind nature. But then when you started junior high and would fawn over certain girls but never had the time of day for any boy—well, then it was clear. Just had to wait for you to figure it out."

"Which took me awhile."

"Till Abby."

"So you knew about Abby?"

"Darling, I respect your privacy; but you've got to understand that the walls in this house are thin."

Devon blushed and looked away—in embarrassment, relief, and a touch of anger.

Her mom walked around the table and hugged her from behind. "I guess I succeeded."

"How?"

"In knowing you. I doubt your birth mom would've noticed you were gay before you did, and then keep that knowledge to herself till you found your own way at your own pace."

"You could've let on a little sooner—saved me a lot of anxiety at the prospect of telling you."

"No, darling; I couldn't have."

Devon knew she was right, and said so. "Thank you."

"The pleasure's been all mine, since the day we brought you home. No thanks required."

So all that had been a piece of cake compared to boarding a plane to meet a stranger on unfamiliar turf who was your biological mother. And now, to meet a gravely ill and comatose man who had been your biological mother's husband but now was not, who was your biological father but didn't know you existed. Coming out was nothing compared to this.

As much as Devon had wondered about, even occasionally longed for, her biological mother, she had hardly ever thought about her biological father. Part of this was simple self-defense—logic held (and statistics proved) that in most adoption cases the father is never identified in the documents, and might not even be known for certain to the mother. So why wonder about someone that might never be identified or found?

But in Devon's case, this indifference ran deeper than simple self-defense. For one thing, she was a female with emotions, sexuality, and involvements mainly focused on females. For another, she already had a strong, unfailing, protective father who would never, under any circumstances, have agreed to give her up. Why should she care about a weak or fickle biological father who had abandoned her at, or most likely before, birth? (Interestingly, Devon had never, not once in all her musings, leveled this same indictment at her biological mother, always had at the ready a long list of justifications for her mother's exit even as she saw her father's departure as pure treachery.)

But mainly Devon longed to find her mother because she was certain in her heart of hearts that she remembered her, however unlikely that seemed, whereas she had no sense, intuitive or otherwise, that she'd known her father. Her earlier reference of her memories of Laura had been intentionally softened for public consumption. Where she'd told Laura (and Jocelyn and her mother and her therapist when she had one a few years back) that she was uncertain about the veracity of these memories, in fact she had no doubt whatsoever that her memories of her birth mother—of Laura—were real memories. She recalled lying in a cradle hearing her mother hum a song she'd never heard anywhere else, a tune that for her came to define loss. She remembered her mother lying with her in her arms and wiggling each of her toes, then each of her fingers, then starting with the toes again, as if trying every way she could to forestall the inevitable. She remembered her mother pressing her mouth to her ears and whispering words that Devon couldn't recall but came to assume were a version of "I'll always be with you."

Opposite these vivid (if embellished) and sustaining and haunting memories of her birth mom, Devon had no shred of memory, real or created, of her biological father. She'd never thought he didn't know she existed; she'd always assumed he didn't care that she did.

But now he was just a few short strides away, somewhere down this dim hall that seemed a long dark tunnel. And she'd see him first (and maybe last) comatose and dying. Though she'd never anticipated meeting him, never thought about it or longed for it or dreamed about it, had she thought about it, she sure wouldn't have thought about it like this. Just as Laura reached for the bedroom's doorknob, Devon grasped Laura's shoulder.

Laura turned and even in the dim light could see her freshly found daughter was in deep pain. She instantly chided herself for her selfishness and single-mindedness, and quickly folded this grown woman (two inches taller and maybe twenty pounds heavier) into her arms as if she were again the infant she'd handed over to the sisters all those years ago.

Devon's sobs poured into Laura's chest in a muffled gusher of sound and tears. One might've predicted such an emotional moment at the reunion of mother and daughter; but who would've guessed it would happen here, under these circumstances?

Laura half-carried, half-guided Devon farther down the hall, opened the first door they came to (on the opposite side of the hall), and led Devon in there. It was a bedroom Laura'd not seen before now, medium-sized and well-lit by sunlight pouring through two small casement windows on either side of a neatly made up double bed. The color scheme was yellow and turquoise, and sitting atop the pillows of the bed was a white stuffed bear. Laura immediately knew this was Angie's room, apparently little changed since Angie'd moved out, a shrine that'd maybe been seen by no one except Josh's housekeeper in nearly fifteen years.

Laura helped Devon to a seat on the bed then sat beside her. Her sobs were already subsiding, but she kept her face buried in her mother's shoulder.

This gave Laura a chance to look about the room. Opposite where they were seated was a tall white dresser with numerous photographs in small frames on top. In all the photos was a pretty dark-haired teenager that had to be Angie. In some were other teens, male and female—Angie's long-ago friends. In a few was an older woman that was clearly Angie's mom, Vicki. And in one, off to the side and behind the rest, was a younger Josh in a bathing suit holding a bikini-clad Angie horizontally over his head like a human barbell. Whatever the context of the photo, Angie was laughing and clearly relaxed, unabashedly and recklessly confident in her father's strength and love.

By now Devon had dried her eyes on her mother's shirt and was following Laura's eyes to the cluster of photos.

Laura noticed Devon's gaze and smiled kindly at her sudden new confusion and vulnerability. She reached across to the dresser and took hold of a picture of Angie lying atop her mother on a blanket or a bed, each with their arms crossed under their chins, grinning broadly like two Cheshire cats at the photographer (who had to be Josh). "This is Vicki, Josh's—your father's—second wife; and this is Angie, his only other child. I never met either one. Vicki died of cancer some years ago; and Angie, we just found out, is serving in Iraq as an Army-reserve nurse."

"Why isn't she here, caring for her father?"

"They are estranged."

"Why?"

"He'll have to explain that."

Devon thought, "If he can," but remained silent.

Laura set that photo down and reached around to grab the one of Josh and Angie at the beach. "This is Josh holding Angie." She handed the framed photo to Devon.

Devon studied the photo for long seconds. "I look like him."

Laura laughed. "When I first saw you in the airport, I thought you were Josh in a woman's clothes."

"I guess we don't have to do a DNA test to prove paternity."

Laura said, "No." Then she added, "Wouldn't have had to in any case—Josh was the only man I'd ever been with before you were born, and for a good many years after."

Devon looked at her gently but said nothing.

"Josh and I were high-school sweethearts, each the other's first love. We married the summer after I graduated high school, after his sophomore year in college. He dropped out of college and we moved to Boston. We both worked and I took classes at night.

"I'd like to say it was an idyllic, romantic period for both of us; but in fact it was a very confusing time. We were young and the world was before us and the city offered lots of exciting opportunities, but rarely were we on the same page in terms of interests or needs. What had seemed so clear and simple in the small town before we were married became murky and treacherous once we were married and on our own in a city. We drifted apart. My classes offered me friendships and stimulation that Josh became jealous of. And he developed habits that excluded me."

"Like what?"

"He started staying out late, drinking and carousing with a gang of guys from school I'd introduced him to. But that really didn't bother me. What bothered me was that he would read and write and escape into a world that I was forbidden to enter or share in. It left me feeling very lonely. He probably felt the same way about my studies and my friends. The strangest thing is we never once talked about this, about what was really wrong. We'd fight about money, about weekend plans, about what to make for dinner. But we never once argued about excluding each other from the most important parts of our separate lives."

"So what happened?"

"I made arrangements to spend a semester in Paris without fully consulting Josh. And when I told him about my decision, he didn't shout or cry or argue or ask to join me. He simply said, 'O.K.'"

"And?"

"And he accompanied me to the airport and stood at the window watching as the plane pulled away from the gate. That was the last time I saw him till five days ago, last time I heard anything from him till a hospital social worker contacted me and relayed Josh's request that I come and care for him in these last days."

Devon looked at the photo of her young and still vibrant father in his weightlifter pose.

"And?"

Laura hugged her daughter and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "You want to know where you fit in—or, more accurately, didn't fit in. We generally used contraception—condoms—during our times together. But every so often, Josh would 'forget' in the heat of the moment. Josh always wanted a child, a daughter, and would talk about it at length even though he knew I wasn't ready for kids, truly couldn't begin to fathom the possibility (I was, after all, just twenty at the time, hardly more than a kid myself). I always figured those times he forgot to put on the condom were him playing roulette with God, using my body and my future as a gambling chip.

"And such episodes had produced more than a few anxious days and weeks over the years, especially while I was still in high school—sleepless nights hoping for, praying for, my period to start. And it always had, till that last time. I suspected I might be pregnant even as I packed for the flight to Paris, but managed to dismiss my anxiety as related to the trip. I was a month in Paris before a French doctor confirmed my suspicions. By then, Josh and I were a lot further apart than the Atlantic Ocean.

"I never figured out the right way to tell him. I still haven't."

"And now it might be too late."

Fair as it was, that hurt more than Laura would've guessed or Devon intended. But Laura simply nodded and said, "May be."

She took the photo from Devon and set it back in its place on the dresser. Then she stood, offered her hand to her daughter; and together they walked out of Angie's room and down the hall toward Josh.

At some point in Josh's vision, he had stopped recording the human exodus passing before him and become part of it. This transition had not been instantaneous but gradual and seamless. In imperceptible stages he went from sitting apart and witnessing and counting the migration to first feeling his legs (two of them, and both whole and strong) beginning to move in slow effortless stride, then his waist and arms starting to move, then his senses gathering in the sights and sounds and smells (stale huffing breaths, sweat-soured clothes) of proximate human bodies, then the feeling of movement in his inner-ear and balance equilibrium. Yet, even as he merged with that human tide, some part of himself continued watching and counting from afar—eighty-six thousand three hundred fifteen, one hundred twelve thousand four hundred eighty-two. In his counting and his walking, time was suspended and space compressed until both time and space ceased to exist, merged into something new. The counting and the walking became one action, one sensation; the close proximity of countless other bodies and the distant safe and airy spaces of observation blended into a unified wholeness; and Josh was all of these things—observer and observed, counter and counted—at once.

And that was all.

Sherri the nurse looked up from her seat—in "Laura's chair"—where she was reading one of her pulp romances beside Josh's bed. Above her on a stand beside the headboard was a new video monitor with numbers flashing and lines creeping across but no beeping sound or alarms. Several cords looped down from the monitor and to the headboard where they were held in place by white surgical tape, then ran from the headboard to sensors on Josh's neck and chest and the back of his left hand and the tip of his left index finger. Josh himself was lying on his back with the sheet neatly folded just beneath his chest, his arms to either side on top of the covers, his shoulders, neck, and head raised on several pillows at about a thirty-degree angle above horizontal. The skin of his face and neck was shockingly pale, almost pure white and faintly luminescent in the room dimmed by the drapes being drawn in front of the windows.

Sherri looked up at Laura with a neutral glance that seemed kind and compassionate when placed in the context of her expertise and professionalism. Her gaze silently spoke all that needed to be spoken—I don't know what's going on here; I've got the situation in hand for now; I'll help guide you through whatever happens to a safe other side.

Then she saw Devon behind Laura, and her reassuring gaze was instantly clouded by doubt and confusion and perhaps a touch of offense at this stranger's presence so close to the heart of things.

"Sherri," Laura said in a voice barely above a whisper that nonetheless seemed a clanging gong in the shrouded silent room, "This is Josh's daughter Devon; Devon, this is Josh's nurse Sherri."

Devon squeezed between her mother and the bed and extended her hand to Sherri. Sherri stood and accepted the handshake even as her eyes betrayed some reluctance and confusion.

Laura began, "I'd not told you—" then stopped in mid-sentence. She stepped forward and gave Sherri a hug, a loose embrace that lingered a second longer than either expected. "Thank you for being here when you needed to be."

"I'll be here long as you need me."

Laura stepped back half a stride and looked closely at her. "I'll count on that. Now can we give you a break?"

"I don't need one right now."

"Then can we have a few minutes alone with him?"

"Long as you want. He's not going anywhere."

Laura looked very closely at Josh's nurse. "You mean you think he might be with us for a while?"

"I'm not a doctor or a fortune-teller."

"I know that, but what do you think?"

"I think that whatever this is,"—she gestured at Josh—"it's not the end."

Laura nodded. "Thank you."

Then Sherri added, "But I've been wrong plenty. There are no guidelines for this part; and whoever is writing this story is keeping the ending to himself."

Devon added, to no one in particular, "Or herself."

Sherri smiled at that. "We can hope it's a she."

Laura said, "Josh does."

Sherri nodded. "I figured," then added as she walked past toward the door, "Holler if you need me."

"We will," both women said simultaneously.

Alone now with her husband and her daughter, Laura leaned over and kissed Josh on the forehead. His skin felt unnaturally cool and she touched her cheek to his dry lips. They were warmer and she felt the soft wash of his shallow exhalation across her skin and what she would swear was the slight movement of his lips into a dry and chaste kiss of his own. But when she turned to look, his eyes were still closed and his face expressionless.

She straightened up and faced Devon. There was in the foot or so of dimly lit space between them a new bond strong as iron that neither could've predicted or planned. For Laura, there was the support of this woman, support that might actually allow her to survive this brutal trial. For Devon there was the light-speed thrust of her whole self into the heart of the life (and death) of not one but two parents part of her had thought she'd never meet let alone get to know at the very core of their lives. In the manner of death-watch epiphanies down through the ages, each woman knew that they were exactly where they needed to be, with whom they needed to be, each the other's harbor through the storm. When you got right down to it, could either have asked for more?

Laura crossed to the far side of the room and opened the drapes. The brilliant spring sun barely filtered by the new leaves feeding off it was too sudden and strong for the room or the moment, so she lowered the metal-slat blinds and tilted them to block about half the sun's glare. Then she grabbed the wooden chair from Josh's desk and carried it to the far side of the bed and set it beside the upholstered chair where Sherri'd been reading.

Devon had remained frozen in place staring down at her father. She had no urge to close the small gap between her and the bed and reach out to touch his face or hand. In fact, she felt suddenly terrified at the prospect of touching him—not because he might in fact be as dead and cold as he looked (that prospect, though disturbing, would at least be final) but that he might in fact really be alive, that within his blood and bones and flesh was half her DNA, half all she was to this point or ever would be, the genetic precursors that had shaped her nose and eyes and ears and lips. This confrontation of the second of the two beings that had caused her, brought her into being, froze her in place, balked her in a way that preparation and planning had eased her meeting with Laura. So she chose to leave a few feet of space between her and her father for now. (Oddly, it didn't occur to her that he might rouse at any moment from this slumber and choose to close that gap from his side—in Devon's mind, that final gap would only be closed by her, at a time of her choosing.)

Laura sat in the upholstered chair and gestured for Devon to sit in the one she'd brought from the desk. Devon nodded thanks and sat. Laura took Devon's right hand and held in loosely in her left. Linked like this, the two women were content to let the silence of the room and the sun's muted light gently spread round them, pooling at their feet and under the bed.

They might've remained such for minutes or hours except Josh's eyes suddenly flew open, stared directly at Devon with a look of fear or pain, then closed down tight. The lines on the video monitor flashed a series of steep spikes and equally precipitous troughs, and the numbers fluctuated wildly. Devon's hand tensed beneath Laura's, and she started to stand. But Laura reached out and touched her shoulder gently but firmly, holding her in place. The two women watched Josh closely, waiting to see if he would open his eyes again. He made no further movement; his eyes remained shut; his breathing calmed. The lines on the monitor and the accompanying numbers settled into a renewed and stable rhythm.

Laura began in a clear, firm voice that gave every sign that it thought it was heard by the subject of address, "Josh, this is our daughter. Her name is Devon. I surrendered her for adoption when she was four days old. She contacted me some time ago, and we met for the first time since her birth yesterday. And now I introduce her to you."

Laura paused, took a long slow breath, then continued clear-voiced and clear-eyed. "I'm sorry I never told you about her, sorry I couldn't give you the daughter you so desperately wanted. Maybe that was the impasse—your desperation, your blind desire for a child. You seemed to think it would be the solution to all our problems. To me, a child would've become a lightning rod for our differences. How could a helpless child have resolved our issues? How could another human being—one in constant need of love and support and security and guidance—have disentangled all those months of confusion and hurt? She would've only complicated our estrangement. She would've become the innocent caught in the middle. I couldn't let that happen."

Laura weighed her words in silence, stared at Josh's profile for any signs of recognition or response. She never once looked toward Devon, but part of her was acutely aware of her daughter's presence. And it was that part of her, the part that was watching Devon in her mind even as she watched Josh with her eyes, that was a conscience to her confession, a truth filter to her words.

"That last sounds so noble and selfless. Part of me did want what was best for our unborn child, but most of me was being selfish. I was scared of what a child would require from me, and scared of the weaknesses a dependent would uncover in me. I was twenty years old Josh, barely out of childhood myself. I knew I couldn't bear the weight of another human being. All that other—that stuff about a child further confusing our confused marriage—is true far as it went. But when it comes right down to it, I didn't tell you about my pregnancy and didn't keep our baby because I was scared. And there's no nobility or self-sacrifice in fear. It's an entity unto itself, its own purpose and destination. I suppose I've been living in its shadow ever since."

Laura took another deep breath, then faced Devon directly as she spoke these final words, "I'm sorry, Josh. I'm deeply sorry to you for not ever giving you a chance to know your first daughter. And I'm sorry to this beautiful woman for not having had the courage to try to raise her. But I'm also sorry to myself, partly for the difficult choice I made, more so for never having forgiven myself once I made it."

Devon held steady through her birth mother's confession, and bore unflinching Laura's half-defiant, half-pleading stare that accompanied her last words. Really, what choice did she have? She couldn't stand and leave and thereby turn her back on the two people she'd set out to find, the one person she felt she'd been walking toward her whole life. Besides, she acknowledged her responsibility in setting in motion the events that had brought her to this place, a responsibility that now obligated her to this witness. And in the moment's spirit of accepted responsibility and obligation, Devon would have to admit to herself at least (if not out loud to Josh and Laura) that a significant part of her desired to be this hinge pin on which the door of her mother's (and father's) life might swing open. Her whole life, she'd secretly wanted to matter to them. Here and now, she mattered immensely. She knew at that instant she'd accept whatever weight they heaped on her shoulders.

She broke from Laura's stare and looked again at Josh. "Tell me about my father."

Laura glanced toward the bed. "He's right there."

"About his life, from now working backwards."

"I don't know much about the last thirty years. Heck, until five days ago, I'd seen you more recently than him."

"Tell me what you know, please."

Laura nodded. "He has a rare and terminal blood disorder. It has spread throughout his body, worst in the appendages but starting to affect his major organs. They amputated his right leg above the knee to try to slow the progress of the disease. They did that while he was in an earlier coma, with no living will or next of kin to stop them. When he came to, he said as clearly and as forcefully as he could while on his back in a hospital bed—No more! He hired a lawyer to draw up all the legal forms—no more surgery, no more efforts to revive, no more hospitals. Then he had a patient advocate track me down to ask if I'd be available to insure that his wishes were honored. And for some unknown reason, I said yes—set aside my life in California and came here to watch him die."

"Like me," Devon said.

"What?"

"The unknown reason."

"You came to see me."

"And ended up here." She tilted her head toward Josh.

"To watch him die."

"With you."

Laura nodded. "Thank you."

"So why is Josh here, in Durham?"

"He teaches—taught—at the university."

"Teaches what?"

"Twentieth-century American literature. Apparently, after we split up, he followed his interest in writing and literature back to school—completed his undergraduate degree then went on to get his doctorate. Somewhere in that process, he met and married Vicki, they had Angie, he got a job at the university, and he's lived here ever since. I know that's a brief summary for thirty years of a person's life; but, like I said, I wasn't in contact with him. Most of what I just told you I gleaned from the back cover of one of his books."

"When did you get divorced?"

"That's how I knew he'd met Vicki in grad school. I got a registered letter from some lawyer's office with the divorce papers inside. There was a hand-written note from Josh attached, explaining that he was asking for the divorce so that he could remarry. Then he ended the note with a sentence I've not forgotten in thirty years—'I miss you every day.'" Laura paused and blinked back sudden unexpected tears.

"And you believed him?"

Laura grabbed a tissue from the nightstand box and took a moment to compose herself before continuing. "Oh, yes. It was vintage Josh—simultaneously selfish and deeply moving. He'd not once asked how I was doing, but in a sentence managed to cut me to the quick."

"Why?"

