

### Two Sisters Times Two

by

Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2016 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.

Wedding Belles

Leah watched in silence from the Fulcher family table as her sister Brooke rose from her seat at the head table and, after a few inaudible words cast in the direction of the huddled bridesmaids and the bridesmaids' reaction of shocked laughter, began her visits to the tables assembled around the dance floor. She trailed the bride, her twenty-five year old daughter Penni, and groom, Penni's boyfriend since college Randall, by about five tables. Brooke's husband Dave—her second husband, though who here remembered her long ago and brief marriage to Onion?—pretended not to notice Brooke's departure as he continued his animated conversation with Dave Jr., a groomsman and the eldest of their three sons. After a few minutes, Dave Sr. turned toward his wife's empty chair, made an exclamation of surprise with upraised arms, and stood to follow his wife who was now four tables ahead. Though Brooke was lingering at each table, offering forth her patented mix of incisive observations and self-deprecating humor, it still took Dave another seven tables to catch up to his wife as he paused at each table she'd just visited to exchange small talk or a loud belly laugh in response to some lame joke.

Leah saw that their staggered start was calculated, unconsciously so, the product of decades of practice in social events just like this, allowing each marital half to be their own forthright self while still presenting a united front. That Brooke had developed such social skills following her rebellious youth and adolescence still, even all these years later, struck Leah as one of the most amazing reversals she'd ever witnessed.

Her eyes drifted from her sister across the room to her parents across the table. Momma and Father had just returned from the dance floor after taking a turn to the rock band's version of "Blue Moon," a request relayed from Father to the band by Leah's son Jasper who had continued past the band to join two of his cousins at the open bar. Father slid Momma's chair out for her to sit, directing a gaze of love-struck attention toward his wife of fifty-eight years as if they were still at the college formal where they'd first met, each abandoning their dates to leave together. Momma sat with a natural grace and dignity she'd not lost despite the knee replacement last year and a nearly fatal post-surgical infection. Before Father sat, he daubed his brow with his handkerchief as he surveyed the room. Though Dave's money had paid for this plush affair, and his side of the family far outnumbered the Fulchers—all neatly corralled at this eight-seat table if you didn't count those at the head table—Father still projected an air of patriarchal satisfaction. He and Momma had done right by their families and their community. Leah saw that though Brooke's social skills were of a more conspicuous sort, their roots were surely genetic, as predetermined as her nose or eye color. It was the rebelliousness that had been the feint all along, though someone forgot to tell Leah, and Onion.

Leah's gaze shifted back to the head table. Jodie, the Maid of Honor and Brooke's daughter with Onion, sat by herself surveying the room with active and piercing eyes. The mauve-colored sleeveless attendant's dress revealed the multi-colored tattoo covering her left shoulder. Even at this distance, the tattoo was striking; and up close it was a work of art. But it also set Jodie off, not only from the bride and the other bridesmaids—all with lily-white shoulders and backs—but also from everyone else in attendance. Leah had noted small and innocuous tattoos on the exposed lower backs of several young women, but none to match the in-your-face insistence of Jodie's. Her niece's current frank and imperious gaze seemed perfectly matched to that tattoo's claim— _I don't need or desire your approval!_ But that defensive wall crumbled as soon as Jodie's eyes crossed Leah's. The taut skin of her quite beautiful face relaxed, her dark eyes twinkled, and her mouth curled into that vulnerable lopsided grin that had been her standard greeting to Aunt Leah during all those years of difficult transition and frequent moves. Jodie could shove away the rest of the world, even her mother (sometimes her mother most of all); but she'd never figured out how to push away Leah. And now they both hoped she'd never want to.

Jodie's eyes locked on Leah's and her grin steadily swelled into a smile. She stood from her seat and started toward Leah's table. Then she stopped, frowned, and veered off toward the restrooms as if that was where she'd been headed all along.

Leah stood to follow but was stopped as the bride stepped in front of her. "Aunt Leah!" Penni exclaimed with a broad smile and glow of affection and attention that would've melted a stone monument's heart. "My day is now complete!" She leaned over—aunt and niece were exactly the same height, but the bride's heels made her a couple inches taller today—and kissed Leah lightly on each cheek then gave her a hug that lingered for a few seconds, her face pressed against the side of Leah's head. When Penni stood upright, her eyes glistened with tears. She took hold of Leah's two hands without looking down and waited for her throat to clear, her gaze never breaking from Leah's despite the swell of emotion. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you," she said finally in a soft though firm voice. She regained her graceful smile and composure. "Everything that happens from here on out is your fault!" she exclaimed with a restored playful twinkle.

Penni was referring to an incident at the beach when she was ten. Though an expert swimmer for her age, she'd miscalculated the strength of the tide and then panicked. No one on shore had heard her shouts above the crashing surf, but Leah had spotted her hand in its last reach above the waves. With no time to communicate the distress to anyone else, Leah had rushed into the surf and made her way to the spot where she thought Penni would be, instinctively adjusting for the current's powerful pull. She found Penni thrashing about and gasping but still conscious. She'd put Penni on her back and somehow forced her way through the rough surf to shore.

Penni, with her fair skin perfectly made up, her brown hair beautifully arranged atop her head, her lovely sleeveless wedding gown with hand-stitched beaded lace bodice and a sea of satin folds, gazed serenely at her aunt now and repeated what she'd said that day when she finally stopped coughing up seawater, as she lay in the lap of her frantic mother and looked up at her still panting rescuer. "Aunt Leah, I didn't know you could swim!" Neither had Leah.

By now Randall had come abreast of the two. Overhearing Penni, and having heard the story many times before, he took Leah's hand and kissed it lightly following a deep and formal bow. "I am forever in your debt," he said, and seemed to mean it.

Leah accepted their gushing praise without blushing or embarrassment though with a clear-eyed nod that let them both know their kind recognition was gratefully accepted. Then she turned bride and groom toward her parents and her Grandmother Mim in a wheelchair at the other side of the table.

Penni immediately caught the hint and rushed over to lavish attention on those elder generations that were half-responsible for her half of this affair. Randall followed just a short stride behind.

Leah turned to check the hall leading to the restrooms. Jodie was nowhere to be seen. She decided to excuse herself and head off to find her wayward niece but was intercepted by her sister jumping in front of her and exclaiming, "Hey, Sis," in a volume of voice and gesture better suited to their afternoons at the pier or State Fair than in this place on this occasion. The skin of her sister's face was taut and lined with more than just the wrinkles of her midlife. Her eyes looked especially animated, producing in Leah an instinctive reaction of anxiety. Brooke out of control had once been her greatest worry, dating to the days when her destiny and Brooke's were inextricably twined. Though they had spent little time together since Brooke's marriage to Dave and the four kids that followed in quick succession, some deep-seated fears never faded. Leah tried hard to ascribe Brooke's frenetic energy to the stress of planning this event or the relief at accomplishing it or the emotions of seeing her baby married off, not to mention the two vodka tonics and three glasses of wine with dinner. There were plenty of reasons for Brooke to be giddy. Still, Leah felt unsettled by the sight and actually took a half-step back from her sister. "Hi, Brooke," Leah said tentatively.

"I love it!" Brooke shrieked. "I still can't get used to you talking!" She threw herself onto Leah's neck in an impassioned embrace that shifted her entire weight onto her sister.

Leah recoiled another half-step then caught her balance. She accepted Brooke's hug with a patient indulgence recalled from decades ago. After a few seconds, her arms gently wrapped around Brooke's small waist and held her sister close. Despite her misgivings of the moment—in fact, quite probably _because_ of them—she realized she still loved her sister more than anyone in the world.

When Brooke finally unknotted herself, there were tears in her eyes that she tried to wipe away while pretending to straighten her neatly permed short hair that showed many flecks of gray amidst the fading brown. She stared at Leah in hapless vulnerability through brimming eyes, trying several times to speak but each time failing.

Leah grinned at her sister. "So now who's the one that can't talk?"

Brooke laughed. "Now that my kids are gone maybe we should relive our childhood with me deaf and you speaking."

"That would be a lot of history to rewrite."

Leah had been born deaf, and depended heavily on her older sister's care and guidance throughout her childhood and adolescence. By the time she graduated from high school and went on to college, she had developed, with Brooke's help, the skills to prosper on her own despite her deafness. Brooke moved to Shawnituck Island, married Onion Howard, and had Jodie all in rapid succession, her time and attention now diverted to other demands. Leah went on to college, then graduate school, then married and had a child of her own.

Then, ten years ago in a miracle of medicine coupled with microprocessors, she was fitted with two cochlear implants that gave her the ability to hear. It took many months of therapy and training to learn to hear—that is, interpret the signals the implants sent to her brain—then many more months to train herself to speak intelligibly (she'd always had the ability to make sounds with her mouth and throat; she'd just never known what they sounded like and had always used sign language or written messages instead of the awkward and embarrassing "deaf-speak"). Now she spoke as naturally as any lifelong hearing person, if a little formally and more distinctly. The only evidence of her prior handicap were the small external processors magnetically attached to the internal implants just behind and above her ears (and discreetly hid by her long blond hair) and the small microphones hung over her ears like hearing aids.

Brooke's mouth curled into the sly grin of their childhood conspiracies. "I'm game if you are. I'll rent that cottage at the tip of Bogue Beach and bring the wine; you bring the food and promise to do the cooking." She laughed at her joke—Leah was a gourmet cook from a stint at an upscale restaurant between college and grad school whereas Brooke had never gotten past church casseroles and meatloaf.

Leah laughed. It was the one sound she retained from her pre-hearing days—a cross between a hiccup and a baby's giggle, a childish sound that didn't fit her polished demeanor and thus made it all the more endearing. "How much wine?" Leah rarely drank and then only sparingly.

"Oh, cases and cases," Brooke said. "The whole truck!"

"Then I'm there," Leah said.

Penni stuck her head between the two sisters. "What are you two schemers planning?"

Brooke turned to her youngest child. "How to get you back in the crib!"

"Crib? Who's having a baby?" It was Whitfield, Leah's husband, back from sharing Cuban cigars and golf anecdotes with other like-minded males out on the balcony overlooking the golf course behind the restaurant.

"Don't look at me," Penni said.

"I mean Penni," Brooke wailed. "Just yesterday you were the cutest little baby. Now look at you!" She burst into tears and threw herself on her daughter's chest, burying her face in all that lace and delicate beadwork.

"Aww, Mom; I'll always be your baby," Penni cooed, only faintly aware of all the eyes turned toward her and Brooke, many of those eyes shedding sentimental tears.

Jodie watched from the entrance to the restroom hall, no tears in her eyes.

Leah instinctively looked in that direction, away from the hubbub. She caught Jodie's eye and gestured for her to join the group. Dave Sr. had just caught up to his wife, Dave Jr. came over from the head table, and Jasper along with his other two cousins, Brent and Garrett, had crossed over from the bar. Only Jodie was missing from this assembly of Fulcher kin.

Jodie shook her head once.

Leah sighed— _always the outsider_. She nodded acceptance of the choice then started toward her elder niece. She would not let the outsider stand outside alone.

Jodie stopped her with a look and a half-raised hand, locked her face in an impassive stare and came forward.

Leah met her halfway and took her hand. They walked toward the Fulcher table together.

By then Brooke was standing on her own and again wiping away tears. She spotted Jodie and exclaimed, "The Maid of Honor!"

Jodie flinched and her hand tightened on Leah's.

"One day soon, a bride," Brooke announced.

Jodie looked down and shook her head but kept on coming, urged along by Leah.