Laura stared at her incredulously, not believing her daughter didn't already know the answer. "I'd never stopped loving him. And if ever I began to think I could stop, could possibly move beyond him with this or that willing partner—and there were several eager candidates—I would get a mental image of you, like you looked when I last saw you. I would smell your formula-tainted breath, feel your incredibly soft skin, hear your cooing. What I never could've imagined when I chose to carry you to term was that you would link me to Josh for the rest of my life."

"But you never saw either of us for over three decades."

"It didn't matter—how foolish is that? I knew you existed; I was the only one who knew who your father was. I felt I was a vital part of both your lives. I just didn't know how."

"I'm sorry."

Laura shrugged. "Don't be. People live whole lives without ever grasping one thing that matters. I've had this." She paused and smiled, the expression lifting a huge weight from her face. "I mean, you."

"Not entirely your choosing."

"What ever is?"

For Laura, that seemed an ending, at least for the moment, a logical and welcomed pause in the morning's inexorable rush of crises, demands, and revelations. Her eyes fell to Josh's peaceful profile, locked on his face as the calm heart at the center of the storm his illness and this sudden turn for the worse had caused. Her whole being poured itself into his peacefulness. Unconsciously, her breathing slowed to match his, her heartbeat calmed to reflect the blips passing on the monitor, her face relaxed. As she began to fall into a waking rest in the resting Josh, a small scrap of her self-awareness couldn't help but note the irony in the present exchange—patient caring for caregiver, struggler soothing the soother, dying showing the living how to survive.

From Devon's side and seat, Laura's last words opened a window on a whole new world of possibility and risk—what that matters is ever our choosing? A month ago, before she'd filled out, signed, and submitted the forms requesting that her birth mother be made aware of her desire for contact, Devon would've confidently claimed that she was in full control of all the major aspects of her life. She had a devoted and stable life partner, supportive parents, a secure job, a house in a good neighborhood that was nearly paid for. There'd been no surprises at the core of her life since the day her mom had told her she was adopted twenty-nine years ago. Her and Joce's willingness to consider parenthood reflected this sense of security; and their desire to uncover any possible genetic risks to her or the baby—even to the extent of seeking Devon's birth parents—further reflected the intent, and expectation, of preserving control over their lives and choices.

But the day she'd dropped those forms in the mail—she remembered the moment with absolute clarity, even recalled the half-dollar sized blister of rust on the postal box across the street from her bank—Devon felt a strange and unprecedented light-headedness, a kind of momentary dizziness and detachment that might've been construed as either foreboding or fortuitousness. She imagined then that the envelope containing those forms was like a dove, struggling in her hands for release but oh so fragile and vulnerable, a dove that would fly out into the world beyond her control, perhaps never returning—slain along the way or finding shelter beyond sight or further knowledge—or, even more frightening, returning after absence of unknown duration, carrying who knows what scars or message from the world beyond her, and beyond her control. She'd accepted an evangelical friend's invitation to attend Sunday School for a few months when she was eleven, and therefore knew the story of Noah's dove returning first with nothing, then with an olive branch, then not returning at all. (Their erstwhile Sunday School teacher—a plumber during the week who liked to close his eyes and boom "Praise the Lord" at the slightest provocation—confidently explained that the dove hadn't returned the third time because he'd met a girl dove and set out making a nest and raising a family of baby doves in the land wiped clean of sin. But Devon had blurted out, "Or got eaten by a hawk!"—an explanation that resulted in groans from her classmates and a condemnatory stare from the plumber.) So, against all her training and expectation, Devon felt herself a latter-day Noah, releasing the dove of her forms out into an uncharted and potentially perilous world, not knowing if that dove would return or what might happen to it along the way—in short, relinquishing control, leaving her destiny in the hands of Fate, or God.

And here she was, seated within arm's reach of her dying birth father and her good-hearted but fiercely independent birth mother, most firmly in the clutches of Fate, or God. And it now mattered to her immensely which of those two held her. Though she'd not thought much about either Fate or God in her former life, she knew she wasn't like Jocelyn, who happily blurred the line between the two, seeing God as Fate, Fate as God. No, in her mind the two were profoundly different. Fate was simply chance, random events outside the control or planning of anyone or anything. God, on the other hand, possessed both control and intention, and (she was reckless to hope) exercised that power with unseen and inscrutable benevolence, maybe even (still bolder hope!) love.

But which was it—Fate or God—dictating her life? At that moment, from her seat in the desk chair that might be resting on bedrock or might be sinking in quicksand, a part of herself she didn't know she possessed, a part laid bare by the events of the last few days, the last few hours—that part silently but irrevocably chose to believe it was God. And in this belief, she made a final leap into the darkness of these events beyond her control, trusting God to catch her.

Though it seemed he'd been plodding along forever—his two solid legs had never stopped moving and the myriad bodies that surrounded him had never ceased their slow forward momentum—Josh would've sworn he was where he'd started. And from above, where the other Josh was watching, though the line kept moving and the numbers kept climbing, at some level the scene never changed, was simultaneously static and moving.

It was only then, in the contemplation of this paradox, that Josh recalled the presence of another, the one who had spoken from behind him earlier. And he knew now that this other was watching both him and them, was both far above and intimately close; and further that this other controlled both time and space, could blur the line between the two at will. Intimation of this news should've been reward enough for his long witness and journey, but Josh wanted more. "Then why let us choose?"

A protracted and massive silence ensued. In what might've been a millisecond or a millennium, bearing the weight of a microbe or a mountain, the silence was all consuming—nothing but silence. Yet outside the silence, the migration continued, with Josh both participant and witness.

Then a tiny voice so faint it might've been the wind, and like the wind was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, said, "To discover my love."

Josh's answer was immediate. "Never soon enough."

The wind answered. "Always just in time."

Josh thought for a moment that might've been an eternity. "But you control that too."

The migration continued—the shuffle of worn feet, a puff of dust.

Laura set the tray between them on the kitchen table. On it were two small plates, each with a pimento-cheese sandwich neatly cut in half diagonally, two cups of steaming Earl Grey tea, and lemon wedges, milk, and sugar, each in its own matching pottery container. Laura gestured, palms up, to her daughter. "Eat."

Devon nodded. "To preserve our strength." She sat opposite her mother at the table.

They'd left the still unconscious Josh under the attentive gaze of Sherri. Before they'd left the bedroom, each agreed to serve an eight-hour watch daily, long as needed—Sherri would handle 8 AM to 4 PM, Devon 4 PM till midnight, and Laura midnight till 8 AM. Further, Sherri would serve as a live-in nurse, bringing an overnight bag of clothes and toiletries and setting up in the nursery (where Laura'd been—close at hand in case of an emergency), Devon would retrieve her bags from the hotel and stay in Angie's room. And when the two younger women looked to Laura, she said, "I'll move my stuff to the guestroom down the hall," then added after a pause, "but intend to sleep, if I sleep at all, right here, with him." Sherri took a deep breath to object, but Laura stilled her with a silent raising of her hand. So Sherri swallowed her protest and said only, "Be careful of the monitor leads." Laura said, "I will."

The two women ate their sandwiches in a comfortable silence, sharing a kind of battlefield intimacy that far exceeded their history (which was, after all, only two days) or even their kinship. Though neither felt hungry, they ate their sandwiches and drank their tea with deep satisfaction, savoring each bite and sip.

Her plate cleaned of every morsel, Laura looked up at her daughter. "You can use my car—correction, Josh's car that I've been driving—to get your things from the motel."

Devon nodded.

Laura asked, "How bad is this disrupting your life?"

Devon paused to consider that. "Normal amount, I guess. I'll have to change my plane reservation, get someone to cover for me at work, cancel a dentist's appointment." She shrugged. "No big deal, in the near-term."

"It could go on for a while."

Devon nodded. "Then we'll see."

"And Jocelyn?"

"She hates sleeping alone, but I think she'll understand. If not, she can always come here."

Laura kept quiet, but her face betrayed her reservations.

"We could stay at a motel, maybe one closer by."

Laura said, "We'll worry about that when the time comes." She collected the empty plates and cups, set them in the tray, and turned to carry them to the sink before pausing and looking back over her shoulder. "Devon, I feel so close to you that I'm already taking you for granted. Please forgive my selfishness and accept my sincerest thanks for your willingness to share this burden, and all that choice is costing you."

Devon nodded. "Thanks accepted. I only hope I'm up to the task."

"I hope we both are."

"We'll prop each other up."

"Or fall trying."

Devon asked, "Would you like for me to try to reach Angie?"

Laura responded simply, "Please."

That night Devon sat in her father's dimly lit room in the upholstered chair beside his bed watching his calm and unmoving profile. Sherri'd connected an IV bag to a port in his arm to keep him hydrated and provide rudimentary nutrition, and she'd added a permanent catheter to drain his bladder and track his urine production and kidney function. Just before leaving for the night (to put her house in order—she'd be back the next morning by 8), she'd checked the urine bag and nodded with satisfaction. "That's a good sign." She held up the plastic bag for Devon to see. "Normal urine production, good color. Kidneys are usually the first to go, but no sign of that yet." She set the bag back down on its hanger taped to the footboard of the bed. "Now you or your mom call me if there's any change, any change at all. This phone"—she pointed to the phone clipped to her belt—"is always on and within arm's reach."

Devon laughed. "Even in the shower?"

"On a hook just outside the curtain. You'd be surprised how many calls I get while in the shower."

"You must take long showers."

"This woman's only consolation, since my husband ran off."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. The sex wasn't worth the headaches. I've found alternatives that are more satisfying and whole lot easier on the nerves." She winked.

"Might need to hear your tips one day."

"Anytime. A girl never knows when she might need to be self-reliant."

"A girl never knows."

Now alone, Devon watched her father locked in his persistent unconsciousness. The house was incredibly still. Laura was somewhere down the hall but made no sound, was probably asleep after their exhausting day. The numbers and lines flicked past on the monitor. Beyond the window, night gripped the woods. Somewhere out there, an owl trilled its lilting tune that Devon recognized from her childhood in Louisiana. Then new silence ensued.

Devon had not yet touched her birth father—no part of him: not his face, not even his pale near hand resting atop the covers. She wasn't quite ready for touch, wasn't quite ready to take the final step to make him real. Part of her reluctance derived from an understanding, both formal and visceral, of his empirical rights—in this case, the right to welcome or initiate contact with a stranger (even a stranger that is your daughter). And part of her wanted him conscious so that he might invite her approach, share in that first touch. But beyond both of these reservations was a more basic fear—the fear that no sooner would she make him real to her through touch then he would be taken from her, dying without ever seeing her or knowing she existed.

So she sat beside him, watched him closely, but watched him as if she were watching a corpse, the corpse he might soon be.

She opened her laptop, accessed the Internet through Josh's wireless router, and typed Joshua Earl into the search engine. She was startled, as always, by the thousands of entries the search returned. After several dead ends, she found a website maintained by the university that included brief bios of the faculty. She was surprised to see how many books Josh had published, including scholarly works on Frost, Agee, Roethke, and Stevens, and two books of his own poetry. The bio ended with this sentence—Professor Earl was married to the late Victoria Lawton Earl, with whom he had a daughter, Angela Brock Earl.

Part of her winced at her exclusion from this listing. She also noticed that Laura's name was missing, but then who ever lists ex-spouses. So far as the world was concerned, Josh's only living relative was one Angela Brock Earl.

This fact had been enforced on Devon earlier in the afternoon when, after wading through more than a dozen touch-tone responses and being placed on hold for over twenty minutes, she'd finally spoken with a Defense Department "Family Liaison Officer" and asked if she could be placed in contact with Lieutenant Angela Earl.

The stern male Family Liaison Officer asked, "Who is making this request?"

"Her half-sister."

"Regarding what matter?"

"Her dying father."

"Please hold."

Thirty seconds later, the liaison came back on the line and said, in a voice even more stern that before, "Lieutenant Angela Earl has no half-sister."

"Not that she knows of."

"And you would know better than she?"

"In this case, yes."

"Why hasn't her father contacted her?"

"He's presently comatose. As I believe I mentioned, he's dying. He can't come to the phone!" Against all her training, Devon was losing her patience.

The liaison was unswayed. "Access to our troops, especially those in a warzone, is highly restricted. Normally, such contact can only be initiated by the listed next of kin."

Devon took a deep breath. "I understand. I also desire maximum security for our troops. But I believe it is critically important that Lieutenant Earl be informed that her father is gravely ill and could die at any moment."

"Please give me your contact information. I will forward your request. Someone will get back to you within forty-eight hours."

Devon'd thought, "That may be too late," but gave the Family Liaison Officer her cellphone number.

Devon looked up from her laptop. Either the light, or her eyes adjusted to the computer screen, or Josh's skin tone had changed. Whatever the reason, her father's face in profile appeared more alive, his skin color and texture that of a living soul, not a corpse. She felt a sudden deep sadness for him, not due to any direct connection with him (such attachment, if it ever came, still felt far off) but rather the opposite—as an unbiased, uncommitted observer allowed into the center of this good and intelligent and well-regarded man's last moments on earth, given rare privileged access to the simple truth that all of one's worldly possessions and accomplishments condense to this one reality: you alone see the steady approach of death. It mattered not how many spouses or children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren or friends or dignitaries or awards you'd accumulated throughout your life—thousands or none: that final walk would be solitary. And to this privileged observer who spent her entire conscious and unconscious life seeking and nurturing durable connections, this man's loneliness in his closing moments was almost too much to acknowledge, let alone bear. Yet bear it she must.

Devon whispered a sudden spontaneous prayer—"In your hands," not knowing if it was his life or hers she was asking to be borne up.

She looked again at her laptop screen, typed in the address Laura'd given her for Angie's blog, and breathed a sigh of temporary relief at the sudden flood of backlit words apparently authored by her half-sister a third of a world away under constant threat of maiming or death, and yet a world that nonetheless seemed a veritable sanctuary compared with her present perilous watch beside their father.

Unlike Josh, who'd scrolled back to Angie's earliest entry and read them forward in time before being balked at the account of the Bradford pears, Devon started with the most recent entry and read them backward in time.

The most recent entry had just been posted, carried today's date and a time three hours into the future—an 11 PM posting when it was about 8 PM when Devon started reading. When adjusted for the time-zone difference, this meant Angie had posted the entry some four hours earlier, but Devon chose to ignore the time-zone adjustment and pretend that her half-sister actually had the ability to speak to her from the future, might somehow in that capacity guide her through this present.

April 27

How many G.I. Joes and Janes can you fit in a ruthless dictator's pool? Sounds like a riddle from high school, right? "How many cheerleaders does it take to unscrew a light bulb? Answer: Can't be done—cheerleaders only know how to screw." Or like a Guinness Book challenge—How many college kids can you fit in a phone booth?

But this pool thing was neither riddle nor challenge but a fair summary of a recent trip I went on. The whole company received a two-day in-country furlough (Strat. Commands rather lame attempt to try to make up for last week's three-month extension of our tour) and was bundled into armored busses and given gunship escort to one of Saddam's desert palaces, a polished-marble oasis luxurious beyond imagining or description. The female reservists were housed in a wing of the palace covering more than an acre, with some forty bedrooms arranged around a central enclosed courtyard covered by hundreds of glass panels each with its own remotely controlled retractable shade. Each bedroom had its own huge bath with sunken whirlpool tub, walk-in shower, marble vanity and make-up tables, mirrored walls, and huge walk-in closet with mahogany shelves, rotating closet rods, and conveyor-belt shoe racks. Each bedroom had a king-sized mattress (and, in some cases, canopy) customized to suit the tastes of its occupant. And in the middle of the floor of each bedroom was a mosaic portrait of that room's occupant—in my room, an azure-eyed, raven-haired beauty who looked to be no more than sixteen (but who knows—may have been a forty-year-old hag who bribed the artist).

Of course, this was the harem's wing—the poor end of the palace. The male reservists got the fancy rooms, though they had to bunk four and five to a room since there were so many more of them—still, not a bad gig given the sheer size of their rooms.

And the food, prepared by Saddam's own palace chefs (who, after being carefully screened by security, were kept by Provisional Command in a rare show of administrative wisdom amidst the transitional chaos), matched the décor—the best fresh fruit and vegetables in limitless supply (some of which I "borrowed" for bathing in my tub—got to love those mango shampoos and pomegranate facials, not to mention those cucumbers!), all manner of meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish exquisitely prepared, cheeses and rolls and fresh-baked breads of every description, and the desserts—ohh, the desserts! If you're ever looking for a more than adequate substitute for sex, make your way through all those minefields and IED traps and razor-wire checkpoints to the dessert trays at Saddam's Palace #3. 'Nuff said!

Now, back to the pool—knowing that we'd soon be piled back into our armored busses and ferried back to base under cover of dark and by an alternate route (to avoid a rumored ambush), we decided to see if we could fit every member of the company into Saddam's main star-shaped pool. And with all our bathing suits and other clothing already packed and on its way back to base ahead of us, we had the choice of jumping into the pool in our Army-issued desert uniforms or stripping to our underwear for a modified skinny dip. So we all turned to our CO (a woman as stern as she was fair and forthright) and she stared back at us for a tense twenty seconds before quickly stripping to her bra and panties (matching in hot pink) and being the first to jump in! She was soon joined by every single member of the company, even the old stick-in-the-mud requisition clerks. And we made it! We all fit—though we were so cramped we couldn't have turned around if we had to, and most of us got enough free feels to last us through several months of lonely nights (I felt at least five different hands brush my thighs and waist, and at least two of them had fake nails!). One of the palace's security contingent took a wide-angle photo on his cellphone and promised to send it to our company's information officer—encoded and on a secure server, of course.

Then we all crawled out of the water, dried off on Saddam's textured marble pool apron with Saddam's infinitely plush towels, pulled on our desert fatigues and boots and boarded those armored busses for our circuitous ride back to base, an uneventful trip under the cover of dark and allowing each of us to rest along the way with dreams of a life in the Arabian Nights.

As I write these words, I can still smell the chlorine in my frizzy hair from several days ago—so it wasn't a dream!

Or maybe all a dream—the chlorine in my hair, the furtive touch of fingers on bubble-coated skin, fingers that tomorrow (or later tonight) will be couched in latex-free gloves probing blood-soaked skin to find the shrapnel entry point in hopes of prolonging one more life in this pervasive, never-ending bad dream.

Devon paused, then read the entry that Laura had read just last night, an entry dated April 22 that began with two stanzas of consonance:

descending desert's darkness danger

daring dissolves disaster's distance

and went on to describe the weight of the desert's formidable and infinite night and Angie's fear and vulnerability in the face of such yawning infinity.

Devon returned to the second line of Angie's two-line poem, spoke the words aloud in a firm but quiet voice—"daring dissolves disaster's distance." She wondered how much her half-sister was aware of the power and transferability of these words. Could daring—a blind leap into the unknown—actually trump fear, become the method by which the chasm of fear and timidity was bridged, terror dissolved? Was Angie prepared to make that leap by returning to her father's deathbed? Had she, Devon, already made that leap? Had Laura? Had Josh?

She looked up at her father's dimly lit profile and spoke the words to him this time—"daring dissolves disaster's distance." What was he seeing behind those closed lids, within his brain's maze of neurons and synapses that Sherri said were firing away like crazy, in an apparent state of active dreaming? What daring had been called for and deployed within that mind that was apparently as alive and vibrant as his body was damaged and wasting?

She leaned forward in her chair, out over the bed, closing the gap between her and Josh to mere inches. "What courage called for?" she asked in a firm whisper. Then added, "My father," and closed the last few inches to kiss him lightly on his slick cool forehead.

She leaned backward into her chair, hugged herself against a sudden chill, then noticed the computer on the night table, still open to her half-sister's journal. She clicked on the next entry.

April 16

In war, life is simplified. For the body, simple—eat, sleep, survive till tomorrow. For the mind, simple—facilitate survival. For the profession, simple—have all supplies and equipment ready for any instant's need (a nurse sets her surgical tools in order, an artilleryman his targeting maps, a machine gunner his ammo belts).

Such warzone simplicity applies to groups as well. For the platoon, simple—watch your buddy's back while he's watching yours. For the company, simple—bring everybody home. For the corps, simple—achieve your mission. For the nation, simple—win.

But such simplicity begins to break down as the war experience wears on, the initial imperatives whittled away by time and introspection and doubt. The body's imperative for survival is compromised by fatigue. The mind's call to facilitate survival begins to be blurred by a creeping question—why? And all the other simplicities are assailed by similar time-spawned doubts and questions—what if I do survive till tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? what will be left on the other side?

Before being deployed, I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. I know—great choice of a read before going off to war. Don't ask me why I chose it. It's a depressing book; it's interminably long; all those Russian names are confusing as hell; and it's about a society and a culture that is unrecognizable to this 21st century American girl. Yet (and you had to know this was coming), despite all that, the book opened a window on a fundamental question for me and, I'm bold to suggest, for our country—How do I/we find our way back from a mortal mistake?

And the book makes one thing emphatically clear—the endless hours and days and weeks and months (and pages, pages, pages, pages!) of waking and dreaming reflection on the mistake and all the choices that led up to it are not a pathway beyond it. To the contrary, such rumination and recrimination only imprison one in the mistake.

So what leads one out of the past and beyond the mistake and into the possibility of a hope-filled future? I could be coy and say "Read the book" (all 856 pages, in my edition). I could be vague and non-committal and say "It's complicated." Or I can borrow from wartime's simplicity, clarity, and efficiency and say—confess (your sin), accept (your punishment), and receive (your future).

Now apply that to your life, your war.

April 9

TRUST—in a warzone, this word, this concept, this fundamental human emotion and desire (or fear) takes on an entirely different meaning, an entirely different dynamic and urgency, so much so that there should be two separate words—as in war-trust versus peace-trust.

Back there in the "old" world, which is to say 21st century peace-time American society (and forget all that crap coming out of politicians' mouths that we're "a nation at war"—the average Joe and Jane on the streets and in the malls of America have no awareness of or concern about the faraway conflicts being fought by professional soldiers that seem to them more like hired mercenaries than their brothers and sisters. And I should know—I was one of those average civilian Janes until about a year ago, and I could've cared less about where we were fighting or why), to these folks the word "trust" means shallow and generally harmless things like a willingness to loan someone your car, or spot your roommate a twenty till her next paycheck, or (heaven forbid) having sex with somebody without using a condom. And if you're really daring and willing to go way out on the shaky civilian trust limb, you might believe someone enough to think he won't screw your friend behind your back (or in front of it) or leave one day for good with no explanation or forwarding address.

But wartrust is like this—you risk befriending someone at lunch knowing that person might have his or her head (or arms or legs) blown off before dinner. Or you take the time to look another in the eyes, make that empirical human connection, only to stand there helplessly as the light goes out of those eyes for good. Or you part your legs in the dark to receive an individual's viable DNA wrapped in his motile sperm cells only to discover by daylight that your vagina now holds the sum-total of all that remains of that man's living DNA, and it now slowly dying cell by cell in those dark recesses, no chance for replacement or renewal and no egg fertilized (would that you could at that moment and in that knowledge unfetter that cloistered egg and make it available to one of those lingering sperm cells, and thereby perpetuate some part of that man's now extinguished life?).

Forgive please that momentary lapse into graphic detail. In the interest of full honesty and disclosure, I must admit that such a tragic unfolding has not occurred to me, at least not yet. But last week one of my closest nurse pals stumbled into my tent, collapsed into my arms, and sobbed for a full fifteen minutes before finding her voice between the sobs to tell me of the death of a private in Recon who had shared her bed and her vagina the night before. Crazy with grief and shock, she suddenly stopped sobbing, stared at me with wild desperate eyes, and asked if I would help her swab her vagina so that she might freeze his sperm till she could go off the Pill and fertilize one of her eggs with that preserved sperm. Writing it all down now, it sounds like the subject of an ethical debate for third-year med students, or an episode on Jerry Springer. But living it, in wartrust, the immediate concerns were not ethical or sensational but practical—how many swabs? what kind of hermetically sealed container? where was the nearest liquid nitrogen? how to label the container so that it would not be discovered or discarded? In the interest of preserving the privacy (and deniability) of all involved, I'll leave open the question of whether or not we followed through on her rash plan.

But as long as we're in the realm of graphic detail (and as partial penance for the preceding coyness), I'll venture to add that sexual congress in wartrust is so different (and better) than sex back in the real world as to be a totally different (and thoroughly untamed) animal, so different in fact that it's taken as common knowledge that once you've screwed in a warzone you're ruined for life—you'll never find that intensity or release back in the real world. I mean, think about it—you're engaged in a procreative act slam in the face of DEATH! How better to defy the Reaper? And it matters little if actual procreation is blocked by mechanical means or hormonal ones—to the heart and soul, it feels like procreation in the face of extinction, it feels like the ultimate affirmation of life in the face of death. (Or maybe, for the guys especially, it's just a huge adrenaline rush—still better than any lay you'll find back home!)

April 1

One thing you get used to in a hurry is the constant whir and roar of helicopter rotors. All times of day and night and in all kinds of weather (except sandstorms, of which I've seen only one so far), those choppers are taking off and landing, roaring by high and oh-so-reach-out-and-touch-the-skid low. Sometimes they land on the makeshift tarmac we have between the three surgery tents, but mostly they land over at the main depot, where most of the troops and supplies are. They have a huge maintenance hangar over there that's humming with activity twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week as the grease monkeys and avionics geeks try to keep this myriad flock of helo-birds airborne. I once complained to Sal, a friend from the helo-shed, that the choppers get better facilities and equipment than the doctors and nurses, and he said, "No choppers, no need for any docs or stitchers." He says it's the damn sand that chews through the choppers' parts—cuts the life-expectancy of all exposed metal by sixty percent or more. I may not know about chopper parts, but I can attest to the wear and tear sand causes on just about everything, and everybody, else.

This morning I was eating breakfast with Sal. Now since being in-country, I've learned to tell the difference between the rotor noise of a Chinook and a Blackhawk, the turbine-assisted roar of an Apache and the near-silent whir of those little scout toys I call "Keys." But Sal can tell every chopper in the fleet just by its rotor noise. So eating with him is always interesting, if a little distracting, as he'll pause in mid-sentence to say something like, "That's Biscayne returning from Baghdad" when the chopper is barely audible to me, or "Viper's headed out on a turkey shoot" as an Apache passed by so low and fast it made my hair go straight. And I always wondered if he was making it all up (who could check him?) or if he really knew every chopper by its sound?

Wondered, that is, till this morning. I was finishing my scrambled eggs and Sal was into his fifth cup of coffee and we were talking about the latest Harry Potter that'd been shown in Rec two nights earlier when suddenly Sal jumped up, spilling his coffee, and said a sharp "No!" I said, "No, what?" He said, "Please, no." By then he was gazing out the mess tent's open side into the brilliant desert sun. I looked past him and saw nothing. I listened intently, but heard only the chatter of Army-issued cutlery on plastic plates. Then Sal sat again with a thud, his face white, his shoulders slumped into his body. "Too late," he said. "Too late for what?" "Too late for Billy and Frank."

Then I and everyone else on base heard the explosion. Two miles out, an Apache was returning after night recon. Sal had heard that even when none of us could. And somewhere out there (there's a mud-hut village in the area, supposedly clean) the Apache had taken some small-arms fire—a not uncommon risk for these low-flying birds. But unlike most such incidents (that end in little more than small tears in the titanium skin), this time the bullet hit a vital component—Sal muttered something about a "tail union"—and the bird went straight down. That's what Sal had heard—the broken tail union that doomed the Apache.

And it was "Billy" and "Frank." Sal begged me to go on morgue shift (not my normal duty or desire) to confirm for him the identity of the two men, and to "be sure they got Frank's toe ring for his fiancée." So I called in a few favors and served as Sal's eyes as they brought in the two officers, their bodies not too terribly mangled despite the violence of the crash.

And I have Frank's toe-ring on my finger now. Sal will get the address of the fiancée (a woman Frank had proposed to but not told his family about) and send it to her, even as the rest of his personal effects are returned along with his body to his family—their April Fool's Day present from Iraq.

March 25

So what's the deal with God? Is there one? None? Several? Hundreds or thousands? If there's one, is he, she, or it nearby? Inside us, outside us, both, or neither? And if nearby, always or sometimes? Or if far away, how far away?

Idle speculation, you say; and I'd have to agree. But as I'm currently deployed at the center of a conflict where the word "god," and all the freight that word regularly drags around behind it, is frequently invoked in public, professional, and private discourse, the above questions, however speculative, seem empirical and imperative. Yet, as often as the word is used—in every form and meaning from greeting to curse to explanation to justification—the above questions are never posed or meaningfully discussed.

Our leaders—from the evangelical proselyte turned President to our generals and division commanders to our civilian administrators and their Iraqi counterparts—regularly punctuate their speeches with the word. If I hear or see the phrase "may God bless you" attached to another order that will result in the death of many of those same "blessed," I will vomit on the spot—on the speaker or the cursed order. Better to say, "May God have mercy on your soul" which is all that's left of some of the "blessed" after the order is executed. Or, better yet, let the divinity-invoking leader say, "May God strike me dead" if my decision harms you or the world in any way. Then let's see how many bone-headed orders are issued, or how many numb-skull leaders are left.

And of course the word gets into our daily conversations and actions. Being in a Muslim country and dependent on many Muslim workers, God—or their word, Allah—is invoked in my hearing hundreds of times a day, from their names (myriad versions of Allah) to their greetings and farewells to their fatalism (which they call faith) as evidenced by the endlessly implored "God willing," when history endlessly indicates that He (or She or It) is so rarely "willing" to fulfill any of our desires or expectations or calls for fundamental fairness and care.

And as if the Muslim "God culture" (read prison) isn't enough to weary one on the matter, everywhere I turn in our company I see or hear or smell or touch references to our chosen deity dozens of times a day. I see it in the collars of the chaplains, see its touch in the sign of the cross made by some before starting a shift, see its imprint left by a worn cross or Star of David on the surgical smocks of certain doctors and nurses as they lean over a patient. And of course God audible everywhere in the whispered prayers of the dying and their caregivers, God touchable in the crosses drawn on the foreheads of those dying (sometimes leaving a faint trail of blood turned near black in death), God smellable in the odor of incense on the priest's clothes, the fragrant scent of the anointing oil of Last Rites, and in the unmistakable odor of C4 explosive on the body parts of the suicide bombers brought in for identification and forensics. And I touch God all the time—in the ubiquitous cross tattoos on the lifeless forearms of so many of my patients, in the blood pulsing out of severed arteries, in the last breath of a life extinguished, or the first breath of a life restored.

God damn you God! Where are you? What's this all about?!

Today they brought in a sergeant. I didn't know him personally, but I'd been hearing about him since arriving. Seems he was a bit of a messiah to his men. He was on his fourth tour. He'd survived three IED explosions, four ambushes, two major assaults, and a sniper's bullet that left a three-inch scar across his temple and into the line of his close-cropped kinky hair (he was African-American). But what made him messianic was not his incredible good luck or divine protection in battle. What made him messianic was his love and healing power for his men. He was said to have staunched a battlefield hemorrhage with his touch, breathed life into three dead men with his breath, given strength and power to broken limbs with a word. All the enlisted men wanted to be in his platoon. All the commanding officers had grown afraid of his power and legend.

Well, his commanding officers can rest easy. This sniper's bullet didn't plow a harmless furrow through his scalp; it punched a ragged hole through his heart. There was no gushing blood—just a tiny hole punched by the armor-piercing bullet as it went through his sometimes-but-not-always bulletproof vest. On the stretcher, he looked as peaceful and composed in death as he had been peace-giving and consoling in life.

As I was marking the time and cause and location of death on his chart, one of his men (a chubby-faced white private from Alabama) burst into the tent, took one look at the deceased sergeant, unleashed an animal moan from the depths of his sizeable gut, and ran back out of the tent. The doc on duty took the clipboard from my hands and gestured in the direction of the grieving private's exit. I took that gesture as an order and headed in the direction of the private in my surgical booties, smock, and latex gloves, not sure exactly where I was going or what I might do when I got there but compelled by my CO and something else, something that must've been—dare I write the word—God.

The private was kneeling in the sand between tents. He'd already torn open his flak vest, his mottled battle fatigues, and his sweat dispersing t-shirt; and he was clawing at the pale and flabby skin of his chest. He'd managed to gouge open the upper layers of the epidermis, even torn some muscle tissue, and looked like he'd reach the breastbone any second. I have little doubt he would've succeeded in his apparent goal to tear out his own heart, though he might've fainted from loss of blood first.

But before he could reach either of those tragic ends, I knelt before him, grabbed his chubby hands, and said, "He's with God now."

The man's arms went slack, but his eyes remained wild. "How do you know?"

And I said what I knew to be true at that moment. "God told me."

But that wasn't enough for him. "Then what should I do?"

I looked at his face, then at his hands covered in his own blood and holding large shreds of his own skin and said, "Live for him."

He considered that order for a minute, apparently contemplating the chain of command that had issued it, then said, "O.K."

Muscle tone and strength returned to his arms. We stood together. I became dizzy and fell into him. He steadied me awkwardly against his bleeding chest till my dizziness cleared and I stepped back.

"Thanks," I said.

He shook his head. "No, thank you."

I shrugged. "Just the messenger."

He nodded then looked at his torn-up chest. "Guess I should go to the infirmary."

"I'll walk with you."

I left him in the care of a young black nurse from another company, apparently just arrived in-country. When she asked the private, "Cause?" I raised my hand to silence him and said, "Field injury," a catch-all category between combat injury and self-inflicted.

Then I left him to his fate, God-determined or otherwise.

March 18

A few days ago, they brought back that baby we'd delivered by C-section from his dead mother. Seems the High-ups saw opportunity in a human-interest piece (i.e. propaganda) on the incident for distribution back in the States—trying to boost flagging public support for the war, show some of the "good" we're doing over here.

Can you blame them? It's the perfect touching tale for a two-minute filler piece at the butt end of the evening's bad news—pregnant woman blown up by a car-bomb (or so the script said), humankind-serving and nationality-blind U. S. Med Corps receive the victim and, after a valiant struggle to save her, commend her to God but deliver a healthy baby boy from her lifeless body, then deliver the boy to his half-smiling, half-grieving father: life delivered from death.

It's a good story, it really is.

But the High-ups gave the project over to a private contractor—some public relations firm in-country with a multi-million dollar mandate to try to improve the public's perception of our efforts over here. Seems like everyone in the civilian command hierarchy—from the President on down—is tired of all the negative stories and videos and pictures being shown on the non-stop news channels. No balance, they say. No fairness or objectivity, they complain. So they brought in this PR firm to help out with the "fairness and objectivity."

And this PR firm did our story up to the hilt—brought in the cake and the balloons and the crape-paper streamers and turned our back-up surgical tent (which we've never used) into a party hall to celebrate the baby's one-month birthday. They brought along the baby's father and grandparents and great-grandparents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, maybe fifty locals total, all shipped into the camp on two armored busses. And they got pictures of me and Dr. J and the rest of our surgical team (including a half-dozen who weren't even in-country when the baby was delivered), all of us fully-attired in our surgical scrubs (but no blood stains), standing in a line with the father holding the baby in the middle and all the relatives looking on with gratitude and wonder.

Well, God bless their efforts. At least we got some cake out of it.

Afterwards, as the crew was packing up their camera equipment and taking down the balloons and streamers, the baby's father approached me and introduced himself (a name I won't divulge, in hopes of protecting him and his family).

"So you were the one who delivered my son?" he asked in surprisingly clear English.

"I helped."

"You were there when they brought her in?"

"Your wife?"

"My wife."

I nodded hesitantly, not sure where he was going with these questions.

"She was conscious?"

"No, not by the time I saw her."

He nodded then looked at the floor. "Did she suffer?"

"She didn't suffer."

He continued to stare at the floor.

I felt compelled to add, "I'm sure she's at peace knowing your son is alive and healthy."

He looked up at me, tears streaking the dark skin of his face. "I can't look at my son without thinking of her."

"One day I hope that will bring you more comfort than sorrow."

He nodded, though his eyes showed little relief from my words. "Thank you for your kindness, and for saving my son." Then he walked back into the mob of locals who may or may not have been his blood relatives.

And I walked through the drawn flaps into the main surgical tent, ready—or maybe not—to become part of the next story to be spawned by this vast human drama called war.

March 10

What's the point of longing to go home—home to what? Oh, sure, I had a life in Lawrence, Kansas—a good job at the university hospital, a decent two-bedroom apartment in a nice part of town, two cats and a zippy red two-door import in the parking lot. I belonged to a jogging club, knew all the trails along the river, took annual splashy vacations ranging from wilderness excursions to oh-so-luxurious spas. You know, a well-trained nurse with no debt and no family obligations can live pretty high-off-the-hog—and believe me, I did.

But I joined the Reserves for a reason. I knew where I would ultimately end up, and that's why I signed up. It was my passive-aggressive way to turn my life on its head. Just sign here, I told myself—two weeks a year training, one weekend a month: no big deal.

Well, yeah, except for that little asterisk that says with as little as twelve hours' notice they can call you to active duty, bundle you up and pack you in a truck or a plane and send you anywhere in the world for as long as they choose (you can forget about that "tour-of-duty limits" crap—not worth the price of the toilet paper it's written on).

And some part of me buried way down thought, "Hot damn, let's go!"

Don't get me wrong. All other parts of me were scared poop-less and still are. I miss my cats Zoe and Chloe (well cared for by a friend—I downloaded their most recent photos just a few minutes ago); I miss my plush bed and down comforter; I even miss that bitchy Nurse Super who was always riding my case. All that stuff was fine. I had a good life back in the States.

Or did I? I mean, here I am, and I didn't come kicking and screaming or tricked by some over-zealous lying sonofabitch recruiter needing to fill a monthly quota (some of the stories I hear about recruiting deceptions make me think we ought to be pointing our guns at the recruiting stations).

No, I'm here because I needed to change my life, needed to kick myself out of the comfort and complacency that seemed to have as its only goal more comfort and complacency. Call it a mid-life crisis—the big Three-oh fast approaching and what lies beyond that threshold?

So I repeat—going home to what?

Let the bombs and the blood shake me up and spit me out. We'll see what's left on the other side. In the meantime, I laugh when I can, cry when I must, love when I choose, and hone my skills. At the very least, I'll make one hell of a trauma-center nurse when I return to Kansas from this Oz.

If I do.

Devon next read Angie's March 6 entry, the account of the Bradford pears and how their blooms marked for Angie the start of spring in her childhood home, the account Josh had read just that morning (though Devon didn't know that) before sliding into his deep unconsciousness. And from there Devon read backward through all the entries to the start of the blog, including Angie's matter-of-fact introduction and statement of intention to the vast anonymous blank of cyberspace.

On completing the blog, Devon leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. Who was this woman, the author of these sometimes cynical, sometimes callous, sometimes oh-so-honest and vulnerable accounts? Could she really be her half-sister? (The very thought of that hyphenated noun made her head spin—did she really have a blood sibling out there? If so, how much, if anything, did they share beyond a few strands of DNA and this dying father?) Was the life-hardened author of this blog the same person as the bubbly fresh-faced teen in the photos on the wall in the room down the hall, her room at the moment? How much of the woman behind these words was still in that room—fingernail clippings under the bed, strands of her hair in the carpet, maybe even a trace of her scent on the pillows? She wished the blog had some photos, recent pictures of Angie in her current environment that might help Devon connect the dots of Angie's past in this house with the nurse in Iraq, and help fill the yawning chasm between her and her half-sister. But no pictures—just words with gleaming edges sharp as razor-wire.

Devon looked up to Josh, the only physical link to the far off and slippery Angie fading in and out of focus. Josh at least was solid flesh, however imperiled it might be. The irony of building her new world around the physical reality of a comatose and dying man, and using this dying man as a link to an even more elusive sibling, was not lost upon Devon. But then that was her present situation, that was the reality Fate or God had dealt her.

She looked again at the laptop, closed Angie's blog and opened the Instant Messenger window. Wake up, Bunkie! she typed and hit send. She prayed Jocelyn would respond. But seconds later, the computer screen flashed the message friend away.

She'd talked to Joce last night, after the initial meeting with Laura. But she'd not had the time or the presence of mind to call her since the dramatic events of the day. Suddenly she felt a desperate need for the consolation and support of her partner. She considered calling her but saw the late hour (it was past eleven) and knew Jocelyn would be asleep and also realized she wouldn't be comfortable talking about her father while seated beside him, even if he was unconscious.

So she typed this short-hand update:

Body O.K. Mind spinning. Heart hurting. Longing to lay my head on your chest, feel your breath in my hair, taste your sweetness on my tongue. Would that you could be here with me—but of course no. As you said—my trial by fire. Little did you know. More tomorrow. Love. D.

She hesitated a moment, then hit send.