"If she could only hide that tattoo," Brooke concluded. She'd lowered her voice by then, but still everyone around their table heard her.

Penni raced to her sister. "I think it's beautiful! I think she's beautiful!" She gave Jodie a big hug as Leah stepped aside. "The best Maid of Honor and the best sister in the whole world!" She gave Jodie a kiss on the cheek then forehead. Several cellphone cameras flashed pictures of the embrace.

Jodie, at first stiff and hesitant, suddenly acquiesced to the moment, the day, her whole Redmond-family life, and firmly grabbed her sister's face in her hands, stared straight into her eyes, and gave Penni a long kiss on the lips. Photos of the moment (there are eight known to exist) show Jodie's eyes closed in passionate surrender and Penni's open and wide in wonder and surprise. One of the eight snapshots, taken on panorama setting, shows Brooke off to the right with her hand raised to her mouth and Leah off to the left with an ambiguous half-grin that might be of approval or might be of tolerance but was in any case patient and watchful.

2

Brooke stood at the end of their wide drive watching the limo's taillights make a graceful arc around the broad cul-de-sac rimmed by stately three-story houses with their yard lights just starting to switch on in the fading dusk. She watched the pair of red lights end their arc and hit the short straightaway leading out to the main road. Those lights paused for what seemed a long time at the main road. Brooke wondered if they'd forgotten something, were maybe preparing to turn around and come back. She unconsciously took two steps in their direction—to meet them halfway, have Penni lower the window and say with an embarrassed apology "I just realized I forgot my sunglasses, Mom" and Brooke would run into the house and retrieve those sunglasses from her room. But then she saw the twin red lights turn left onto the main road and disappear into the swirl of traffic racing past.

It had all gone off as planned and on schedule. Following the champagne toast and the cake cutting and the garter toss and the bouquet toss, the bridal couple had run (or strode, hand in hand) the gauntlet of cheering, popcorn tossing guests arrayed on each side of the burgundy carpet running from the reception hall's entry portico to the drop-off circle where they stepped up into a canopied horse-drawn carriage assisted by the carriage's top-hat and tails attired coachman. After more shouts and cheers and a few off-color comments about the big night to come, the carriage slowly pulled away from the crowd, trailing some rattling tin cans that seemed to rile the horse no more than the trailing exclamations and whistles and a couple of firecrackers lit by high school boys from Randall's side of the guest list—that is to say, troubling the handsome well-groomed gelding not at all. He was used to it.

As soon as the carriage was out of sight around a bend in the long drive of the sprawling restaurant complex (it had three wedding and two anniversary receptions that day in addition to a full book of dinner reservations), the carriage had veered right into a small service entrance where their hired limo and its more contemporarily attired driver (black suit and shoes and tie, white shirt, driver's cap sitting on the middle of the front seat) waited. This time the coachman remained on his seat and let Randall jump to the ground and help his bride down. Randall pulled a fifty from his pocket and handed it up to the coachman. "It's covered," he'd said. "For the horse," Randall insisted. The coachman laughed and took the bill then directed the horse and carriage to the loading dock's overhang to await their next call. Randall slid into the car's spacious backseat where Penni was already waiting, and the driver closed the door and took the wheel for the short trip to Penni's parents' house.

After hooting with the crowd at the carriage's picturesque exit ( _Wasn't it so romantic?_ ), Brooke had hurried back into the reception hall, pausing only as long as necessary to be polite in accepting the thanks and congratulations of a number of guests who intercepted her along the way. She found Dave out back on the balcony with Whitfield and several other middle-aged men she didn't know—maybe from Randall's side, maybe party crashers: what did she care?

Dave had laughed at her impatience. "You spend two years planning this, and now you can't wait to rush home?"

"We need to help Penni load the car!" she said with more volume and insistence than she intended. Why couldn't he just do as she asked?

"Penni's got Randall now," Whitfield said. "What do you think husbands are for?"

Brooke turned a hot stare on her brother-in-law but swallowed her retort unspoken, for Leah's sake. For some reason she felt closer to her sister than in years. She wondered if this was another symptom of menopause. She looked back at Dave and said in the calmest voice she could muster, "I told Penni I'd be there to help her. Could you drive me home, please?" The last word had more edge to it than the rest of the request, but at least she'd tried. Hopefully Whitfield would remember that when he repeated the incident to Leah.

Dave looked to Whitfield and shook his head. "Duty calls." He knocked back what remained of the dark brown liquid in the tumbler in his hand. "Have a drink on me," he said to the group, waving toward the bar behind the balcony's doors. "In fact, have as many as you want on me." By the time he finished shaking their hands, Brooke was already through those doors and on her way back to the main entrance.

The driver had just finished loading the luggage into the trunk when Dave swerved the high-performance European sports car around the limo and raced into their garage before the overhead door was finished rising. He loved it when he beat the door from the end of their road.

Brooke jumped out and ran on her high heels through the garage and the mudroom and the kitchen to the entry foyer where Penni was double checking her list. "Hey, Mom. What are you running for?"

"You've changed!" Brooke cried.

Penni looked down over her linen blouse, thigh-length skirt, and open-toed sandals to confirm the fact. "Yep."

"How?"

Penni laughed. "I unzipped the gown and took it off."

"But how?" Brooke repeated.

"Randall helped me. I hung it on the wide hanger and hooked the hanger over the curtain rod so it wouldn't drag on the floor."

Brooke frowned.

Penni leaned over and hugged her with one arm, like a mother reassuring a petulant child. "It's O.K., Mom. I was careful with the dress. I told you that you didn't need to rush back. We have it all under control."

As if to affirm that statement, Randall descended the central staircase, also changed—into casual khakis, a crewneck shirt, and an open linen sport coat. "All set?" he asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs. The driver would take them to the airport hotel where they would spend the night before rising early for the flight to their honeymoon in Hawaii.

Dave came out of the kitchen and intercepted Randall and pulled him into the dining room.

Brooke followed their disappearance with flashing eyes. "I told him to hurry up," she muttered. "But he had to stop and talk to every person we passed between the restaurant and the parking lot."

"Don't be angry, Mom. It was a big day for Dad too."

Dave and his new son-in-law reappeared and joined the women in the foyer.

Penni said to her parents, standing a few feet apart with arms at their sides like boxers being introduced to the crowd, "Thank you both, not only for today but for the twenty-five years of days leading up to this one." She leaned forward and hugged her father, lingering with her face plastered to his chest for several seconds. Then she stepped back, took a couple steps to one side, and hugged her mother.

Randall followed his bride with a firm handshake for Dave and a warm but chaste hug for his mother-in-law.

Then they were gone—out the ornate front door, across the covered entry patio, down the brick walk, into the waiting car, out the drive, around the cul-de-sac, down the straightaway, left at the highway: gone.

Dave had watched from the open front door till they were in the car, then waved once into the dusk before retreating inside in search of a glass of water and a couple aspirin.

Brooke had followed to the end of the drive, discovered herself suddenly alone there, shivered at what she would've assumed was a chill in the new dark, if she'd thought about it at all.

3

Penni looked at Randall across the wide backseat in the pale glow of the car's courtesy lights. Her eyes were lit by a glow far brighter than that of those courtesy lights, a vivacity and cheerfulness that originated inside and was quite amazing, particularly given the exhausting demands and stresses of the past twenty-four hours, starting with last night's rehearsal and dinner. But then Penni was no ordinary young woman, a fact Randall affirmed through heavy-lidded eyes much more weary and a little bloodshot, his body reclining into the corner like that of a child about to take a nap on their ride home from a long trip.

"Can you believe we made it?" Penni asked, her tone answering her rhetorical question.

"Unh-unh," Randall grunted.

"What do you mean 'unh-unh'?"

"Unh-hunh?" Randall tried.

Penni tilted her head coquettishly and purred, "Are you going to fall asleep on your wedding night?" She reached across to grab his near knee then directed her hand slowly upward across his thigh.

Randall's left eye, nearest Penni, opened wide in sudden interest and anticipation. "Umm," he said, as if weighing the respective merits of sleep versus remaining awake.

"Unh-unh," Penni mimicked as her hand ever so slowly crept toward Randall's crotch.

"Unh-hunh," Randall said, firmly this time.

When Penni and Randall were first dating, during their last undergraduate semester, they had quickly moved from hand holding to good night kisses to outside the clothing fondling to inside the clothing petting. By the day of their graduation, the climax of this progression appeared in sight. The prospect riveted them both, though perhaps more so Penni, who was a still a virgin, than Randall, who had had several sexual relationships with long-term girlfriends, starting in high school. The end to their longing seemed destined to happen during a weeklong beach trip, in a rented condo with only one bed, they'd planned for the end of that summer before they parted to go to separate graduate schools—Randall to medical school at Center, Penni to Georgetown for a masters (and later a doctorate) in public policy.

But two days before they were scheduled to go to the beach, Jodie stopped by home on her way back to Seattle from her annual visit to her father and his family on Shawnituck Island, a tiny island off the coast once accessible only by ferry but now with a bridge connector. She'd been making these annual visits every summer since Brooke and her father had divorced when she was three. When they were younger, Penni had envied Jodie for these annual excursions and for having a second mystery family. In Penni's youthful eyes, it was as if Jodie the teenager could step off the face of the earth and into her version of The Secret Garden or Jodie's Wonderland during these long absences. And Jodie happily enhanced that impression, returning with tales of adventure and intrigue she would share at length with her younger sister as they sat in Penni's bed with the lights out until Penni drifted off to sleep. But once Jodie had gone off to college and, later, moved to the west coast, and Penni was herself engaged in a range of summer activities, they rarely saw each other during Jodie's brief stops on her way to or from Shawnituck. Some years she didn't stop at all, though home was less than a half hour from the airport she flew into and out of.

But this particular summer, Jodie did stop; and she was a mess. It was unclear to Penni exactly why Jodie was upset. She refused to share specifics, had never shared details of her personal life with her half-sister who was ten years younger. But she wore the emotional distress just as conspicuously as the five rings in her right ear and the stud in the side of her nose. She was chain-smoking—in the dark on the picnic table in the backyard, not in the house—and a fidgety wreck. Penni, at her mom's urging, went out and sat with her, trying to calm her and, failing that, just keeping her company. At one point, Jodie grew suddenly still then looked to Penni and asked "Who am I?"

Penni had answered simply, "Jodie Elizabeth Howard."

And Jodie laughed hysterically, frighteningly, for what seemed an eternity before leaning forward and saying quietly, "Then tell her," pointing at Brooke standing in the light over the sink squinting out into the dark toward her shadowed girls.

That night, Penni decided she and Randall would not consummate their relationship during their summer-ending beach trip. They would never consummate it in any way that might result in the conception of a child out of wedlock. They could find plenty of other outlets and opportunities for expression of their affection, and in fact over the years had grown quite creative in this regard. But sexual intercourse would only happen once they were married and prepared to raise the child that might result.

And tonight, they were married.

Penni's hand continued its slow passage up over his thigh toward the all too conspicuous bump beneath the zipper of his pants.

Randall slid further down on the seat till he was all but lying across it.

Penni's body started to slide toward his. Shortly, she'd be fully on top of him.

Then the car stopped at a traffic light.

Penni sat up quickly and glanced toward the front seat.

The driver—his name was Al—redirected his gaze from the rear-view mirror to the windshield.

Penni giggled. She pushed the button to raise the window dividing the front seat from the back. Al could still see them but at least they had a little more privacy. She straightened her skirt then her hair and sat prim and proper on her side of the seat.

Randall slowly sat upright himself, his eyes now wide awake.