She signed off the Internet, shut down her computer, and set the laptop aside. Without the tint of the computer screen's silver-green glow, the bedroom lit by the one low-wattage bulb of the bedside table's lamp seemed a warm, safe, and nurturing cocoon. Far from the threat he'd seemed earlier, Josh's peaceful resting body now seemed a guardian for her, and a companion in this room that had become a world unto itself, a ship sealed and safe against the dangers of the night, the perils out there waiting. Devon's eyes drifted shut and her head rolled to one side against the cushioned back of the chair.

A safe ship travelling it was for Josh also at just that moment locked as he was in this persistent unconsciousness that was not prison but seemed at the moment home.

And within that home as if no time had passed but indeed as if all time had passed and was still passing, he walked with the eternal migration neither tired nor winded and still walking, and watched that migration from the dry hillside above with the other behind.

And now a new layer of understanding, a new layer of distance and removal that was simultaneously more intimate and proximate as Josh saw the migration and his observation of it as a ship floating on the sea of space and time, floating so easily and imperceptibly that he'd not noticed it before, but now discovered he was both shocked and dazzled by the knowledge.

"How could I not have known?" he asked aloud to no one in particular.

"If you had known, what would you have changed?" It was Vicki sitting across from him at the breakfast table, cup of coffee in her hand, morning sun backlighting her in a blaze of fire.

"I would've knelt before you, laid my head in your lap, and never left."

"With the knowledge of the ship of life—"

"Ship of love," Josh interrupted.

"Life is love," she said. "Otherwise, why bother?"

He stared into her eyes across the table. They opened onto the vast darkness of space. He pulled his focus back from that yawning blank and studied her skin. It was fair and soft and perfect—her young skin restored or never gone. "Life is love," he repeated, one more simple fact he should've known but hadn't.

"Dear, dear Josh," Vicki said. "Even now, still longing to return to the womb."

"Is that so bad?"

"Source of all your pain."

"And pleasure," he added.

"And product."

"Angie."

"You need her here."

"What will I say?"

"What she needs to hear. What you need to tell."

"And if she doesn't come?"

"She will."

"Who will call her?"

"The one beside you now."

"Who is she?"

Vicki was gone. The kitchen table and the morning sun were gone. In the valley below the human migration continued. Josh watched, felt the gravel beneath his feet, tasted the dust on his tongue.

Beside him in the chair, Devon slid into a shallow dream of her own. She was lying on a beach in a brilliant summer sun that turned everything white—sand, sky, water: all gradations of shimmering white. She loved the beach and the hot sun on her skin; it was what she most loved to do, the place she most wanted to be. She closed her eyes against the brilliant light and rested in this gift.

But some sound or perhaps lack of sound raised her from her rest and she opened her eyes on the same brilliant white world but felt it had somehow changed. What had been gift and pleasure had become threat and foreboding. Suddenly frightened by the vast brilliance and intensity of white, she tried to rise to flee but couldn't move, was locked in place by a paralysis of unknown origin. She tried to shout for help but no words came out. She started to cry but no tears fell. She closed her eyes and prayed to wake from this nightmare, this prison of light and fire.

Somewhere in the distance arose the sound of Jocelyn's voice. She looked about but couldn't see her in the dazzling light. She struggled mightily to shout out in response, but no words came out. Jocelyn's voice grew fainter by the minute, fainter and fainter then nothing.

So this is it, Devon thought within the dream—left alone to die in this brilliant prison. She surrendered to the inevitability of it.

Then a shadow crossed her shut eyelids. She looked up and saw a figure leaning over her, offering some small relief from the persistent sun. It was a man; but try as she might, she couldn't discern his features in all the brilliance. He was simply a silhouette against the white sky, a cut-out of head and shoulders offering shade at least but no hint of identity.

"Will you stay here and shade me?" she asked.

The figure gave no response, no sign of hearing.

"I can't move and might die in this sun."

Still no answer.

"I thank you for your help."

Just then, the silhouette began to rise straight up into the brilliant background, slowly but steadily drifting away.

"Please, no," Devon whimpered, already surrendered to his departure. "Please don't leave," she said, but in a whisper—knowing he couldn't hear, knowing he wouldn't stop even if he did. "Thank you," she said at the last, maybe aloud or maybe just inside her head.

But throughout and within his fading, Devon just now noticed that she was also rising. She had no sensation of movement, but she saw she was still in the shadow of the now infinitely distant figure and was rising in his track, following at great remove. She rolled her head and looked down on where she'd been. There, imprinted on the white sand, was the outline of her body. And all around it, unbroken by plant or dune or structure, was more white sand, stretching off into the distance. And as she rose farther, she saw where this unbroken sea of sand ended, and where the sea that was the sea began—sparkling water in all directions with the circle of sand that had so recently been her prison at its center.

She turned her head and looked up again and found that the silhouette that'd been so distant was beside her now, no longer a cut-out offering shade but a real person with a real face. It was Josh—his face that of the younger man in the photos with Angie, but unmistakably Josh.

He smiled cautiously and extended a hand. "I don't think we've met."

She looked back at the dot of sand in the sea of blue that had so recently been her home then turned to face her father. "I'm Devon, your daughter."

Josh chuckled at the thought and nodded. "What took you so long?"

Down the hall asleep atop the covers of Angie's bed, Laura was locked in an unfolding nightmare.

She was seated in a simple wooden armless chair in the middle of a room so dark she couldn't see floor or walls or ceiling but knew it was a room by the closeness of the space and the absence of outdoor light or sound.

Reaching out into the blackness, her hand sought some sign of where she was. But she felt nothing within arm's reach above or around her—no walls, no light switch, no window, no person, no object. She didn't dare stand for fear of falling into the chasm she now imagined surrounded her.

But her feet in shoes rested on something solid, so she slowly slid her hands down along her thighs, past her knees, over her shins. She felt her ankles covered with soft socks, her feet in what seemed jogging shoes with padded tops and thick laces. Beneath the shoes, the floor was hard and cold—perhaps tile or concrete. She explored the cool, slick surface far as she could reach with her hands without rising from the seat.

She discovered her fingertips were wet with a tacky liquid the exact same temperature as the floor. She wondered why she hadn't noticed it before. She cast her hands out and found that the liquid surrounded her chair, far as she could reach in all directions. She raised her hand close to her face, rubbed the liquid between her thumb and forefingers, sniffed it. It had only a faint odor, vaguely familiar but not something she could place.

She cautiously extended her tongue, dabbed her finger on its tip. The cool liquid had a slight saltiness, a faint metallic tang, and a deeper earthiness. Her curiosity grew. This was a familiar flavor. Her mind raced through the possibilities. She licked her fingers again.

Then she sat bolt upright, grasped the chair with straining hands, yanked her feet off the floor. The liquid was blood. Though unfamiliar in its coolness and slightly tacky from drying, the taste second time around was definitely that of blood. But from whom or what? And why? She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, pulled herself into as tight a ball as she could manage.

Only then did she notice the dampness leaking from her core. Only then did she know the source of all that blood, cool now and drying.

### Day Five

At the stroke of midnight (the clock in the living room tolled the hour with a tone both distant and forlorn, the peals continuing for what seemed an eternity, as if the former day were reluctant to surrender its life to the new), Laura stood in the doorway to Josh's bedroom. In the warm faint glow of the bedside lamp, the room offered forth a cave of safety and companionship against the dark and threatening loneliness of the rest of the house. Laura shivered once and hugged herself tightly, then entered the room.

From the foot of the bed, she saw both her husband and her daughter peacefully asleep—Josh on his back with the covers pulled to his chest and his hands at his sides atop the covers; Devon slumped slightly to her right seated in the chair, her cheek resting on her loosely clenched fist, her elbow on the armrest. After her hard night (she didn't remember the details of her dream but woke to the cellphone's alarm in deep unease), these two companions in this warm close room seemed all she could've hoped for, the three of them in this bubble of peaceful and secure present devoid of the complexities of the past or the threats of the future. "Thank you," she said aloud but in a whisper—to the night and the room and its two occupants—then added, "Just a few minutes more, please." She stood at the foot of the bed and soaked the peace and reassurance in.

Then she stepped to the side of the bed, barely squeezing between the mattress and Devon in the chair, and leaned over and lightly kissed Josh. His lips were dry but warm, and the whiff she got of his breath was earthy and rich, no hint of staleness or decay. She softly rubbed her cheek against the stubble of his chin and could've sworn he returned her greeting with a gentle pressure of his own. But when she looked up, his eyes were shut and his shallow quiet breathing unaltered. She pressed her mouth to his ear. "We're not done yet," she whispered.

Then she turned in the tight space and looked down on her dozing daughter. The sight of Devon's clean pale scalp in the part of her dark hair produced in Laura a depth of gratitude and wonder she'd never felt before. Imagine that, she thought, this full-grown issue of my body gone for all those years returned now to rest here beneath my gaze—what greater gift could God have offered? Then she realized—gift in return for my sacrifice. But what sacrifice? And offered for how long? She looked up at the dim ceiling and offered the room—her gift room—a wry smile and whispered her second prayer, "You keep the score."

When she looked down, Devon—clear-eyed and full awake, that fast—was looking up at her. "Who's winning?" she asked.

Laura leaned at the waist in a deep bow and kissed her daughter on the crown of her head. "We are," she said. "Way ahead in this round."

Devon nodded. "I'll take your word." Then she looked at her father. "And Josh?"

Laura replied confidently. "Him too."

"How do you know?"

To Laura, Devon's heart-felt question seemed a version of all the sincere questions she might've asked her while growing up, had she the chance. That she'd asked those questions of another woman caused a wince of pain in Laura's heart. She pushed that pain down out of her throat. "Because I know," she said and smiled down at her daughter.

Devon nodded and stood. "I'll try to believe that."

Laura said, "Don't have to take my word on it. He'll tell you himself."

Devon looked down at her unconscious father and doubted Laura's prediction. But she said, "I'll hope you're right." She leaned forward and hugged her mother. She took one step toward the door, then paused, turned suddenly, and bent at the waist and kissed her father. Then she left.

An hour later Devon was drifting off to sleep in Angie's soft bed when her cellphone's surprisingly loud vibration purr jarred her awake. It took her a few seconds to gain her bearings in the dark, to recall where she was and why she was there. She spotted the backlit digital clock on the nightstand—1:12. Beside the clock, with its display screen glowing, her cellphone did a slow twirling dance on the tabletop with each cycle of vibration. She grabbed the phone between rings.

The screen read encrypt where the number for the incoming call would normally appear. She opened the phone's flip cover. "This is Devon."

"Devon who?" a woman's voice asked with startling clarity, as if in the room.

"Devon Atwater."

"Who is Devon Atwater?"

"The person you called at 1:12 in the morning and woke from much needed sleep."

"Sorry for that. I've never quite figured out the time difference. Can I really be seven hours into your future?"

"Where?"

"In Iraq."

Devon sat bolt upright. "To whom am I speaking?"

The woman laughed. "My father'd like you. He never could get me to use the objective pronoun after a preposition." She paused. "At first it was ignorance on my part—I just didn't get the difference. But at some point a line was crossed and it became defiance."

"You're Angie," Devon said, barely a whisper.

"Most people now call me Angela. But I used to be Angie, still am in my own head."

"I'm in your room, Angela Earl. Your pictures are everywhere." Though the room was dark, Devon had no trouble imagining the abundant photos that were everywhere—on the walls, the dresser, the nightstand. In her mind, she imagined vastly more than there were in reality.

"What room? Where?"

"The room you grew up in, in your father's house in North Carolina."

"And just why are you in my childhood room in my father's house at 1:12 in the morning, Devon Atwater?"

"Didn't they tell you?"

"They told me to call this number. That's all."

Devon took a deep breath. "Your father's sick."

"I didn't even know he was alive."

"He is alive but failing fast. He's been unconscious since this morning."

"At the house?"

"Yes—in his bed in his room, not twenty feet from me this minute."

Angie thought—you don't have to tell me the location of my parents' bed in relation to my old room. Then she recalled the last time she'd seen that bed, and who was in it. "Why not at the hospital?"

"He was there but asked to be brought home. He wants to die here."

"And you're his hospice nurse?"

A long silence ensued before Devon finally spoke in slow deliberate words. "Not hospice. Not a nurse. I'm your half-sister, the daughter of your father and his first wife, Laura. Laura came here to care for your father in his last days; and I came to meet Laura and found my father—our father."

Accustomed as she'd become to shocks and surprises, Devon's words nonetheless stunned Angie. She'd known that her father'd been married before but didn't know the woman's name and certainly had never heard about a daughter, a half-sister. In all her childhood years of longing for a sibling, she'd never dreamed that one might exist.

Devon began to wonder if maybe Angie had fainted, or perhaps hung up (she always regretted that cellphones didn't have dial tones for just that reason—never knowing if the one on the other end had hung up). "Angie? Are you O.K.? Are you still there?"

"I'm here, I guess."

Devon laughed. "Me too, I guess."

"Me also," Angie corrected her. "Hasn't my father taught you anything?"

"Our father."

Angie paused to consider that, then said, "You know, I've gotten used to the idea of a sniper's bullet taking me out in an instant, of an I.E.D. blasting the Hummer I'm riding in a hundred feet into the air, or a mortar round annihilating our entire mess tent and everyone in it—but this 'our father' deal may take a little while."

"For us both. I'd only hoped to find my birth mother, never dreamed I'd get to meet my father in the process."

"Find your birth mother?"

"Laura gave me up for adoption at birth. I met her for the first time yesterday—well, two days ago to be exact."

"And now you're caring for him in his last days?"

"We're caring for him—Laura, me, and the home nurse Sherri. And Sherri has access to a whole range of medical resources. Your father is being well cared for, given the situation."

Angie laughed. "Our father."

"Almost as new for me as for you."

"So, Devon Atwater, my new half-sister, what do you propose that I do?"

"Get here quick as you can."

"Setting aside for a moment the daunting logistics of such a decision, why should I try?"

"He needs you here."

"My father hasn't needed me for years, if ever." She knew the last clause was a lie, but said it anyway.

"I think you're wrong."

"How would you know?"

"I don't," Devon said, but then contemplated her statement. "Then again, maybe I do."

Angie waited in silence.

So Devon continued. "Twenty-four hours ago, I didn't know you or my father existed. I certainly have no idea, beyond these photographs of the two of you smiling, the nature of your past relationship. But I well know the emptiness of a lifetime of not knowing my birth parents, of not being with them while I could. That's not an emptiness I'd wish on anyone. Whatever happened between you and your father, you need to try to get here, and soon."

Opposite all the hurt that had flooded back into her heart on recalling the last time she'd seen her father, Angie couldn't help but think of the Hispanic soldier whose hand she'd held yesterday as his eyes went blank and his taut grip slackened. Some loss was irrevocable. "I'll see what I can work out and call you later."

"At a more reasonable hour?" Devon ventured.

Angie laughed. "At a more reasonable hour," then added as she signed off, "Damn this time thing."

Sitting beside Josh in the deepest quiet of that pause in the diurnal cycle too late to be night—the world preparing for rest—and too early to be dawn—the world preparing to rise—alert to that moment caught between ending and starting, Laura finally began the journal she'd intended when she bought the 6 x 9 book-keepers pad in the airport shop on the way here.

April 28, 3:37 AM

"Bedsitter people sit back and lament,

Another day's useless energy spent."

Don't ask me why I remember that line from the poem that concludes the Moody Blues' album/song "Nights in White Satin." Talk about useless energy spent!

But now serving as one of those bedsitter people for the first time in my life, I'll do my best to keep from falling prey to the lost moments of wasted time. And since I left my knitting needles in California (wouldn't have allowed them on the plane, anyway), I'll try keeping this journal (another first) as an attempt to keep myself productive.

But one might reasonably ask what I am now asking myself—productive to what end? Do I expect anyone to ever read this journal? No. Do I expect that I will one day wish to read it and visit again these moments? Again, no. As powerful as these days with Josh and now Devon have been (and, I assume, will be—no lessening of the emotional volume in what's to come), I can't imagine ever wanting to revisit this time or these notes in the future. I recall when the movie Saving Private Ryan was released with its vivid scenes of the landing on Omaha Beach, an interviewer asked a veteran of that landing if the movie accurately depicted the reality of that battle, and this old man stared at the camera and calmly replied, "Yes, but who'd choose to remember that?"

And who'd choose to remember this? Not that it's been all bad—far from it. Much, maybe most, of the experience thus far has been good, maybe even life-altering, certainly soul-redeeming. But the heart just gets so full it aches. I can't imagine wanting to recall that ache, or that there would ever be a time when the ache would be diminished enough for the redemption to shine through.

But maybe therein lies the reason why I'm writing, and hoping to continue to write, this journal—not for others or for posterity or for future reflection but simply to try to ease the ache, to hope that somehow someway in the physical act of writing the words and documenting these events, I might lessen the weight pressing me down.

Or maybe not. As I said, I've never done this before. But it's worth a try, and I might as well do something with this pretty notepad.

So it's the middle of the night and I'm sitting beside my ex-husband who looks to be sleeping peacefully but is really in a condition the doctor calls "unresponsive unconscious"—something short of a coma but pretty darned close. We've split into eight-hour shifts to be sure someone is with him at all times—in case he wakes, or things turn worse. I've got the overnight shift, Sherri the home nurse has the day shift, Devon has the evening shift.

Of Devon, my newfound Devon, what can I say? I gave her away when she was four days old, freely released her to a world known more for cruelty (especially toward children) than kindness, let her go without hope or expectation of ever seeing her again. Then, through no effort on my part, my daughter I'd surrendered to the world all those years ago sought me out and contacted me and I met her for the first time (as an adult) just two days ago.

And now, without my intending (what of any of this has been my intending?!), she's been thrust into the center of caring for her dying birth father, who still doesn't know she exists. Devon, I'm sorry; Devon, I'm sorry.

Not sorry you found me. Oh, no, not sorry for that. How can I be? You are a wonderful woman—smart, sensitive, kind. You have your father's beautiful eyes and quick intellect. And you clearly have the morals and grace and self-possession of a fine upbringing by your real parents, whom I one day hope to meet and thank.

I'm tempted to insert here, in a self-deprecating vein, that I see none of myself in you. It's true that I see nothing of myself in your face or bearing. Leave it to Josh's DNA to shape all your features (and lucky for you, I might add, however much I'd like to see at least a fingernail's worth of me in you). But in all honesty, I must admit to seeing a hint of my grit in you. In me, this grit is generally the result of the lack of good alternatives—when all else fails, I put my head down and plow forward or through or into whatever life has waiting for me. But in you, at least on early observation in heavy emotional weather, this doggedness seems but one of many options you have at ready summoning.

What a beautiful person with just a tiny bit of my making (and nine months of carrying). What a gift for me, out of nowhere.

Or maybe not out of nowhere. Devon began the process of seeking me before Josh reached out to me through the social worker. But it was only after I picked up my life and came across country to care for him that I felt entitled and ready to respond to that communication. I couldn't have put these words to it then, but I think my initial hesitation to respond was tied to the fact that I'd never told Josh of her existence. For all these years, I'd somehow justified keeping my secret by telling myself that our daughter existed for me no more than she existed for Josh—an unfulfilled chance for us both.

Unfulfilled, that is, until she contacted me. So what was I to do with that? Well, Josh solved that dilemma by calling me to his side and giving me the opportunity to confess my secret—which I did, aloud and in his hearing, though I don't know if he heard; or, if so, at what level.

No matter—I told you the best I could Josh, as early as I could manage. I told you, Josh, and now she's here and now she'll share the weight of your dying even as you share the weight, light as a feather, of her existence.

One big happy family.

Laura looked up at Josh and sighed, then shivered the length of her body. She set the notebook and pen on the nightstand, stood, peeled back a triangle of covers without uncovering any part of Josh's body, and slid into bed beside her ex-husband. She noted his pale warmth that'd slightly raised the temperature of the sheets. She also felt the catheter tube running down between the sheets. She lay on her side facing away from Josh, toward the chair, and reached out and switched off the light. She pushed her butt gently against his bony pelvis, all the touch she could bear right now.

The phone's vibrating purr jerked Devon from a deep sleep. The room was softly lit by early morning light filtered by thin clouds. She sat up in Angie's bed, instantly and fully awake. She grabbed the phone expecting to see the code for Angie's number but instead saw a single letter lit on the screen—"J." She flipped open the phone. "Hey, Bunkie."

"Sweety, I woke you," Jocelyn said.

"It is"—Devon checked the clock on the nightstand—"6:42 AM."

"Since when do you sleep in?"

"It was a long night."