Penni looked at him with a wink and whispered, "Soon, Tarzan," alluding to a game they'd created that involved him swinging her back and forth upside-down. Sometimes their Tarzan and Jane wore loincloths, sometimes not.

Randall thumped his chest a couple times in affirmation. An envelope fell out of his coat's breast pocket.

"What's that?" Penni asked. She had their tickets safely stowed in her purse.

Randall shoved the envelope back in his pocket. "I'm sworn to secrecy."

Penni looked at him slyly and cooed, "Jane won't come out to play if Tarzan keeps secrets.

Randall caved in all too easily. "Your dad gave it to me at the house. He said to buy you something nice to remember the trip but not to tell you where the money came from."

Penni reached into his coat for the envelope. Randall grabbed her hands. They tussled a little bit until Penni whispered "Al" into his ear. He let her go.

She sat upright with the envelope in her hand. It was a standard bank envelope, shaped to hold bills, with a resealable flap. "Did you look in it?"

"Not with him standing there!"

She opened the flap and slid the contents partway out. There were at least twenty crisp new bills, all hundreds. She looked back at Randall. "And you were going to buy me something?"

"Of course."

"And pretend it was from you?"

"I guess."

"On your student's budget?"

He shrugged. "I have a piggybank."

Penni laughed, then slid the money back into the envelope and resealed the flap. "O.K.," she said. "Your secret is safe with me." She handed the envelope back to her husband of five hours and forty-two minutes according to the digital clock blinking off the seconds just above the limo's partition.

4

Jodie made her way from the reception hall to the public bar at the far end of the complex without any of the dispersing guests noticing her departure. Leah, who would've noticed, was preoccupied with loading her son into a van with a half dozen other State-bound students. And all the other guests still remaining were busy checking their phones or making eyes at their newest conquest.

Dressed in her gown, Jodie struck quite a figure as she stepped through the swinging saloon doors into the dim bar decorated with wagon wheels and hay bales. Everyone in the bar noticed her, and several single men—regulars out trolling on a Saturday night—eyed her closely as she strode to the long bar at the back. But those desperate regulars turned their attention to other prospects even before she'd reached the bar. Perhaps it was her aloof scowl or the stiff-shouldered way she moved. Each fantasized she'd give him a hell of a ride if he could ever get close enough without getting kicked or flattened. But none was willing to take that chance.

She sat on the middle of three open barstools and ordered a ginger ale from the gray-haired woman behind the bar. "And you wouldn't have a cigarette, would you?" Jodie asked.

The woman tilted her head toward the _No Smoking_ sign behind the bar.

"Oh," Jodie said. "I forgot."

The woman laughed. "At least you didn't light up. Since they started enforcing that law, I feel more like Smokey the Bear than a bartender."

"Only you can prevent lung cancer from second-hand smoke!" Jodie laughed.

"Tell me about it." The bartender slid her a stick of nicotine gum to go along with her ginger ale.

"Thanks," Jodie said, though she dropped the gum in her small matching purse. She'd never been a regular smoker, just a compulsive fidgeter when alone in bars. Smoking kept her hands busy and her eyes squinty, softening the harsh surroundings.

She was into her second ginger ale and wondering where she'd go next and how she'd get there (and toying with the chain of plastic drink stirrers she'd absent-mindedly woven) when a handsome fortyish man in a gray tailored suit sat on the stool beside her. He was as out of place in his attire as she was in hers, but men can get away with that better than women. She stared at the side of his face. He had the faraway look and the soft set of jaw of someone who had just discovered, perhaps too late, that he had nothing left to lose. That look would've terrified most women, but it didn't bother Jodie. She'd seen it plenty of times in her travels, more than a few times when looking into grimy restroom mirrors.

He waved the bartender over, asked for an imported beer, then turned on the barstool to face Jodie directly from no more than a foot away. "Dressing down this evening, I see."

Jodie didn't flinch. "Were you at our wedding?"

"I don't know. Was I?"

"Redmond-Coulter."

The man thought hard for several seconds, his eyes losing their glaze. "No, I don't think so. I can't remember their names, but that wasn't it."

Jodie laughed. "Close friend, I see."

"Of the bride's older sister, yes. But she kept her name from her first marriage."

"And she asked you to come with her to her sister's wedding."

"Yes. I took it as a positive sign—meeting her family and all."

"So what happened?"

"How do you know?"

Jodie laughed. "You're sitting alone on a barstool talking to a strange woman."

"Dead giveaway, I guess." He sipped his beer then continued. "She was in the wedding party, one of the attendants at the front table. I got stuck off in the far corner with some of the other misfits."

Jodie shrugged and turned back toward the bar. "Family responsibilities."

"So I told myself. Then she danced with one of the groomsmen."

"Goes with the territory."

The man didn't seem to hear her. His eyes were staring at the bottles lined up in front of the mirror behind the bar. "The dance floor was crowded. Everybody was drunk. She and her tuxedoed partner ended up in front of our table but I don't think she noticed me. She was too busy dry-humping the guy's leg."

Jodie looked at him with a sideways glance.

After a few seconds he looked at her with a wry grin. "So what's your story?"

She laughed. "Nothing as sordid as that. Flew in from the west coast yesterday to serve as Maid of Honor for my younger sister today to fly back tomorrow."

"So where's everybody else?"

Jodie shrugged. "Bride and groom rode off into the sunset. Party's over."

"But you're still here."

She looked around, as if confirming his statement. "Better than my old room at my parents' house."

"Meticulously preserved, I bet."

She stared at him but said nothing.

"I have a nice room," he said. "At a hotel downtown."

"With the bride's sister."

He shook his head. "She's like you—staying at home." He paused then added, "Or maybe with that groomsman tonight."

Now it was Jodie looking into the mirror behind the bar. She hardly recognized the woman she saw there. She tried to tell herself the disconnect was caused by the dress—when was she ever in a sleeveless gown? She turned away from the mirror, opened her tiny purse, dropped a couple bills on the bar, more than enough to cover both tabs, then stood up and walked toward the saloon doors, no word or gesture to her companion.

The man behind her hardly missed a beat before downing what was left of his beer and rising to follow. He caught up by the time they reached the main lobby, still crowded with diners waiting for tables, and forged ahead to lead the way out into the night and to his car.

When they were nearing town on the thinly travelled interstate, Jodie spoke for the first time since leaving the bar. "Do you mind taking a little detour?"

The man laughed at that. "Theme of my day."

"Yeah, everyone's." She directed him off the interstate at the next exit then through a series of turns onto ever more narrow and poorly lit streets. As they neared her destination, they passed an entire city block that had been raised and looked like a moonscape of desolation in the wan glow of streetlights at each corner—piles of rubble and broken pavement interspersed with the yawning holes of former foundations. Jodie began to wonder if the place where she was headed even existed anymore.

But two more turns put them on a gravel road between rows of decrepit mill houses barely visible in the streetlamps that weren't burnt out or broken, instantly familiar despite the dark—indeed, because of it (she'd never been here in the daylight). She gestured for him to pull over in front of what looked like an abandoned shack lurking in the shadows.

"Cut the lights," she said quietly.

He did so but left the car's engine running.

They waited several minutes in silence, staring ahead at the gravel road receding into darkness—no other cars, no people, no movement. Then there was movement on Jodie's side of the car. A tall thin black man in gray sweats and a backwards ball cap emerged from the shadows and walked up to the car. They could only see him, and just barely, because their eyes had adjusted to the night.

Jodie lowered her window. "Bling around?"

There was a high-pitched cackle followed by a series of ever quieter snorts. After a pause to catch his breath, the man said, "Bling take his sparkle up to the stars."

Jodie didn't understand.

"Drive-by," the voice continued. "Bout five years ago. Day say Wood done the deed, but now Wood dead too."

"Too bad," Jodie said. "Bling was a friend from school." She counted off ten seconds in her head then started to raise the window.

"Business partner?" the voice asked before the window was all the way closed.

Jodie left the window open a few inches. "Yeah, sometimes."

"When times was good."

"Yeah," Jodie said.

"Who he?" the man asked, waving toward the driver.

"Nobody," she said. "We just met."

"He deaf?"

Jodie nodded. "Deaf and dumb."

"Day all like that."

"I wouldn't know."

"Yeah, right." The voice paused a minute then continued. "I been looking for some new business partners."

Jodie waited.

"How much you be looking to invest?" the man asked.

Jodie opened her purse tucked under the seat and put a twenty on the dash.

"Cost of investing gone up since Bling day."

Jodie reached down and pulled out another twenty. She hung both bills on the lip of the open window. By the time she looked up from closing her purse, the bills were gone. The man was gone too, swallowed by the dark. But a voice trailed behind his departure, so low she could barely hear it. "My secretary bring you a receipt."

They waited more than five minutes without a word or sound. Jodie refused to look toward her companion for fear he'd bolt.

Then out of the darkness appeared a girl in satin hotpants and a white tank top, both skimpy items of clothing bright and shiny against her black skin. She wobbled on high heels over the uneven terrain. She couldn't have been more than fifteen. She stopped on the far side of the ditch.

Jodie lowered the window.

The girl extended her arm, her hand cupped palm down and appearing empty. The hand stopped just short of reaching the window.

Jodie reached out into the dark, her hand palm up.

Something fell from the girl's hand into Jodie's, light as a feather, almost imperceptible. The girl turned and wobbled off into the shadows.

Jodie looked at the small square of folded white paper in her palm, no bigger than a postage stamp. Her fist closed loosely around it as she raised the window. "We can go."

"You'll have to get me back to the interstate."

"Start by turning around," she said with neither humor nor impatience, more like resignation.

Still, he laughed, then turned on the headlights. They were momentarily blinded by the glare. She'd been clean six months twenty-three days and fifteen hours, if you adjusted for the time-zone change.

5

Whitfield stood at the mirror in their hotel suite slowly undoing his silk jacquard tie. He stared at his nearly bald head reflected in the glass and frowned. How did all the Fulcher men—meaning by that Leah's father Franklin, as her wayward brother Matt had skipped the wedding—manage to keep their hair? It was bad enough that he was nine and a half years older than his wife, but his hair loss made him look like her father—older than her father! Leah always dismissed his worries, claiming baldness made him look "dignified," perhaps her highest compliment for a man. But she didn't know what it felt like inside.

Leah sat at the dressing table removing first her pearl necklace then her matching ear rings and carefully arranging them in their spring-hinged cases before setting those cases in her open travel kit.

Jasper was already on his way back to school, hitching a ride straight from the reception with a carful of others from the university. Leah had thought he'd sleep on the pull out bed in their suite and they would drop him at his dorm on their drive back to Atlanta tomorrow. It wasn't far out of their way, and she'd secretly hoped to get a mid-semester glimpse of his room and his freshman-year life. But he was anxious to get back and insisted on leaving tonight. Was there a girl waiting at school? Or maybe he had an eye on that willowy brunette from Randall's side of the guest list and among those riding in that van back to the university. What was her name?

She almost picked up the phone to ask Brooke. She had her sister's new cellphone number already logged in from several calls in the days leading up to the wedding. But she stopped herself. Her question would only open the door to a lengthy interrogation about Jasper, and Leah wasn't ready for that.

She thought about Jodie, how Brooke had embarrassed her. Where had Jodie gone? She'd last seen her sitting alone at the bar, looking bored and somehow out of place at her own sister's wedding while everyone else was busy saying goodbyes or, in some cases, the hellos of the next step in new friendships.

"Your sister was over the top, as usual," Whitfield said without turning from his mirror.