"Baby, I called soon as I signed on and saw your e-mail. Sounds bad. Tell me about it. Do I need to come up there? Do you need to get back here? What can I do? How can I help?"

"Slow down, J. You're wearing me out and I've only been up for"—she checked the clock—"two minutes."

"Sorry, Sweety; it's just that your message scared me. Being away from you scares me bad enough."

"For you or for me?"

"Us both, darling; but you're the one in uncharted territory."

Devon nodded. "You can say that again."

"So what's up? What's changed?"

"I met my birth mom."

"Yes—Laura. You told me the other night that went O.K."

"Well, yesterday, I got my birth dad thrown in for good measure."

"That's a good thing, right. I mean, he's not a convict or a terrorist or something, is he?"

"Nothing so dramatic. He's unconscious and dying and I've kind of been put on a team to help with his care."

"'Been put?' You could've declined, right?"

Devon hadn't even considered that. "I don't know. I suppose I could've walked away. But then what would I have had? It would've been worse than nothing."

"I suppose. How sick is he?"

"Sick. Some blood disorder or infection spread throughout his whole body. They've already amputated one leg—just a matter of time before he loses the whole battle."

"And he's in a coma?"

"Yes, sort of. The nurse says he has brain activity. They don't really know what's going on, just that he's really sick and could die at any moment."

"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry."

"Me too, I guess. You know, I've thought all my life about the day I'd meet my mother but never once about meeting my father. I'd convinced myself that my father must've abandoned my mother before I was born, that that was the only possible explanation why my mother would've given me up. So I never thought about meeting my father, didn't think it could ever happen, even when asking Laura for my father's DNA. I figured she'd just say it was impossible and that would be the end of it."

"And now you've been asked to watch him die."

"Yes."

"Be careful what you wish for."

"I didn't wish for this."

"I know. Do you think he'll wake?"

"Who knows? Laura said he will, but I think she was just trying to convince herself."

"Do you want him to?"

Devon contemplated that central question head-on for the first time. "On first impulse, absolutely—I want him to know I exist, I want my face to register on his eyes, I want to meet him."

"Only to lose him."

"That's the downside. I'd be meeting him—"

"Only to lose him," Jocelyn repeated.

"Again."

"You never had him to lose before now."

"I guess not. But now that I'm here and have a face to put with the idea of a father, it starts to feel like I've had him all along, like he was there all the time and I just had to find him, or he just had to find me."

"What are you talking about, Dev? He didn't find you, and you didn't find him. You just stumbled on him, by accident."

"I know. I know. But here I am in his house, surrounded by pictures of him as a younger man, lying in his grown daughter's bed, waiting—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute—he has another daughter?"

"Yes."

"You have a half-sister?"

"Yes. A nurse serving in Iraq."

"Holy shit."

"A version of my thoughts exactly."

"Any other siblings?"

"None that I know of; but after these last two days, who's to say?"

"What about this other daughter, this half-sister?"

"I spoke to her last night—actually, early this morning—and am waiting to hear if she can come here, and if she wants to."

"Sounds like more drama."

"No 'sounds like' about it."

"Guess not, and you in the middle of it all."

"It's O.K., Jocelyn."

"Doesn't sound O.K."

"No, it really is."

"Your e-mail didn't sound O.K."

"That was last night, after a long day and feeling lonely at the end of my night watch by his bed. I feel better now."

"Should I come up there?"

"Not yet. Let me see how this all shakes out, then maybe."

"You're sure you're all right?"

"I'm sure now. Talking to you has helped a lot. You're my rock, J."

"That's my middle name—Rock of Gibraltar."

"Rock of Devon."

"That too."

"Then rock on."

Josh unconscious was again in the midst of the vast human migration only this time without the offer of a loftier perspective. He was now in the middle of the crowd that spread outward from him in every direction, people of every size and age and race and attire—infants cradled in their mothers' arms, their fathers alongside, their brothers, sisters, old men helped along by young arms, by teens, by children each side, young adults, middle-aged, older, school children, adolescents, black-skinned, olive-skinned, honey-colored, weather-beaten, pale: all moving in one direction across the dry and barren land, the haze of dust raised by those who passed before settling over the crowd, clogging the eyes, ears, noses, mouths of those passing now, exhaled back to the sky, descending on those following, all moving, moving, moving one direction: forward.

Through a valley now, then up a hill, down a slope, up another.

And Josh walking with the hoard on two strong legs carrying him forward, no assistance needed, though he couldn't feel his legs beneath him, couldn't feel them moving, only felt his whole body carried forward in the crowd. From in their midst he was only able to see a little ways in each direction but he could see that they were all moving together, all on the same path.

And moving in silence. How could so many move so far and make no sound? The question drifted across his consciousness then was gone. He puzzled over the question no more than he wondered how his legs could carry him forward even though he didn't feel them, no more than he wondered where they were going or when they'd arrive, no more than he questioned perspective from above once granted, perspective denied. It was enough to be moving with them all and moving in the same direction.

Then, partway up another rise in the terrain, a rise that might end in an instant or continue indefinitely, from ahead a sound that first arrived so faint that he wondered if it were a sound at all or simply the purr of blood strumming through the veins beside his eardrums. Then the sound, real sound, rolling resolutely over the multitude, a whisper rising to a rustle, rising, rising, rising, rising in volume to a rumble, rising to a roar, a roar like a gale in the face though there was no wind, a roar that lifted them up and moved them forward but into the sound not away, a roar of arrival, a shout of victory.

Josh reached the crest of the rise. Before him, far as he could see—straight ahead, to the left, to the right—the land sloped gently down to the sea. And the crowd surged forward, down the slope, to the water. Some played in the shallows, splashed one another, kicked up a spray. Others fell to their knees, their foreheads in the sand, and wept. And from everywhere and in all directions, the shout—pushing out to the sea, up to the sky, beyond.

Josh opened his eyes on the dawn, spring dawn—something in the angle of light, its color, told of the season. Time to plant, he thought—hand to trowel, trowel to earth, seed to soil, then over to you, Creator one: all over to You.

He silently rolled his head and his gaze away from the spring dawn and discovered the back of Laura's head, her gray-flecked auburn hair just inches from his face. He was not surprised by the sight. It seemed to him a perfectly logical, a perfectly natural proximity—like that spring dawn, something he'd known long as he could remember but had discovered just now, again.

He inhaled deeply the scent of his ex-wife—the oils of her hair, the fragrance of her shampoo, the earthiness of her skin, the pungency of her body. Time to plant, he thought—hand to trowel, trowel to earth, seed to soil, then over to you, Creator one.

He rolled to his side toward her, his free arm extended over her shoulder, his hand found the hollow between her neck and shoulder, gently massaged that spot, felt the slow rise and fall of her breast, felt the beating of her heart, the pulse of blood in her veins. He rolled his torso toward her, tried to raise his leg to rest atop hers but couldn't move his leg, was balked, stopped short of his intention. He waited for pain but none arose, only numbness from his waist down. So he waited. Time would sort this all out.

Laura carefully rolled onto her back and turned her face toward Josh. Her broad smile more than compensated for his blocked intentions. "Welcome back."

"I never left."

She shook her head. "You went somewhere."

"Faraway?"

"You tell me."

"I don't remember. Doesn't seem like far."

"Maybe not. Maybe just a little excursion."

"Like a walk in the Public Garden on a warm spring day."

Laura smiled at the memory. "The swan boats out for the first run of the season, all fresh scrubbed and brilliant white."

"School kids squealing along the shore."

"Lovers paused on the bridge for a kiss."

Josh leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. "I remember that part."

"Long time ago," Laura said but without sadness or loss.

"Just yesterday."

"Yes."

Josh brushed away her one tear and gently cradled her cheek. This was the same skin as then, no matter the wrinkles, the same eyes, the same heart beating under his hand. He was deeply grateful for that continuity, that unsought gift.

"Josh, you've been unconscious for over eighteen hours. Nobody could wake you. We didn't know if you would wake again."

Josh contemplated that summary then said, "Here now."

"Stay for a while?"

"Hope to."

Laura started to sit up but Josh gently held her down. "Stay."

She laughed. "If we keep this up, you'll have to make an honest woman out of me." She settled back into his loose embrace, nestled her head up under his stubbled chin.

Josh thought about her words. "No more honest soul on the planet."

Laura suddenly remembered Devon, not twenty feet away down the hall.

Josh felt her tense under his hand and said, "O.K. I'll marry you. Bring on the preacher."

Laura carefully slid out of the bed, straightened her pajamas, pushed back her hair, rubbed her eyes once, and sat in the chair facing the startled but clearly awake Josh. The soft dawn light bathed the entire room in a delicate, almost ethereal glow, tinged in the green of new foliage just unfurled, paused here between the memory of death and the promise of new life. Laura swallowed hard then began. "Josh, remember when I went to Paris?"

"How could I forget—maybe the biggest mistake of my life."

Laura pressed on. "I didn't know it then but soon thereafter discovered I was pregnant." She paused and looked up.

Josh appeared confused.

"You were the father—no other possibility. I carried the baby to term and gave birth in a convent in Mississippi. Four days later, they took the baby away for adoption."

"Was it a girl or a boy?"

"A girl."

"I wish you'd told me."

"I'm telling you now."

"Late."

Laura nodded. "I know, Josh. I'm sorry—more sorry than I can ever say."

"Late."

"But not too late, Josh. This baby, our daughter, is a grown woman now. She contacted me out of the blue shortly before I came here. I responded. She called back. And she came, Josh—came to me, came to us. She's down the hall right now, sleeping in the spare room."

"In Angie's room?"

"In Angie's room, yes. I hope you don't mind. I needed to put her somewhere."

Josh stared at the ceiling. In the dawn light, it seemed very far away, infinitely distant. Dizziness washed over him but then passed on. He looked back toward Laura. She was the one clearly defined object in the room—seated in the chair, sharply outlined, solid. And she was anxiously watching him. "What's her name?"

"Devon. Devon Atwater."

"I'd like to meet her, once she wakes."

Laura nodded. "O.K." She stood and began to straighten the room in anticipation of Sherri's imminent arrival, then paused in her actions, quickly bent over and kissed Josh softly on the forehead. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

"For forgiving me."

He considered that for a moment then said, "Nothing to forgive."

Laura nodded another thanks. "Welcome back."

"Never left."

The warm water jetting from the showerhead and coursing over her skin confirmed for Devon that she was fully awake, in the midst of taking a shower in her half-sister's former bath in her birth father's house in central North Carolina on a bright April morning. A few minutes earlier, Laura had tapped lightly on the bedroom door, opened it part way, stuck her head through the crack, and said, "Josh is conscious again. He looks forward to meeting you whenever you're ready." Then she was gone.

Devon had remained in bed for some minutes, wondering if what she'd seen and heard was real or imagined, the product of waking or sleeping. Finally convinced Laura's brief appearance was real (Devon remembered vividly one pale foot holding the door open while Laura spoke—who would've dreamt a pale foot?), Devon nonetheless moved through her waking routines in a half-daze—rising from bed, peeing, and brushing her teeth without quite registering the actions fully on her consciousness.

It was only now, with the water stimulating her scalp and her shoulders, that her mind began to shake off the fog of sleep, the disorientation of unfamiliar spaces, and the shocking revelations of the previous twenty-four hours. It was really happening—no dream, no turning back or pausing the forward march of events.

She thought of Stevie. He was in her third-grade class, a loud tall black boy given to pulling her braids and ordering her around like she was his slave. And most times she'd obey his commands, though usually with an exclamation of protest or a shriek of exasperation. The irony of their relationship—a black boy ordering around a white girl in a southern public school—never dawned on her; but what did slowly develop inside was a childhood crush, her first, on this boisterous boy. She figured one day they'd get married. She'd dress up in her bedroom with a sheet for a gown and a veil made from a sheer linen napkin and pretend to walk down the aisle toward the altar that was her desk where Stevie waited. She even asked her mom for a black Ken doll to replace Barbie's white mate; and when her parents failed to produce the substitute, she turned Ken's white face black with her crayons. Then the infatuation was brought to an abrupt end when Stevie moved away to live with his grandmother in New York City.

Through this memory of Stevie, Devon's hands found their unfailing way over her breasts, her stomach, across her waist, down over her inner thighs. Her fingers gently parted the lips of her sex, rubbed her soap-coated hand back and forth, back and forth. She leaned against the wall under the showerhead and let all the water strike her breasts and stomach and cascade in thick rivulets down over her sex. The orgasm rose so suddenly that it caused her knees to buckle and her lungs to release a massive but near silent moan. Her back slid downward against the tile wall in a slow-motion collapse till she sat on the tiled floor, warm water striking her head and her face in huge drops from high above, a blessed summer rain, the morning's second sparkling gift.

Angie sat on the sand with her head against the huge hard rubber tire of one armored personnel carrier staring at the mottled beige-yellow-brown paint of another personnel carrier parked less than three feet away. The U.S. Army was extremely proficient at providing for the bodily needs of its soldiers. There were plenty of toilets, each with an ample supply of the raspy toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and tampon dispensers. The mess tent had adequate seating even during the breakfast rush and food that was hot and nutritionally balanced if bland. They provided shower stalls with hot water that usually worked and soap and shampoo dispensers (if you didn't mind your skin and your hair getting so dried out it began to flake away—she carried her own moisturizing soap and body-enhancing shampoo ordered from the States on Amazon). The cots and the sheets and the blankets they provided were clean and warm at least, if less than cushy and soft. They had an exercise tent with treadmills and barbells; and a recreation tent with Wi-Fi, video games, DVD players, and even a small paperback library-exchange. They even acknowledged the body's need for sexual release, providing x-rated videos for play on those DVD players and even winking at the official ban on sexual congress by offering condoms to the men (and women) and birth-control pills to the women not interested in depending on condoms.

But the one bodily need they didn't provide for was solitude—and it was definitely a bodily need, for Angie at least. When lacking, she craved it like a nutritional deficiency, her body craving it like a sailor longing for the vitamin C of citrus, a desert traveler yearning for salt. She'd been in-country less than a week when she began to notice the first signs of solitude-deprivation—irritability, clouded thinking, hand tremors, fatigue, even dizziness. But everything about base regimen and security protocols worked against providing for solitude—a soldier's whereabouts in a hostile environment needed to be known 24/7, otherwise that soldier was vulnerable to kidnapping or worse. And every square foot of the base needed to be mapped and monitored to prevent intrusion or ambush.

So after a few weeks of solitude deprivation, Angie took matters into her own hands to survey every square foot of the inner base (nobody except recon went into the outer perimeter) to find the most private spot available to her. And, excepting the odiferous toilet stalls that provided cramped privacy at a steep price, the most private spot on the whole base was right here amidst the heavy armor parked lead-reinforced bumper to lead-reinforced bumper. Ironically, this spot was near the geographical center of the base, where most of the equipment was stored for monitoring and security. And it was here where Angie came when she needed to hide, when she needed a few minutes or longer to restock that essential nutrient the Army had neglected to supply, or was incapable of acknowledging let alone granting. Sitting against this one tire, facing another tire and its surrounding wall of mottled steel, Angie was not visible to any guard tower or camera or heat sensor or drone (which never flew over the center of the base). And if there was a security satellite parked twenty thousand miles up watching her sitting between these armored personnel carriers—well then, God bless the geek sitting at his monitor back at Langley spoiling her solitude: she'd done her best.

She sat there breathing in solitude in long draughts like oxygen to a mountain climber, needing aloneness today more than in a long time. It'd been a quiet day, quieter than in weeks—no sirens wailing or helos whirring overhead or ambulances honking their horns. They'd tended to one mechanic who'd broken his leg when a Humvee slipped out of its hoist; other than that, the trauma unit was empty. Normally, Angie cherished these quiet days—for rest or reading or writing in her blog. But today, in the wake of the news from the woman who said she was her half-sister, Angie wished she had the distraction of her job. Lacking that, she'd sought out the solitude of the armor depot.

She recalled thinking of her father for the first time in—what? years surely—just a few days before, and couldn't help wondering if that'd been some sort of premonition. But she'd thought of him in conjunction with her mom, not alone in his deathbed, certainly not tended by a sibling she hadn't known she had.

But premonition or not, she searched her heart to discern what it meant to know her father was dying now. What did that mean to her, for whom her father'd been essentially dead for well over a decade? Could she, should she, make him alive again, only to watch him die again? And how much did she want to get to know this woman who claimed to be her half-sister, and the woman who was her father's wife before her mom? How could all this be happening now, and why? Part of her wanted it all to go away, wished she'd been told who she was calling and why before making that phone call earlier this morning. This part of her knew that she could make it all go away simply by asking her CO to inform her half-sister that Lieutenant Earl could not be released from active deployment at this time. Angie looked up at the slice of Middle Eastern sky visible directly above, the dazzling blue just now turned to shimmering silver as the sun rose above the near carrier's gun turret. She closed her eyes and let the sun's brilliance claim her whole body, her whole being.

Devon found Laura seated at the breakfast table reading the morning paper with a plate of toast and a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. She looked up from the paper, her eyes lively and alert as if she'd just risen from a good night's sleep rather than a long night sitting beside Josh's bed. "An official good morning," she said as Devon entered the kitchen.

"Official?"

"My earlier greeting at the door to your bedroom caught you half-asleep. I'm sorry. I was excited about Josh's return to consciousness and needed to share the good news with somebody."

"And that he wanted to see me, wants to see me?"

"Very definitely."

"How'd you tell him?"

"Once I was sure he was awake and clear-headed, I just told him. Couldn't think of any gentler way, not after all these years, not with so little time."

"And how'd he respond?"

"It's always hard to tell with Josh, even without all these meds. He masks his emotions well. But my best guess is he was shocked for about ten seconds then began to be pleased. I'm sure it's all a bit of a blur. It's not every day you wake to discover you have a grown daughter."

"Or a real father."

Laura nodded. "Surprises for everyone."

"How's he doing?"

Laura shrugged. "He woke like normal, no sign of any problems from the protracted unconsciousness. Sherri says all his vitals are good. Doctor Joe's supposed to come by later this morning."

"And what does Josh say?"

"Says he feels fine, given everything—no new pain or weakness. He doesn't like the catheter, but Sherri thinks he should leave it in for now—in case he lapses back into never-never land. She's taken the other monitors off. It's no big deal to hook them back up if we have to."

"Does he have any memory of what happened?"

"Not a thing—says he was reading Angie's blog one moment, woke beside me the next. Said he thinks he had some interesting dreams, but can't remember those either."

"Not a whole lot to go on."

"Sherri says this is not unusual in these situations. His body is confronting a lot of unprecedented stresses. The body acts in weird ways when placed under those kinds of demands."

"So we don't know what will come next?"

Laura looked up at her—Devon still hadn't sat—and nodded. "Why don't you sit down? I'll get you something to eat."

"I'd like to see him now, if that's O.K.?"

Laura nodded. "Sure." She rose from her seat and they walked together to Josh's room.

The voice came out of the dazzling sun. "Found you."

Angie squinted into the brilliance. "What if I didn't want to be found?"

The sun's light, which seemed to spin off its own almost audible roar, amply filled the long pause that followed. Then the voice said, "That's not always your choice." Doctor J sat opposite her against the tire of the neighboring carrier.

Though his face was no longer consumed by the sun's fire, it was now almost equally hidden in shadow, her eyes still blinded by the sun. She kept her gaze pointed skyward, not ready to be released from the sun's enrapturing hold. "You're either prescient or have access to my newest secrets."

"Can I be both?"

"Sure—what the hell. I could use a guardian with all the answers."

"At your service."

Angie lowered her gaze and gave her eyes a minute to adjust to the dimness surrounding Jacob. Lingering flashes of red and gold and silver streaked across her retina, reinforcing the illusion that Jacob was a divine guardian come to her aid amidst much Heavenly fanfare. It was, after all, in a desert not far from this locale that such divine intrusions occurred on a regular basis not so long ago, at least in geological time (let alone divine time, or lack thereof).

But then the visual bedazzling passed and it was just Doctor J sitting opposite her in the shade. "How much do you know?"

"Jackson told me that you'd been contacted by your family and told that your father was dying." Jackson was the sergeant in charge of all state-side communications.

"Did he tell you I have a sister?"

"I thought you were an only child?"

"A half-sister, from my father's first marriage."

"Did you know about her?"

"Not a clue. I don't think my father knew either, or else he would've told me during one of those hundreds of fits I pitched about having no brothers or sisters."

"Or maybe there was some reason he didn't want to tell you."

"Could be. In any case, my newly revealed half-sister Devon is tending my dying father along with her mother, my father's first wife, Laura."