"It was a challenging day for her," Leah said quietly. She didn't turn from her mirror either, but she watched her husband's back in the left panel of the three-part make-up mirror. She noticed it stiffen slightly.

"Why's that? Dave paid a fortune for the best wedding planner in the state—hell, probably the best one in the country. Everything came off without a hitch."

"Her struggles were on the inside," Leah said. "That's where Brooke's struggles always are." She pulled out the hidden clips holding her hair in a loose fold at the nape of her neck. Her long hair, still naturally blond, fell in a rush over her back. From earliest childhood, she loved that feeling—like a single wave along her spine, so soft and delicate as to seem almost imagined, almost a sign from some other realm.

"You cut her too much slack, Leah; always have. Everyone's got struggles on the inside. Most people deal with theirs without making such a show of it."

Leah lightly swayed her head from side to side, letting her hair fan out across her back, gently to and fro. The action recalled memories of her childhood, when the absence of sound made touch—all touch, whether hair on her back or fingers on her wrist—that much more intense. She wondered what it would be like to reclaim those feelings, that intensity of experience. She could try turning off her processors, re-enter silence like in the shower or at night. Who would ever know? She laughed to herself at the thought of it—turning off sound. Brooke's face—her youthful face from decades ago—rose in her mind. This was all her fault.

"I don't think it's funny, Leah. She's never grown up. I don't care how many charities she's started with Dave's money or how many foundation boards she serves on. She's still a spoiled child." He laid his tie neatly over the back of the desk's chair and began to unbutton his shirt.

Leah stared at her face in the mirror. Somewhere behind those eyes, Brooke hid and waited.

Normal Lives

Brooke flew into the church lobby holding the covered aluminum pan of her customized version of Rice Krispy treats (melt a bag of chocolate bits and drizzle over the top, but don't tell anyone it's that simple) out in front of her like a sacred offering. She'd hardly had time last night to make them and even less time this morning to swing by and drop them off. But she'd been making them for so long now, since the boys were little and she used them as a bribe to get them to go church potlucks, and for every church food event for over thirty years that when Doris Upton called and asked her to contribute a pan for this Thursday's post-funeral reception with the words "If Brooke Redmond's Rice Krispy treats aren't on the dessert table I believe they'll have to lock the doors and send everyone home" she was only half-kidding.

She stuck her head in the receptionist's office. "O.K. if I drop these off in the kitchen?" She knew it was but asked anyway.

Marjorie—the church secretary since she and Leah used to hide under her desk from Pastor Rick, five pastors back—nodded her approval. "God himself will rest easier."

"Anything for the Team!" Brooke said. She meant the Fellowship Team, a stalwart group of erstwhile middle-aged women who coordinated all church functions that involved food, made sure the tablecloths were ironed, the flowers fresh, the silver polished, and the plates spotless. Brooke had been Captain of this team a few years back during a particularly busy period as they welcomed their current shepherd, Pastor Bob, and his large family, holding several large receptions (Brooke's idea) to introduce him to the community. She'd passed her Captain's spatula (they actually had one, plated in shiny copper) to Doris a year-and-a-half ago with the excuse of having to focus on Penni's wedding. But she'd kept her navy apron with the white pinstripes ever clean and at the ready, helping out the Team whenever she could.

"Long as we remember our Captain," Marjorie said. She meant Jesus.

"I talked with her just yesterday," Brooke laughed then scurried off to the dim Fellowship Hall with the kitchen along one side. She pulled a roll of masking tape from the mixed-supplies drawer and wrote _Redmond_ on the curve in permanent marker then tore off the piece and stuck it on the side of the pan. She put the tape back in the drawer then had a second thought and pulled it out again, repeated her lettering and stuck that name on the pan's top. "Can't be too careful" she said to herself as she placed her pan next to a baker's box of cupcakes labelled _for the funeral_ by a sticky note. Must be from Bonnie Young, Brooke thought, picturing the youngest member of the Team and a practicing attorney who always contributed store-bought baked goods that were as tasteless as they were pretty. How many times had she tossed those cupcakes in the trash while cleaning up, left on some child's plate with one bite taken out of it (and sometimes that bite regurgitated on one side of the plate)?

"Brooke," Pastor Bob shouted from the office hall as she raced back through the lobby. "Do you have a minute?"

"No, I don't," Brooke whispered to herself with a frown of annoyance. But she paused in her flight and by the time she turned had managed to put a friendly smile on her face. "Good morning, Pastor Bob. I was just racing off to an appointment."

"This will only take a minute," the tall dark-haired man with the booming preacher's voice said as he quickly closed the gap between them. "How are you this morning?" he said as he gave her hand a firm and vigorous shake.

"Busy."

"And the newlyweds?" He'd performed the service, right here in their large sanctuary, filled to overflowing that day.

"Wedded," Brooke said tersely, then felt guilty (he was a pastor, after all) and added by way of apology, "Penni's decorating their condo in Boston, called me last night to ask if I thought cinnabar or burnt umber was a better wall color for their dining room. I told her green!"

Pastor Bob laughed. "The trials of the younger generations," he said, though he was closer to Penni's age than her mother's.

Brooke smiled up at him. He did have a way of easing her stresses. She wasn't sure if it was his spiritual side or something else.

Pastor Bob's eyes crossed hers. He grew flustered and looked away before recalling what he'd rushed out here to tell her. "I won't keep you. I just wanted to let you know that with the funeral and all, I won't be able to make it to the dedication of the new shelter."

Three years earlier, shortly after Pastor Bob arrived at this call, Brooke had spear-headed a fund-raising to build a new and larger homeless shelter to replace the aging downtown facility, one that could better accommodate and protect mothers and their children. Though not a parish-sponsored effort, Brooke had held several of the fund-raiser's events in the church and leaned heavily on Pastor Bob and other congregation members for support. He'd grown to admire her tireless determination if not always her frank and sometimes impatient manner. Tonight, the product of her efforts, a gleaming facility in a renewed and safer part of downtown, was to be dedicated in a black-tie affair designed (by Brooke) to retire the facility's mortgage before it was finalized.