"Sounds complicated."

"Probably sounds more complicated than it is. Dying is dying, whoever is in attendance."

"You?"

"I don't know, Jacob. If I'd received the call six months ago, I doubt I would've gone across town, let alone a third of the way around the globe, to be with my dying father. But now it seems to matter more. What do you think?"

"I think you just answered your question."

She looked up and grinned across the divide of light and shade. "If that's the best my divine guardian has to offer, I want my money back."

"Didn't you read the fine print—no refunds."

She slid her butt on the sand till she was seated beside him in the shade. "Can I take it out in trade?" Her hand found its way into his lap.

"I'll have to ask my boss."

She rubbed her hand back and forth over his army fatigues. "Don't take too long to find out."

"My boss just answered. He said yes."

"Good."

Laura tapped lightly on Josh's slightly ajar door then quietly entered the room followed by Devon. Sherri glanced up from her word puzzles, nodded, marked the page she was on, and set the book of puzzles on the nightstand. After she stood to leave, she said, "He's all bathed, from the waist up anyway—I'll remove the catheter and bath him down there later— and shaved and in clean duds. He says he's not hungry—probably the residual effects of the IV making him feel full. Maybe we'll try some soft food later, if the doc thinks it's O.K."

"No lobster tails drenched in butter?" Josh said from behind her.

Sherri faced him and winked. "Maybe tonight, if you're really good." Then she turned and walked past the women. "Holler if you need me," she said and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

In her wake, Josh said, "Bring my dancing shoes when you come back." He was sitting up against the headboard, two pillows supporting his head and neck. True to Sherri's claim, his hair had been washed and dried and neatly combed, his face was clean-shaven and had good color, and the fresh pale-blue pajama top still showed ironing creases. Devon wondered who had ironed his pajamas as she looked over Laura's shoulder.

Laura walked to the bedside, bent at the waist, and kissed his clean forehead. He smelled like baby powder. "Good morning again."

"And again and again and again and again, far as the eye can see," Josh replied.

Laura nodded. "We can hope."

"Oh, we know," Josh said. "It's the one thing we can know for sure." He smiled like a schoolboy who just answered the teacher's toughest question.

"Yes," Laura agreed. "We know that much." She turned to Devon. "Josh, I'd like to introduce you to your daughter—." She hesitated. "Our daughter." Her voice wavered. She looked down, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear. "This is all so new," she said to Devon. She again faced Josh and said simply, "Devon Atwater," then stepped aside.

Devon approached the bed with considerable trepidation. The room in daylight with a conscious Josh appeared totally unfamiliar, as did the man watching her approach with the eyes of a hawk—a fiercely independent hawk. Part of her saw him as a friendless man spiffed up by charitable strangers for a last hurrah before the inevitable. Another part of her saw him quite simply as God, resting confident and almighty on his throne, waiting to pass judgment on her. The one thing she didn't see him as was father. Her father was back in Louisiana, probably preparing for nine holes of golf with his retiree buddies, oblivious to the current plight of his adopted daughter. She suddenly felt guilt pangs at the thought of her father who'd provided her unfaltering love and care for thirty-six years and counting. Her legs struck the side of the bed.

"Devon, I'm Josh." He smiled broadly and extended his right hand.

She accepted his hand. It was warm, his grip firm. "I'm Devon. I believe I'm your daughter."

Josh nodded. "So I'm told."

They both looked to Laura, standing near the foot of the bed.

"Don't look at me. I just carried her for nine months."

They could all three laugh at that.

Josh released Devon's hand. "Would you please sit and talk a spell?"

Devon smiled. "I think my schedule will allow that." She sat in the chair beside the bed.

Laura stepped forward. "Can I get either of you anything?"

"Box of Kleenex," Devon said with a grin, her eyes dry.

"Used them all myself," Laura said, but then nodded toward the open box behind the light on the nightstand.

Devon grabbed one of the tissues and waved it like a flag of victory, or of surrender. "Just in case."

Laura looked to Josh.

"I'm all set," he said. "Sherri took care of all my needs."

"Then I'll leave you two to talk, long as you want. Just remember that neither one of you has had breakfast—don't need two hypoglycemic souls to care for."

The two said simultaneously, "Yes, Mom," then giggled at the coincidence.

Laura touched Devon's shoulder. Her hand lingered there for some seconds. She suddenly wanted to bend over and kiss Devon's temples and eyelids and the crown of her head, wanted to kiss her and hug her and hold her tight, thirty-six years' worth. Her legs almost buckled under the weight of the longing, the burden of her loss. Devon felt her mother's hand press against her shoulder and lean against that support. Then the spasm passed and Laura stood of her own strength, on her own adequate legs. "I'll go mix some blueberry muffins. They'll be ready in forty-five minutes."

"Sounds great," Devon said as Laura left the room and pulled the door shut behind her, the latch making a sharp click. Devon stared at the door.

From behind her, Josh said, "Don't worry, she didn't lock us in."

Devon turned toward him, confronted her features in his face, gazed into that time-warp mirror fast-forwarded by more than two decades of wear at the hands of time and illness and more than a touch of regret. Maybe just now she could help reverse the regret part, if not the aging of time and illness. "I was thinking of locking the world out."

"That's a thought. We could try."

"Let's."

A long silence ensued—of awkwardness or new intimacy or both. Sharing the trait of watchfulness—perhaps of genetic origin or maybe just coincidental—neither felt the need to rush into the blur of emotion or disclosure.

Josh finally said, "I wonder which of us is more surprised by this meeting."

"Well, I sort of met you yesterday. I spent all of last evening in this chair beside you."

"I'd like to think I felt your presence. Maybe at some level, I did. What was it like sitting there?"

"Kind of awkward. I didn't know whether to think of you as alive or dead." She immediately regretted the words. "Sorry. That didn't come out right."

"No need to apologize. I confront that dilemma every minute. Hell, half of me is dead; the rest soon to follow." He frowned. "Sorry, that didn't come out right either."

Devon laughed. "Guess we started down the wrong path."

"The path we're on; the one we've been given."

"But you need to know—you're very much alive and I'm very glad to be here with you, to be able to talk with you. Whatever ambivalence I felt last night is gone now that you're awake."

"In the spirit of published corrections, you need to know that I feel no self-pity. I'm not totally at peace with the situation, but what unease I have is more curiosity and questions than anger or regret. Fifty-eight is young to die these days, but lots of folks have died younger. I'll just keep seeking answers till the end, and maybe beyond the end—if questions are allowed."

"Am I a question or an answer?"

"Most definitely both—a totally undeserved, unmerited, unexpected, grace-filled answer to decades of loss and error; at the same time, a looming question of how to respond to this wonderful gift, how to thank you and Laura and God, what to give back, if I have anything worthwhile to give." He paused to consider that then shrugged. "What about me for you—question or answer?"

Devon stared calmly at him. "I don't usually think in those terms."

Josh smiled. "Sorry. I guess it's the academic in me."

"But it's an interesting viewpoint. I'd say you're all question—endless questions. I never expected to meet my biological father, so I never thought about what it might mean. I guess it's time to start thinking about what it means."

"Or not mean."

"True. Revelation works in both directions, doesn't it?"

"For the legions that are taken up, even greater numbers are sent down."

Devon looked confused.

"An allusion to the Book of Revelation—the news, the understandings, are not always friendly or kind."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Me too. Tell me a little about yourself, Devon Atwater."

And Devon did, the Reader's Digest version anyway. She told how she'd been raised in rural Louisiana by kind and generous parents—her father a tractor salesman and her mother a teacher's aide once she was old enough to go to school; how her curiosity and will to learn had earned her a decent education despite the limits of the public schools she attended, and a scholarship to attend Louisiana State University; how she'd met the love of her life in her freshman roommate at LSU—a young black woman named Jocelyn Oates—and followed Jocelyn to Austin, Texas where Jocelyn earned a degree in public policy while she took a job as an EMS dispatcher for the City of Austin and had since worked her way up to supervisor while Joce got a job in the city's Planning Department. And now they wanted to start a family, a goal that set them on a quest to trace Devon's genetic origins. She ended her brief history of Devon with this observation—"Though it all started as a clinical search, I've discovered that DNA is a whole lot less important than the people that are carrying it."

"Did you ever doubt that?"

"Not so much doubted as hid from it. Much as I wanted to know my birth mother—and, maybe somewhere deep down, my biological father—I could've never initiated the search if I'd fully contemplated the potential revelations."

"So you needed a nudge?"

"More like a big old shove from Jocelyn."

"Whatever works."

"Whatever works."

"And now that you're here, what do you think?"

"Ask me in about ten years," Devon said then winced at her words.

Josh never missed a beat. "I'll do that. Just be sure you're listening."

"I will be," she said, no pause or doubt, then added, "What about you—what do you think?"

"I drove away the daughter I knew I had, then one I didn't know about showed up. I drove away the wife I knew I had, then one I didn't deserve returned to tend me. I can only conclude the universe is loving despite all my efforts to deny or undo that love." He had not planned those words, not even known they existed inside his heart until they came out.

Devon said, "I tried to reach Angie."

Josh looked up quickly.

"Laura asked me to."

"And?"

"You know she's serving in Iraq?"

"Yes. Laura showed me her website. I read some of her journal."

"Me too. I contacted the Defense Department. I'm waiting to hear back." Devon thought to herself—that's the first time I've lied to either of my birth parents. She quickly forgave herself on the grounds of trying to protect her father if Angie said no.

The anticipation in Josh's eyes and shoulders slumped slightly. "She probably won't come. She may not even reply."

"Why?"

"I betrayed her and her mother. I didn't mean to. I certainly didn't mean to hurt Angie. But I did, and she hasn't spoken to me since."

"How long ago was that?"

"More than ten years. Vicki, Angie's mom, died about five years ago. Angie didn't want me there—either for Vicki's last days or for the funeral. I didn't even hear about it till later."

"And no word since?"

Josh shook his head.

"Do you want to see her?"

"Very definitely, if she wants to see me."

"Then I'll hope for that, and do my best to make it happen."

"I'd have not thought it possible, but you might just pull it off."

"Somebody planted determination in me."

"Don't look at me. Laura's got the corner on that market."

"Then I'll thank her for that."

"For us both."

The offer of scratch-made blueberry muffins was uncharacteristically impulsive of Laura. She hadn't made blueberry muffins in years—hell, in decades. She didn't know if she could remember the recipe. She had no idea if Josh's kitchen had all the ingredients. Add to all that the possibility that Devon didn't like blueberries or muffins and the likelihood that Josh wouldn't be allowed to eat them and you have the makings of a truly lame-brained promise.

But opposite the impulsiveness were several genuine concerns. For one thing, Devon had not had any breakfast. If Laura had skipped breakfast like that, she'd be shaking by now and in danger of fainting. Further, Laura wanted to serve these two freshly found loved ones; but she didn't know exactly how. Baked goodies had seemed a potentially rewarding—and at worst, harmless—channel for those energies. Finally, she desperately wanted to be there in the room with them—a kind of fly on the wall to watch their exchange unfold, see where she fit in—yet knew she couldn't stay. Her promise of muffins ready at a specific time served as a reminder of her presence, and an implicit time limit to their exchange.

But none of those legitimate needs made Laura feel very good as she rooted through Josh's cupboards for the muffin ingredients—flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. In fact, it all made her feel downright awful, vulnerable and exposed to a degree unprecedented in her adult life. Even when she'd been carrying Brie—that is, Devon—at least she knew her future: carry the child, birth the child, surrender the child, get on with your life. However ignoble or selfish or cowardly those actions, at least they were a plan, at least they were a future. Today, at just this moment, she had no clue. Worse, she didn't even know what she wanted, or where to find it. Hell, she couldn't even find the god-damned baking powder. She slammed the cupboard door, sat heavily in one of the breakfast table chairs, and buried her face in trembling hands. I'm the one needing sugar, she thought briefly, as if that might solve it all. She pushed her face, her very soul, on deeper into the darkness that enshrouded her.

Then out of that darkness arose not a light exactly but more a glow, a glimmer that grew steadily, steadily to embrace her gently, an embrace like two of the gentlest, kindest, loving arms—over her shoulders, across her chest, cradling her head: two perfect loving arms bearing her whole being, guaranteed never to fail. So tangible was this embrace that Laura wondered briefly if Sherri'd silently entered the kitchen and come around behind her. Yet she wouldn't open her eyes, refused to break the spell.

"I wondered when you'd come home." It was Amy, the childhood playmate her parents had always called imaginary but she'd insisted was real, at least in the ways that mattered to her at the time—a voice and touch and consolation and companionship. They'd not talked in forever. Laura'd all but come around to her parents' long-ago assessment, insofar as she'd thought about Amy at all.

But Amy's voice was insistent. "You never bothered to write or call or even wing a thought my way. But, you know, that's O.K. I've grown used to that. I was never far away. The table was always set for your return."

"With tea?" Laura whispered.

"And scones and clotted cream."

"Just the two of us."

"For now. But I've been thinking—maybe we should set a few more places."

"How many?"

"Maybe two, to start. We'll see."

"Why?"

Amy sighed. "Laura my Laura, always the loner, always the self-sustainer. It isn't enough, never was."

"I've got you."

Amy laughed. "Nice of you to remember." Then she grew serious. "You'll always have me. But that's not enough, Laura. You've got so much more to give. And the others have so much they need to give you."

"Which others?"

"Set the places—they'll sit at them."

"Set them how?"

"Come on, Laura. You know—fork left, knife and spoon right, napkin in the middle, saucer and cup at the tip of the knife."

"What to serve?"

"What you'd planned all along."

"You'll help me?"

"Of course."

"How shall we begin?"

"Get the baking powder from behind the box of brown sugar. The rest will follow."

Laura lowered her hands and opened her eyes. The kitchen was empty and still with warm spring sun streaming in the east-facing windows. The blueberry-muffin recipe she'd helped her mother mix countless times rose easily in her memory. And she found all the ingredients in Josh's well-stocked kitchen, including frozen blueberries in a plastic bag buried deep in the freezer. She set herself to the task at hand, the task she'd assigned herself or been given.

On her way from Josh's room to the kitchen, Devon paused in the hallway and turned her phone back on. The screen alerted her to a waiting message which she quickly accessed.

"This is Angela Earl. I'll be returning stateside soon as possible, whenever they can find me a spot on a transport. Hang in there. Thank you."

Devon saved the message, flipped the phone shut, and breathed a sigh of relief on Josh's behalf. But no sooner had she breathed that sigh than a knot of anxiety began to form in her stomach at the prospect of meeting her half-sister, one more family member she'd not known she possessed. She took the last few steps into the kitchen.

Laura looked round from gazing out the window. "Two cardinals have a nest in that camellia bush."

Devon walked over to look.

"Just there." Laura pointed to a bush not five feet beyond the glass. As if on cue, a bright red cardinal appeared out of the leaves and flew off into the tree line at the edge of the lawn. "I think they've hatched. Either that, or he's bringing food to the female while she sets."

Devon laughed. "Who says chivalry is dead?"

"Probably food for the chicks."

"Probably."

"Speaking of food, the muffins will be ready in"—she checked the timer—"three minutes."

"Good. I'm suddenly starving."

"And Josh?"

"He seemed fine. Sherri's with him now."

"How'd it go?"

"Oh, just your average everyday meet your gravely ill father for the first time at the age of thirty-six kind of encounter."

"That bad, huh?"

Devon laughed. "No, that good. It went fine. He seems a kind and gentle man. In a different life, it would've been nice to know him sooner."

"He would've cherished you."

"I want to believe that," Devon said. "But how do you know?"

The oven timer dinged at just that moment. Both women jumped at the sound.

Laura turned to the oven and used two potholders to remove the pan full of golden brown, perfectly shaped muffins. She set the pan on a cooling rack on the counter beside the oven then put the potholders back in their drawer.

Devon watched her mother, waiting for her to finish her task. When Laura finally turned, Devon said, "The muffins look beautiful and smell great. I wouldn't have guessed you were a baker."

"I'm not, anymore. This is a throw-back to a long, long time ago."

Devon nodded toward the muffins. "Looks like you haven't lost your touch."

"We'll give them a few minutes to cool."

"I can wait."

"And for an answer to your previous question?" Laura asked.

"Preferably not another thirty-six years."

"Don't worry about that. I doubt I'll last that long."

"Then how about now?"

Laura nodded. "Please sit, dear." She pulled out a chair from the table. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Coffee'd be great. It's the fuel I run on at work."

Laura poured her a cup and brought it on a mismatched saucer. She brought milk in a small pottery pitcher, sugar in a shallow bowl, and a teaspoon for stirring. She then carefully pried three muffins out of the pan and set them on a bread plate and placed the plate in front of Devon. "Be careful. They're still hot."

Devon said, "You must think I have the appetite of a field hand."

"Don't you—after the night and the morning you've had?"

Devon thought about that. "I just might." She stirred a little milk into her coffee then slowly sipped it. "Ahh, awake at last."

"From this long dream."

"Which the dream, which the reality?"

Laura shrugged. "All a blur to me."

"You think it'll ever come in focus again?"

"If an infant has one weak eye, they cover the good one."

"And the blurry one learns to focus," Devon finished.

Laura shrugged. "We can hope." She sat opposite Devon. She twirled her empty cup slowly on the table and stared at it as if it might hold the answers to all her questions, or at least sort out the current pain and uncertainty. "Josh was the ultimate romantic. If he'd got one look at you, newborn and helpless and cute as a button, he would have grabbed hold of you and never let go, defending you against all dangers, known and unknown."

"But the world would've won, worn him down?"

"No, I don't think so. Josh's supply of romantic delusion was bottomless back then, at least far as I could tell. The world might've tried to wear him down, but the world had met few rivals as determined as Josh."

"Then why didn't you let him have me?"

"Early on, I thought it might be spite—that if I wasn't strong enough to raise you, I didn't want him to have the chance. He certainly would've accused me of that, had he known. But once I was fully clear of his deeply rooted influence, I realized that I didn't want to put you—or, for that matter, Josh—through what he and I had paid such a high price to learn."

Devon looked confused.

"The world doesn't break Josh, never has. It's the object of his obsession that gets worn down and ultimately rebels. Sooner or later, that would've happened to you. It would've been hard on you; it might've killed Josh."

"So you spared us both?"

"That's what I came to think, when I thought about it at all—which wasn't often, for obvious reasons."

"Then I suppose I should thank you."

"Not for that, Devon."

"Then for these incredible muffins!" She had just finished her second and was taking the paper wrapper off the third.

"Those thanks I'll accept with joy."

"Good." She nibbled on the still warm muffin. "Oh, Angie's coming, left a message this morning."

"You talked to her?"

"Late last night, then she left a follow-up message when I was in with Josh and had my phone off."

"When will she arrive?"

"She doesn't know—something about waiting for space on a transport plane. But she's coming."

"Good."

"You think we should tell Josh?"

"Why not?"

"What if she changes her mind? I just don't want him hurt."

Laura smiled. "I hope I'm lucky enough to have you guarding me when I'm old."

"Don't worry. I will."

"Promise?"

Devon raised her eyes from finishing off the final muffin and gazed straight at her new-found mother. "Of course."

The two women sat in the spreading light and growing warmth of the inexorable spring morning.

Angie pulled out a paperback she kept handy for just such slow spells—Madame Bovary this time, her third reading of the novel. She sat beside an unconscious soldier on a gurney waiting for an evac chopper. He'd slipped while disembarking from a personnel carrier during a raid and his ankle got crushed as the ramp started to close. They'd immobilized his lower leg, pumped him full of morphine and antibiotics, and prepped him for transfer to Germany for possible reconstruction or amputation. Now all he needed was a chopper to carry him to the airport for the flight to Ramstein, but the choppers were all dispatched to a bombing site north of Baghdad. So Angie waited with the injured soldier in the quiet hospital tent, reading Madame Bovary.

"She was doomed from the start," he said.

Angie jumped at the words. The soldier was staring at her, clear-eyed and clearly awake. "Who was doomed?"

"Emma Bovary. She expected too much."

"Of whom? Charles? Rodolphe?"

"Of life. It's a dangerous thing."

Angie was now more confused than startled. "What's dangerous—life?"

"Expectations."

"Better to have none?"

"Yes."

"But what of hopes? What of dreams?"

"'Smoke before wind' at best, a terminal cancer at worst. Emma had the worst kind."

Angie lowered her book and studied her calm patient. She was amazed he was conscious, let alone coherent. She quickly checked his IV drips—they were all open and flowing. "Are you all right?"

"My ankle's been better."

"I mean pain. Are you in pain?"

"Been through worse."

"Can I get you anything?"

"I'm fine for now. Just don't leave."

"We're waiting for evac. I'm not going anywhere till they arrive."

"Good." The soldier closed his eyes.

Angie studied his face. He couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty—he still had an adolescent softness to his cheeks and chin. He might one day grow into handsomeness, if his face could negotiate the transition to adulthood. She took a towel from the gurney and gently wiped a drop of sweat from his left temple.

He opened his eyes at the touch of the towel and nodded thanks. "This morning I still expected to be an Olympic skier." He spoke the words with a clinical detachment.

"Still could be."

He offered her a beautiful smile, the brightest thing in the room at that moment. "Thanks for saying so, but you and I know that Olympic skiing is not in my future anymore. Thing is, I now realize it was never a realistic expectation. But it took God to put the hammer down on that expectation this morning."

"God?"

"How else do you explain this?" He nodded toward his leg elevated on pillows under the sheet.

"An accident."

"Not this time. God needed to shake me free of futile expectation."

"To what end?"

"Well, I guess that's the fun part—now I need to figure that out."

"And just how do you do that?"

"Pick up the pieces you're given, put them together best you can."

"When'd you get so smart?"

"This morning around 11:20 Baghdad time."

"Steep price to pay."

"Cheap, compared to years or decades chasing phantom dreams."

Angie gazed at his face that'd seemed to age under her watch.

"Then again," he added, "might just be these high-dollar drugs you're pumping into me." He again flashed that incredible smile.

"Never worked like this on anyone else."

"First time for everything." He closed his eyes and leaned back into the pillow. "Please don't leave."

Angie said, "I won't."

He slid his left hand out from under the sheet and to the edge of the gurney, just beneath the lowest side rail. She reached out and accepted his grasp, a mutual gift.

"Don't talk about the first thing that pops up," Josh joked as Sherri began his sponge bath by focusing on his groin region. She'd finally removed that uncomfortable catheter and was taking full advantage of this renewed access to his penis and scrotum. She scrubbed gently but firmly with her sponge dipped in warm, soapy water. Drops of water leaked out of the sponge and trickled down over his inner thighs and testicles and anus to the thick towel she'd doubled up under his butt.

"I'll give it a workout, if you wish," Sherri countered. "Probably could use the exercise."

"No 'if you wish' about it," Josh said. "That soldier marches to the beat of his own drummer."

Sherri nodded. "So I've observed."

As if on cue, Josh's half-tumescent penis flexed once and rolled to one side, then didn't move again. Sherri sponged the spot it had vacated then continued her bathing gently down over his thighs and hips, every few seconds pausing to dip the sponge in the basin and squeezing out the excess water before continuing her scrubbing.

Josh closed his eyes and seamlessly set his mind to drift on the prevailing breezes of semi-consciousness. Not surprisingly, those breezes carried his mind to the hands of all the women that had massaged his nakedness—whether in love or lust or a desperate need only they knew—over the course of his life. It wasn't a particularly long list, at least for a man of his generation and socio-cultural background—perhaps twenty or so women in all, though he'd never tried to establish an exact tally. Some of the massages had been of the one-night-stand variety—little more (or less) than furious gropes and probes and releases in bar-room toilet stalls, house-party guestrooms, motel beds. Their fleeting images produced both the warmth of wonder (how could my body need anything that powerfully?) and the burn of shame (how profligate the act, its blatant ignorance of cost). But the images of these girls and women—some whose faces he couldn't recall but whose touch and smell remained fresh in memory's light—faded as quickly as they'd arisen.

His mind settled on the protracted and more complex exchanges he'd shared with three women, exchanges where love had superseded lust in the actions of shared touch, where the stimulation of certain nerve endings was routed through the convoluted and ill-understood circuitry of trust, commitment, and responsibility. How could something as seemingly simple as contiguous flesh evolve into something as complex, as rewarding and risky, as love? What transformation happened there between touch and love's tangle? Could someone, anyone document the instant of transition—as the millisecond when the sperm cell's persistent bumping of the egg cell's resistant membrane finally and ultimately results in the breach of that membrane and the consequent conception of a totally new entity. Was touch transformed to love like that—an instant's change? Josh could smile at the apt metaphor. He wondered if it were original or if he'd encountered it in some long forgotten poem or story.

But his mind quickly drifted past such idle speculation and settled on the hands and faces and hearts of the three sexual partners he'd truly loved—Laura, Vicki, and his partner in adultery, Joan. And as much as he would've wished to focus on the nearby Laura (and the product of their love, the nearby Devon) or the wronged and dearly departed Vicki (and the living product of their love, the long absent and longed for Angie), Josh could at that moment only picture Joan.

She had, for him at least, an effervescence that was simply intoxicating—place her in a room with him, and all his senses became instantly more acute: the light grew brighter, sounds clearer, taste and smell heightened, and touch, oh, touch! If she were sitting across from him at a desk, his fingertips on the wood of the desktop knew every twist of grain, every finish-filled pore. Set her next to him at a dining table, and his fingers knew every swirl of filigree on the stainless, every drop of condensation on the water glass, every weave of linen on the tablecloth. His life in her presence became a new life—or, perhaps more accurately, became again the old life of his earliest childhood memories, when every sensation was unprecedented, every moment and action sparklingly intense.

Poor Joan—caught up in a vortex not of her own making (but of his?), swirled around and around and around, dazzling dance, dancing dervish, then dropped. She didn't deserve any of it. She'd loved Angie first, completely and without reservation, gladly becoming the big sister Angie'd longed for. Then she'd loved Vicki—half daughter, half confidant: she'd given Vicki something she'd needed and lacked for years. And finally, almost as an afterthought, she'd loved him. As was her way, she'd led with her heart and let her body follow with no apparent thought to cost or consequences. He'd seen that vulnerability, knew its risks, was too weak to resist.

It seemed a well-worn tragic tale, all unfolding as prescribed down through the ages. All that was left was to place blame, and its place of residence had been clear and irrefutable since the moment of discovery—an instant of the undoing of love at least as explosive and irreversible as the doing of love in its transformation from simple touch: the withdrawal of sperm cell from egg, repair of the breach in the membrane, total rejection now of the sperm cell's hapless tamping, the cell's gradual slowing, shriveling, dying.

So why, in the wake of that life-changing loss, could Josh taste Joan's breath in his mouth just now, feel the textured brush of her tongue against his slick gums, sense the trickle of her saliva trickling down his throat? Where was the loss in the face of such powerful life? Where was the tragedy in the face of such persistent love?

Those questions faded fast as they'd surfaced. It was enough to taste Joan in his mouth, smell her in his nostrils, feel the pulse of her life through his core. It was answer enough.

Devon sat beside her unconscious—again—father. Both Sherri and Doctor Joe thought this episode more or less normal resting unconscious and not something more ominous, though they both acknowledged that they (and, more to the point, Josh's body) were dealing with a lot of unknowns—unknown synergies and side-effects of powerful medications, unknown imbalances within Josh's body (the bloodwork they'd sent out yesterday still hadn't come back), and, most dangerous, the possibility of an unknown infection within one or more major organ systems. So while hardly reassuring, Devon thanked them for their honesty and attempt at full disclosure and chose to trust their combined best intuition and assumed that Josh was sleeping peacefully and comfortably behind his closed eyelids.

After a beautiful spring morning, the sky had steadily clouded over and now in the late afternoon storm clouds threatened beyond the broad bedroom window. The room grew suddenly dim, unnaturally dark for the hour of the day, and gusts of wind pushed clouds of pine pollen in a yellow haze past the window as thunder rumbled in the distance. The weather conditions quickly eroded Devon's thin confidence in the doctor's guarded assessment of Josh's condition and a small but persistent sense of foreboding took root in the pit of her stomach.

She stood and leaned over Josh, putting the side of her face less than an inch above his mouth and nose. She felt his breath brush her cheek and heard his slow but easy inhalation and exhalation. While conscious, Josh had asked Sherri to remove the monitor's sensors and leads—they were annoying and making him feel like he was in a hospital. But now Devon wished they'd left them connected—there was a certain comfort to be found in the steady patterned scroll of those colored lines on the monitor, a reassurance that he was alive despite his unresponsive body. Instead, the monitor's screen was a blank gray, dark as the day. Reassurance would have to be found elsewhere, if it were to be found.

Devon sat back in the chair, opened her laptop, and began a long e-mail to Jocelyn:

Bunkie, why aren't you here?

Sorry, Dearest, I just had to say the words. I know why you're not here and that you'd be here on the next flight if I asked. It's just that I'm feeling lonely and blue sitting here beside Josh's bed while he's asleep—at least we hope he's asleep and not something worse. The doctor and nurse seem to think it's normal resting, but who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

Josh woke up earlier today—YAY! I actually got to meet and talk with my birth father! Funny thing is, it was like we'd known each other forever. It wasn't awkward or emotional or confusing—just two people talking, more like old friends than father and daughter. That was a good thing, since I don't think I could've handled the father-daughter dynamic. I mean, I already have a father, right? How can someone have two fathers? I mean, I know lots of people have a father and a step-father and manage just fine, but I'm not ready for two fathers. So we just talked and I told him a little about myself and I told him all about you and our life in Austin and how we want to have a baby. He didn't flinch a bit when I told him about you, just took it in stride (well, in bed flat on his back) and smiled and nodded. He seemed especially interested in our plans to have a baby and told me to take all the blood I needed for DNA testing.

So he was glad to meet me, and I was glad to meet him.

But now he's unconscious and there's a storm brewing outside and it makes me fear the worst. Just nerves, I guess.

We always want more, don't we? I wanted to meet my birth mom. Once I met her, I wanted to get to know her better. Once I got to know her better, I wanted to see my birth father. Once I got to see him, I wanted to talk to him. Once I got to talk to him, now I want to talk to him some more. I want him to live. I want him to get out of the bed and walk with me through his woods or in a park. I want him to bounce his grandson on his knee, see that he has his eyes, that funny lopsided grin.

Odd how a quest to begin a life should put me beside a bed where a life is ending. It makes me all the more certain that I want to have a child, and that the baby should be from my egg, with my DNA. Josh may never know the baby but I'll know him and see Josh in him every day.

Why should I care so much about this, Bunkie? But I do. Two days ago, I didn't know Josh existed; now I'd move heaven and earth to perpetuate his legacy. If Josh's doctor could take me down the hall and plant that fertilized embryo with Josh's DNA in my uterus right this minute, I'd do it. I'd do it.

You're O.K. with that, aren't you? I know it was always you pushing to have a kid and me dragging my feet and dreaming up all sorts of excuses. But now I want it, Bunkie, want it for all sorts of reasons I didn't know existed before but now that I know them they seem all that matters.

I know that these feelings may pass or certainly fade some. I know that Marty-shrink will have plenty to say about it and lots of questions and advice. I'm O.K. with that. We need that input. But I'm going to have this baby.

Is that O.K., Dearest? You'll still love me, right? With a new mother and a new father and a new need to have a baby with their DNA that is my DNA—you're O.K. with that, right? It's all O.K., right? I need you to tell me these new developments won't make you stop loving me.

It's all still me. Just more.

Dev

Devon paused just a fraction of a second, then hit send, then looked up at the sleeping Josh. The tears she'd shed a few minutes earlier had dried on the back of her hands. She felt a surprising new resolve, the resolve of guardianship. It was strength enough to endure the violent storm that broke outside the window, and the shafts of tentative late sunlight that extended themselves like golden fingers in the storm's sudden wind-whipped aftermath.

For Josh it was like falling through a cloud of white feathers—that soft and slow and blinding. One minute he was tasting Joan in his mouth, feeling her clutch of his revived penis; the next minute he was descending through this infinitely gentle, intimately proximate world of white, a white so bright with diffuse homogenized brilliant light that it should've been blinding but wasn't, a light so powerful in its diffusion that Josh wondered if its source would be bearable, should he ever find it.

But neither searching nor intention was available to him now. Gravity still worked, as he was falling downward, but gravity scaled back, like maybe the gravity on the moon (vividly recalled through the film of the Apollo astronauts bounding like slow-motion fluffy sheep across the lunarscape)—muted, more humane gravity. And breathing seemed to work also—his released exhalations and slow inhalations the only sound, no hint of panic from the falling, no sign of fear at the close press of brilliant white.

Then Josh knew that this was a script written by someone else, something else, a script in which he was both willing participant and coerced conscript, where he went along willingly in a proceeding that would've claimed him, volunteer or not. Josh saw it too as an age-old, eons-old proceeding in a place and a process that knew no time—no ages, or eons, or epochs; no future, no past: just one permanent blur of blinding white.

And this slow deliberate descent. It'd been going on long enough now (in a place that knew no time) that Josh began to wonder if it would ever end; and if so, where and when. Still, he had no fear; his breaths still came and went with the sleeping ease of a baby in the crib, the warm sunlight on his feathery blonde hair, delicate pink skin stretched over bones so new and supple they flexed like rubber, dimpled at the touch like dough. That was where he'd known this white before—there in the crib, all newness and wonder in waking and rest. And there the voice had spoken to him out of the white, the same voice that spoke to him now, with the same questions, the same answers:

"So what do you think?"

"Of what?" Josh asked, simultaneously petulant and passive.

"Of all this?"

At just that moment the white parted and complete blackness ensued; then, in an instant in a place that knew no time, the universe was created in a tiny brilliant flash far away in the blackness and then unfolded its full cosmological history in a dazzling parade of spinning galaxies, gooey nebulae, nascent stars, coalescing solar systems, plodding planets, comets streaking, all beginnings, all endings—the fullness of time compressed into an instant, the massiveness of the universe constrained to a flash, all in a word: this.

"Gift," Josh said, then and now.

"Love," the voice said.

"Is there a difference?"

The white returned, though without the descent. Sleep ensued, then and now.

### Day Six

Laura sat beside Josh. The clock on the nightstand read 2:12—that would be AM: clear cold night outside the window, the quarter-moon's silver glow hinting at the late frost's steady approach. Inside, the room was generously warm. Sherri'd recommended turning up the thermostat to help warm Josh as his metabolism had slowed dramatically and his blood pressure was very low. In this seemingly casual suggestion, Laura had noted in Sherri the shadow of deeper concern—her words too carefully chosen, the skin around her eyes tightening into the briefest of winces.

The patient for his part seemed to be resting comfortably, on his back with the covers tight to his chin, his hands and arms outside the covers at his side. They'd honored his request and not reconnected the sensors. The monitor and its stand had been rolled off to a corner of the room and stood there in the dim light like a one-eyed judge surveying the proceedings. Without the anchoring tethers of the sensors' leads, Josh's body appeared marooned on the bed's island—lost at sea and utterly alone.

Which of course he was, Laura thought—totally alone from here on out. Whatever her caring ministrations—her words and love and actions, even her warm body pushed up against his cooler parts (a gift she'd not venture tonight, out of respect for him, the others in the house, and most especially herself)—the balance of Josh's journey was requisitely solitary, at least in regards to worldly companions or supplies. Laura thought about that long-ago Chinese emperor with his thousands of terracotta soldiers to accompany him in his final walk, the Egyptian pharaohs with their servants and pets and abundant provisions—all just as alone as Josh now: no marathoner's training for this, no trumpet's call of reinforcements, no siren's wail of civil preparedness.

But what about her preparedness—to witness, to say good-bye (after only so recently saying hello for the first time in decades). Well, no prohibition on supplies for her. She had this comfortable chair, this nightstand's light, this can of diet cola (the full-caffeine kind, with plenty more in the fridge). She'd stay awake this whole night—least she could do: for Devon, for herself, even if it mattered naught for the lone-travelling Josh.

Laura took a long swallow from the can, set it carefully on the pottery coaster on the nightstand, took up her pen and pad, and began to write.

It was the day after we first had sex. I wish I could use the euphemism "made love" to refer to that auspicious event, but there was no love there in the back of your mom's car in that awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes painful groping then probing then sweaty panting release by you into my undefended vagina—well, let's call it what it was: my unprotected, pristinely vulnerable womb (a flagrant risk we both were aware of before we started, as we commenced, while we continued, and when you climaxed, and in the heart-slowing seconds after you finished that turned into a heart-stopping anxious wait through the ensuing minutes, hours, days, and weeks till the onset of my long-delayed period—no doubt delayed by the probing of your penis and the stress of our wait—finally granted us a reprieve).

But the day after that forgettable unforgettable event, in the full-blown gale of the chance we'd taken and its potential consequences (pregnant at sixteen!) and in the midst of a late fall blizzard, you decided to go hunting and left me alone in your bedroom in your family's empty house (all other occupants off doing chores of one sort or another) to stew in the juices of my full-boiling fears.

And I was far into those fears, weighing the challenges of getting an abortion without my parents' knowledge against the challenges of carrying a baby while keeping up with my homework, when I heard the pop-pop of two gunshots through the muffling effects of the storm and the thick walls of the house.

I went to the window that overlooked the side yard that led to the fields that led to the swamp that led to the river. The snow had slackened some and I could just make out the river flowing slate gray in the approaching dusk. In the middle distance, where the clean mowed hayfields now a flat sheet of six inches of luminous snow merged into the marsh-grass hummocks of the swamp, I could barely see a lone figure standing still amidst the storm. Your shotgun, which had surely been the source of those two quick shots, was again on your shoulder. In the whole panorama, nothing was moving except the swirling snow and the barely perceptible southward flow of the river.

My eyes locked on your figure and waited for you to move. The seconds stretched into minutes and still you didn't budge. I began to wonder if you were an apparition borne of the storm and my stress, or maybe a sapling that had grown up on that spot since I'd last had cause to look, a sapling that my eyes and heart had made into you out of need and hope.

Then finally you moved, so slowly and deliberately that I wondered if it was my mind making you move, desiring you to move. But no—it was real movement, amidst the snow and the gathering dark. I could see you raise one leg slowly, set it on a hummock, then raise the other leg and step carefully to the next. And in that moment I began to sense everything you sensed—your deliberate strides carefully from one hummock to the next, not wanting to fall into the dark uncertain water and muck between those dry mounds; the gun on your shoulder, the barrels damp with melting snow; the near-numb fingers of your right hand gripping the slick cold wood of the gun's stock, brushing the frozen trigger guard. I felt you sigh at the discovery of the dead pheasant in the shallow water between two clumps of grass, felt you take a deep breath as you bent and grabbed the bird, its flesh still warm beneath damp cold feathers, and placed it in your game pouch.

When I stepped back from the window, your room was startlingly dark. But I didn't turn on the light, didn't need to or want to. I sat down on your bed in the heaviness of the early dark and knew just then the lightness—both brilliance and freedom from weight—of true love. Whatever had happened or did happen inside my womb—embryo lodged or egg flushed away—we would find a way onward and together.

I didn't think of it then in so many words. In fact I've never put words to the moment at all till just now, and in so doing wonder if mere words—these or others—could come close to capturing that moment's full import or ramifications. I mean, how can one ever capture the flash of the creation of permanent love?

Permanent despite lengthy separation and estrangement—indeed, permanent because it outlasted such gaps and wanderings and mistakes and absences, with one more separation to come.

Oh Josh, my Josh, emerge again from the gray shadows at any time of your choosing or Heaven's choosing or God's, come home to me with the double pop of gunshots or lonely trumpet's mourn in the distance or the whisper of flake fall through dimming day, but come home to me! Don't leave me to the ravages of aloneness or the enticing fallacy of self-sufficiency. Don't ever leave me again.

How could we have drifted so far apart then? How can we be ripped apart now? The answer both times—we weren't, we aren't, we won't be.

I pray.

Laura set her pen down and closed the pad. She looked across Josh to the window beyond. The moon had set and taken with it the night's silver glow. Yawning voracious dark poured into the room, trailed by the twinkle of stars, even that light already dead—millions of years gone. She leaned back in the chair and exhaled slowly, understanding for the first time the full embracing peace of resignation.

The eastern horizon offered forth the first tentative glimmer of the dawn to come as Angie turned the rental car into the gravel drive. She'd been out ahead of that dawn all night long, leaving Baghdad after dark (though who would've known in the glare of that military facility's artificial day) and flying across the dark invisible Mediterranean and darker still Atlantic to land at another island of artificial light amidst the darkened former sea of the North Carolina coastal plain.

In the gradual curving rise of the drive, she noted the lower limbs of the trees extending like skeletal arms into the reach of the headlights. The sight of those branches slightly unsettled her, and she realized it'd been months since she'd last seen trees so close at hand. "What other surprises does this long night hold?" she whispered aloud as she let the car roll to a stop behind the other cars parked in the drive.

She well recognized the dark silhouette of the house etched against the slightly textured dark of the trees behind. This was her clearest and most intimate memory of the outside of the house, a memory stored on her return from a late-night high school party, out past her curfew and dropped off at the end of the drive by a half-drunk senior boy. She'd stood outside the house then, studying its every dim line in the dark, wondering if her parents were up, wondering how heavily they'd punish her for the tardiness. The same two lights were on then as now—the one, clearly visible, in the kitchen over the sink; and a fainter glow leaking down the hallway and into the living room from a light in her parents' bedroom. Her parents had let her off easy that time. Her dad was the only one awake, reading in bed; and as she'd tried to slip past their doorway undetected, he'd said softly but firmly, "Call next time." She'd paused long enough in her skulking entrance to whisper back, "I promise," before continuing to her room. It was only later, lying in her bed, that she wondered if her dad had heard her vow, wondered if she should go back and apologize directly for her tardiness and assure him that it would never happen again. But she hadn't done so, had eventually drifted off to sleep. And she was never late again, at least not to his curfew, as it was less than two months later that they parted forever.

Well, till now. She opened the car door and stepped out into the chill night. The temperature and humidity was surprisingly similar to the night air she'd left in Baghdad—cold and dry—but the smell and feel of the air was dramatically different, close and safe and fecund. It was only here that she realized just how sterile, how stripped bare of life, the Iraqi desert was, realized the spiritual cost of breathing in that sterility twenty-four hours a day. It was a condition she'd accepted all too readily.

She retrieved her duffel from the backseat and closed the door. With the dome light out, new dark ensued but Angie didn't feel threatened. The lights in the house were adequate beacon; and off to the east, beyond the row of tall pines, dawn steadily approached. She walked across the parking area, down the steps to the front walk. She was in her Army fatigues and standard-issue boots. The attire was comfortable enough, and she'd grown used to it these past three months, but it felt awkward and out-of-place in this North Carolina setting. She wished she'd taken time to change back at the Air Station but too late now. She shortened her stride in an attempt to quiet her noisy footsteps.

At the bottom of the steps up to the landing beside the kitchen door, she set her duffel down and reached up under the band to the deck. She hoped it was still too early for copperheads to be active, and she recalled the shiny black spider with the red hourglass on its thorax she'd brought cupped in her hands to her mother as a Mayday present when she was six. Benign nature had left her unharmed then; she could risk trust in it again now. She counted the joists with her fingers—one, two, three—then reached up to the top of the fourth. Sure enough, there it was—the door key hanging on its nail all these years later. It felt cool and smooth—no rust evident to the touch—as she lifted it off the nail.

She unlocked the deadbolt, opened the door, and stepped silently into the dimly lit kitchen. The room felt warm as an incubator after the brittle outdoors; the air was moist and close. Her nurse's training made her wonder if fear or anxiety had caused her adrenal gland to secrete adrenaline into her bloodstream, raising her heart rate and blood pressure, and in turn causing her to feel hot and sweaty. But a secondary analysis of her body's vitals assured her that her pulse and pressure were normal, her breathing calm. It was the room, not her, that was very warm, warm and humid after the chill dark.

She set her duffel to the side under the coat hooks then turned to head down the darkened hallway toward the faint light emanating from the bedroom. Halfway there, in the darkest spot between the kitchen and the bedroom light, just in front of the coat closet that had been converted into storage for board games and athletic gear, her physiology did have a reaction to her heightened emotional state, only the opposite of the one she'd contemplated moments earlier—her blood pressure plummeted, her heart rate slowed, and her skin was suddenly cold and clammy. She felt light-headed and would've hit the floor with a thud if her hand hadn't reached out and found the closet door's knob to steady her.

Using the knob as a crutch and tether, she slowly lowered herself to the floor then leaned against the wall, raised her knees to her chest, and lowered her head between her knees so that it was below the level of her heart. She closed her eyes and waited for the blood to return to her brain.

"It'll be O.K." a voice whispered.

Angie tensed at the words but didn't raise her head or open her eyes.

"You didn't think I'd let you walk in there alone, did you?"

"Mom?" Angie wondered if she'd spoken the word or just thought it.

"Darling."

"This is the last place I thought I'd find you."

"More likely the Iraqi desert or the Trauma Center?"

"So much pain here for you—the betrayal."

"For you, dear; I go where you need me."

"Even if it hurts?"

"It doesn't hurt me anymore—maybe once, not now."

"Why not? He betrayed you!"

"Two answers, dear—one, I'm beyond hurt here; two, being beyond hurt allows me to see that he didn't betray me, he didn't betray you, he betrayed himself. More specifically, his body betrayed his heart. I'm sorry for him and I've told him so, or at least tried."

"His body?"

"His body needed Joan, needed her body—her feel, her scent, her breath, her taste—since the day he was conceived. Once he stumbled on her, he could've no more resisted her than a starving child could turn away from a sumptuous banquet."

"He could've chosen not to."

"No."

"He could've tried."

"Oh, he tried; Lord knows he tried. He took cold showers, freezing cold; he took hot showers. He hit the porno shops and the strip clubs and the Internet sites. He took long walks into the woods and howled at the moon, the sun. He screamed into his pillow in the night, bit his pillow, gnawed his hand, his arm. He tried every way he could. It didn't work."

"How do you know?"

"That's the good thing about here—you know everything about those you love. But on this one point, I have to admit I knew it then, while it was happening."

"And you didn't stop it?"

"I couldn't, no more than Josh could. But at least he tried. I didn't even try, and I'm sorry for that. Even knowing it wouldn't have worked, I still should've tried."

"Why didn't you?"

"I was scared. There was this yawning hole of need at the center of Josh that I discovered early on that I had no chance of filling. I was frightened by his need and shamed by my inability to meet it. I guess I gambled that Joan might fill that void and still leave me the parts of Josh I loved and needed."

"Some gamble."

"A foolish bet, in retrospect; but one I freely chose. But I never considered the risk to you. That was my fault, my selfishness. I should've weighed the risk to you and done something, anything, to spare you that hurt."

Angie could only agree. "Yes."

"I'm sorry, darling."

"We all are."

"Josh most of all."

"You know?"

"I know. He's paid, many times over. Forgive him."

"Is there time?"

"Enough."

Angie opened her eyes and raised her head. Blood throbbed in her ears. The hall was perceptibly brighter though still locked in gray pre-dawn. Directly across from where she sat, a few feet above on the wall, a framed portrait photo of the three of them stared down at her. Even in the dim light, she could see the images. Far as she knew, it was the last photo ever taken of the three of them together. They all looked so calm, relaxed, and happy.

Laura's eyes were locked on Angie like some majestic hawk—high up in the tree surveying the whole countryside with regal detachment and assurance before focusing all her attention on this new entrant—as she pushed open the ajar door to her parents' bedroom. Angie stood in the doorway looking calmly at Laura seated in the chair with the nightstand light on behind her. Then she redirected her gaze to the slight figure lying in the bed and wondered if that pale, wizened old man were really her father. Seeing that helpless figure caused her to redefine Laura's intense glare as protective rather than aloof.

"I figured you as resourceful," Laura said quietly but firmly, "but I didn't know the half of it. Must be your father in you."

Angie tilted her head in silent question.

"Maybe your mother too," Laura added quickly. "I can't speak to that. But your father was the most resourceful person I ever knew. You wanted something done, give him the task. He'd find a way, whatever it took."

Angie noted her persistent use of the past tense but temporarily balked at its meaning. "Still?"

Laura smiled. The expression did wonders for her face. "We're here, aren't we?"

Angie nodded. "But is he?"

Laura took Josh's near cool wrist in her fingers and waited for a pulse. It arrived after a long pause, barely perceptible, more an echo of life than life itself. She nodded. "Yes," then added, "But I don't know that he'll come back from this one."

This one what? Angie wondered—this crisis, this coma, this infection, this dream, this sleep, this what? Her nurse's training wanted an immediate diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment regimen. Time was wasting—she needed to act, not watch. Her legs began to wobble.

Laura stood quickly, caught Angie around the waist, and guided her into the bedside chair she'd just occupied. "Drink some of this," she said and raised her can of cola to Angie's nearly blue lips.

Angie took a sip or two then sat back in the chair. "Thanks. Long night."

"For us all," she said, glancing at Josh as she set the soft-drink can on the nightstand.

Angie followed Laura's gaze to her father. The sight of him so radically changed from her last image of him cut her deeply, deeper than she'd ever been cut or thought she could be. So this is it, she thought. This is the reckoning.

Laura squatted in front of Angie, reached up and gently turned Angie's gaze from Josh to her. "I'm Laura, in case you didn't know; Josh's first wife."

Angie nodded but said nothing.

"Devon, Josh's other daughter, is asleep down the hall. And Sherri, the home nurse, is asleep in the guestroom. He's been well cared for."

"I can see that."

"We had the sensors on him, but he made us take them off the last time he was conscious."

"When was that?"

"Yesterday morning."

"So we're flying blind." It was a statement, not a question. As a nurse—particularly one less than a day removed from service in Iraq, one huge testing ground for the latest in diagnostic technologies—this absence of even the most basic of patient data seemed almost criminally negligent.

Laura noted her objection and understood, at least in a general way, its origins. But she chose to avoid direct confrontation. "He's flying—well, somewhere. I almost said 'home,' but realized this is his home. This is where he wanted to be; this is where he wanted to die. He called me here from California to help guarantee that he died here at home—no hospital equipment, no strangers hovering, no extraordinary measures or last-ditch heroic stands. He wanted—." She paused then corrected herself. "He wants to die at home."

Angie, her blood pressure and heart rate stabilized by the dose of cola and caffeine and her seated posture, looked first to her father then to Laura and nodded silent assent—she'd not made herself available for any of the decision-making; she'd not question or try to undo any of those choices now (too late anyway, she could clearly see). She recalled returning to base from a briefing in Baghdad when the Humvee she was riding in came on the aftermath of a recent bombing. She jumped out and focused on an unconscious Marine being cradled in the lap of a buddy. At first glance, except for being unconscious, the Marine showed no visible injuries. She bent down to begin providing care when the buddy pointed a pistol at her and gestured for her to step back. Tears streamed down the pistol-waver's dusty face. She protested firmly, said the man (no more than a boy, really—maybe nineteen or twenty) needed immediate medical attention and that she was a nurse (in case he didn't recognize her regiment's medical insignia on her uniform) and trained in battlefield trauma care. Still, the protector wouldn't relent, kept the pistol drawn and pointed loosely in her direction. She was about to turn and try to find help in subduing this clearly shocked guardian when the unconscious soldier released an awful groan from his core, tensed from head to toe, then fell limp. The guardian took a deep breath, wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his free arm, lowered the pistol, and said, "You can have him now." He gently, tenderly, rolled his buddy's limp body off his lap. The deceased Marine had a gaping six-inch hole torn out of his back, and the guardian's lap had trapped a deep pool of blood that was just now beginning to seep out into the sand beneath his knees. Sometimes love was the only efficacious treatment. "So if not home, then where?"

Laura looked at her questioningly.

"You said he's flying somewhere. Where do you think?"

Laura considered the question a long moment. She recalled sleeping with her body glued full-length to his, first time in decades. She wondered if somehow his dreams had transmitted through his flesh into hers. "He's making amends. It's not been painful but hopeful, and ultimately peaceful. He's almost finished."

Angie nodded. "So he is flying home."

Laura shrugged. "You might say—different home, maybe better."

"We hope."

Laura nodded. "If you think you're O.K., I'll leave you for a little while."

Angie said, "I'm O.K."

"I'll be in the kitchen, brewing a pot of coffee."

"Make it strong."

"I always do."

"Extra strong."

Laura smiled and left silently, pulling the door partway closed on her way.

So here she was. It'd all happened so quickly—the phone call, the request for emergency leave, the flight home in a vast cargo bay with two dozen other silent soldiers (all male) and four tarped Apache helicopters (one with dried blood on its port-side landing skid), securing the rental car from the civilian side of the airbase, the long drive over dark and empty roads, the homecoming to a dark house that was no longer home, to sit beside the death bed of a man who was once her father but seemed now (and looked) a stranger. It'd all happened so fast.

Yet, on another level, this latest sequence seemed part of a larger and longer arc, an arc that began that day she came home from school and watched her father—this same though changed body hidden beneath the sheets—arched in rhythmic undulations over the girl she'd trusted to be her best friend, an arc that continued through her exodus from a home and family that no longer existed, exodus from a childhood and adolescence balked in an instant, an exodus that also marked an entrance—into adulthood, where possibility was constrained, potential truncated, hope starved. This downward-curving arc of destiny had connected the dots of a half-starved life to return her to the bedside where it had begun. So not an arc but a circle, Angie thought—a circle begun at betrayal to end at death.

She'd thought her way through that loop of self-pity without once looking at her father. She'd looked at the door Laura'd pulled halfway closed as she left; she'd looked at the mahogany dresser and matching framed mirror; she'd gazed blankly at the blank darkness beyond the picture window. But she'd resolutely avoided looking at her father.

Finally, with a deep breath like that taken before jumping from the high quarry wall toward the frigid water far below, she forced herself to look at the unconscious man before her. And, like the plunge from the quarry ledge, it was a shock; but she of course survived.

On closer examination, she saw that he was indeed her father—the deep-set eyes beneath the bony brow, the dangling lobe of his ear (that she shared), the thin white scar line on his lower lip. His face in profile summoned a rush of images of the younger Josh, the one she'd grown up with and cherished. She saw him racing down the beach, holding high a piece of leathery brown seaweed that trailed behind him like a pennant, saw him swinging a machete to clear a path through the brush as they sought a site for her treehouse, saw him winking at her as she sat to one side while he taught his class at the university on the day she trailed him to work. These and many other memories flooded her mind; and in each of them he was moving, full of life and vitality, a stark contrast to the unmoving dying man lying before her.

Yet the unmoving man before her was still her father; and she'd traveled a long way to be beside him now—not to recollect the bygone father (which she could've done anywhere) but to be with the current one.

But she didn't know what to do with the current father. She couldn't talk to him, couldn't say she was sorry for not keeping in touch (was she sorry?), sorry for not letting him into Mom's cancer and funeral (she was sorry for that), sorry for not opening those gifts and cards of those first years apart (had one of those packages contained the chance of trust restored?)—so many sorrys to say. So she said it—"I'm sorry, Dad."

He didn't move at the words or give the slightest sign of acknowledgement, but it seemed the room did—vibrating ever so slightly at the sound waves, the picture window brightening, the air in the close space taking on a kind of tangibility of weight and pressure. Angie actually turned and looked behind her to see if someone or something had entered the room—but no, nothing.

So she slid the chair closer, till her knees touched the bed, then leaned forward and wrapped her right arm over his head on the pillow, curved her left arm in front of her on the mattress beside his hand, laid her head gently on his chest atop the neat covers, closed her eyes, and quickly passed into a state between blank sleep and dreaming.

In the distance there was a rhythm, like the gentle lap of waves striking a far-off shore—this rise and fall, rise and fall. That rhythm eased her into a realm of peace, comfort, and security. She felt safe, truly safe, for the first time in—what? months certainly (since being deployed), but maybe years, maybe since fleeing (or being ejected from) home and childhood. She was, well, home again—a place, finally, of rest, whatever the circumstances.

And rest came in a vision of a sloping treeless hillside in full morning sun, succulent spring grass bright and inviting green beneath the crisp blue sky, the gentlest brush of a breeze, the scent of spring flowers—violets, lilacs. And there on the hill, in soft middle distance, a troop of white farm geese, plodding upward in single file from the pond below toward the crest of the slope. The geese moved as if not walking, in their clumsy side-to-side goose waddle, but as if being carried forth by the earth and time in a graceful effortless flow toward the ridge.

And Angie realized now that she was at the base of the hill, lying on a soft blanket on the grass beneath a tree in the shade. The blanket was almost unbearably soft, as if she were floating on air, though she could smell the grass so near at hand, smelled the fertile loam that had given the grass life. So she didn't panic at the soft airiness of the blanket, didn't fear being dropped. She closed her eyes, inhaled the scents of spring, reveled in the soft breeze brushing her cheek, basked in the leaf-filtered sun. It was so good to be loved.

"Find Joan."

Angie didn't open her eyes. She was not startled by the voice. It seemed part of the whole scene, part of what she'd been expecting.

"Find Joan. Tell her I'm sorry. Let her tell you she's sorry."

"Why?"

"She'll save your life."

Angie had no response.

So Josh added, "Save the life I helped create but could never save, hard as I tried."

"That wasn't your job."

"If not that, then what?"

"Love."

"Easy."

"Just love."

"Always."

"I know."

"Finally?"

"All along."

Josh was silent.

"It's been there all along."

"Yes."

Angie held her eyes closed, waited to hear more. Then she realized there was no more; she had all she'd ever need. She opened her eyes. The hillside was still there—brilliant green under resonant blue. The sun was higher in the sky, brighter. The troop of geese had vanished. The breeze picked up, ruffling the spring grass, birthing a fragile dust devil or two at the base of the hill, there by the pond.

Oh, to sit cross-legged on the pinnacle of the highest peak with the universe laid out before you in dazzling array of myriad stars brilliant in crystal clear night sky, stars so close and intense that it seemed you might reach your hand out and collect a scoop, drop them in a jar to light your path home; infinite stars so remote and ponderous that it seemed they hid, there just behind their shine, the source of all time and space. Oh, to be in such a spot, Josh thought as he gazed out on all eternity. What did I do to deserve this?

"Nothing."

"Then why?" Josh asked.

"It's the gift that's been waiting for you."

"Since when?"

"Since the start."

"The start of me?"

"The start of everything."

"That's a long time."

"Or short."

"Either way, thank you."

"So few say that."

"Thanks?"

"It's not required, of course."

"Seems obvious. Seems only right."

"Yes."

There was a sudden brilliant streak across one small sector of the panorama, then gone.

"What was that?" Josh asked.

"You."

"Seemed so brief."

"Come and see for yourself."

### Day Seven

Angie found Joan standing in the light rain without an umbrella or hat out by the line of cars parked on the paved drive that looped around the cemetery. She stood watching from afar the proceedings that were taking place under the green tents five rows of headstones away. Some of the minister's words reached their ears on the slight breeze that blew their way—whether we live or whether we die—in the company of all your saints—lo, I tell you a mystery—we commit his body—but most of the ceremony was lost to the rain and the low clouds and the rustling leaves.

Angie came up from behind and stood beside Joan, mere inches away.

Joan looked at her calmly, as if she'd been expecting her all along, had said "See you later" just yesterday, not twelve years ago. "I figured you'd be with the family, such as it is."

"I am, such as it is."

"I meant down there—lowering him into the ground, saying your good-byes."

"I said my good-bye."

"Was it hard?"

Angie looked up at her. It was unclear if the water streaking Joan's cheeks was rain or tears. "It was the easiest thing I've ever done."

"How?"

"He told me to find you."

"They said he was comatose."

Angie turned back toward the grave site. The minister was tossing dirt in the hole. "He was."

Joan was silent.

"He told me to tell you he was sorry."

Joan nodded. "He told me himself."

"When?"

"About then."

"And?"

"That you'd find me, that I'd have a chance to say what I've wanted to say every day for twelve years." Joan turned to her. "I'm sorry, Angie, more sorry than you can ever realize."

"No."

"No?"

"Not more sorry than I can realize. I know it perfectly. I've lived in that regret all this time."

Joan nodded. "Long enough."

"Long enough."

The gathering around the grave site was beginning to break up—the minister shaking hands with Laura, Devon, the Chair of the English Department. A few grad students tossed roses into the hole.

Joan turned to Angie. "I'd like you to meet someone." She walked toward the end of the line of cars.

Angie followed.

Joan stopped beside a well-kept but older model Japanese compact. She tapped on the passenger-door window. The rain-splattered glass descended into the door. "Angie, I'd like you to meet my son."

Angie stepped forward and peered into the car.

A blonde-haired boy of about ten or eleven gazed calmly at her. After a pause, he unleashed a beautiful and familiar smile. "The rain makes it look like you've been crying."

Angie smiled back. "Not anymore." She extended her hand toward the car. "I'm Angela Earl."

The boy took her hand in his. "We have the same last name."

Angie nodded.

The boy said proudly, "I'm Joshua Earl."

"Pleased to meet you," Angie said.