"That's O.K.," Brooke said. "I'll be sure to give you and Ebenezer grateful acknowledgement. And I'll pick up your contribution on Sunday," she said with a wink.

Pastor Bob laughed and shook his head. "It will be in your box."

"Got to run," Brooke said and turned toward the door.

"Good luck tonight," Pastor Bob said to her back.

"You too," she said over her shoulder. "With the funeral."

"That's in God's hands," he yelled after her.

Sixty-four minutes and fifty-two point seven miles later, according to her hybrid SUV's trip-tracker digital readout, she parked in front of the civil engineer's office in a restored block of the county seat's aging downtown.

She was there to offer input on the design of One Care, her latest civic project. About a year ago, after Dave told her he was planning to expand his chain of dental clinics into the thinly populated coastal plain east of Charlotte, Brooke had what she'd taken to calling a vision of an oasis of cutting-edge medical care in the middle of the desert of agri-business, a full range of healthcare services readily accessible to the poor farm families and migrant workers so often deprived of such care. Dave's initial plan—a dental clinic, that's all—had been rapidly expanded—family medicine, reproductive counselling, a pain clinic!—by Brooke's ever increasing enthusiasm and insistence. He feared losing money; but he feared losing Brooke more, especially as her homeless-shelter project wound down and planning for the wedding neared completion. Brooke would need something to fill those voids.

When the architect called last week to say there was a problem with the planned shape and location of the complex's parking lot—something to do with drainage and soil composition—Dave had told Brooke "Let the professionals figure it out. That's what they're paid for."

To which Brooke had replied with more than a little ardor, "Those stodgy old men don't have my vision! If it's going to be an oasis, it has to look and feel like an oasis!"

Dave had chuckled as he shook his head. Some of those "stodgy old men" were far younger than she, but he kept that thought to himself along with the anxiety that Brooke's famous vision was starting to cost him a pile of money.

Brooke burst into the office fifteen minutes late and strode past the receptionist's desk with only a curt nod to the pretty young woman—girl, really, younger than Penni—and on into the conference room beyond. Four men—the head architect and the project architect, the civil engineer and his assistant—were huddled around a raised drafting table. They looked up from the site plan at the commotion Brooke made.

She paused in the doorway and smiled slyly. "I haven't had this many handsome boys waiting on me since my senior prom." It wasn't true—Brooke hadn't even gone to her senior prom. "Now who wants to dance first?"

All four men were struck briefly speechless. Finally the head architect, a dignified country gentleman in a seersucker suit that reminded Brooke of her father, stepped forward to shake her hand. "Hello, Mrs. Redmond. Thank you for making the trip down here." He moved aside to make room for her at the table.

With no further word or introductions, she walked up to the table and leaned forward—it was almost chest-high on her—and studied the new plan. Not ten seconds into that review, she looked up and demanded, "Where's my meditation garden?"

The four men looked at each other, negotiating who would be the first to respond. Finally the project architect, an intern fresh out of architecture school in a flannel shirt and jeans, turned his blue eyes and charmingly unkempt brown locks toward her. They all silently agreed—he stood the best chance of justifying the change.

But even he, with his youthful enthusiasm and charm and long list of explanations, realized as soon as he looked into her flashing eyes that this current plan was already obsolete. The meditation garden, a circle of green in the center of the circular parking lot set off by head-high cedars and shaded by a tall oak all imported at considerable initial expense and maintained and irrigated at considerable ongoing expense, would be reinserted into the site plan regardless of the cost, regardless of whether it ever got used. Despite his misgivings and the realization that he'd be working late tonight to redraft the plan, he couldn't help but admire this woman's sheer vivacity and will, and wondered briefly what it would be like to be in her orbit, subject to her steady gravitational pull. The thought produced both a vague sense of longing mixed with something approaching terror.

Later that afternoon, Brooke flew into the hair salon—late again—to let Becky trim her hair. Years ago she felt secretly guilty at spending so much money on her hair. What had happened to the days when she simply let it grow out, hanging straight and thick over her shoulders and halfway down her back? If God meant for her hair to be trimmed into a tight bob or permed into layered curls or highlighted with streaks of gold, surely he would have made it so (and saved her a ton of money). But now she was resigned to the task, saw it as simply maintenance—like having the yard mowed or the house painted—to keep up appearances and comply with expectations. If she was going live in this world, she needed to play by its rules.

Momma and Father had long ago showed her that truth. Leah in her own way and despite her handicap had demonstrated that truth throughout their childhood and adolescence. But Brooke had to discover it the way she discovered everything, the hard way—that is through experience, through screwing up so royally she had to burn it all down and start all over again, suffering the pain of loss and humiliation the whole way. It would've been a lot easier to learn from her parents or, better yet, from Leah, ever ready to advise and teach. But that wasn't her way. That had never been her way.

"The usual?" Becky asked after Brooke settled into the cushy salon chair.

Brooke looked into the mirror at her gray-flecked brown hair surrounding her weathered face, then looked at Becky's round and jolly and youthful face reflected in the mirror. "You think you can make me blond without making me look like a vain old woman?"

The hint of disappointment passed over Becky's eyes. She'd hoped to get off early to pick up her daughter from daycare and take her to the park. A quick trim of Mrs. Redmond (if she'd been on time) then out the door would've fulfilled that hope. But she didn't let that disappointment settle on her face. Mrs. Redmond was her best, and best-tipping, customer. She gave a full smile and said, "Leave it to old Becky to work her magic."

Brooke nodded in return, did as requested.

Later she knocked on the locked door of the dry cleaners. Jimmy Hall, a black classmate from high school whose hair was now completely gray, appeared from the back—thank God he was still here!—and unlocked the door.

"Mrs. Redmond," he said.

"Jimmy, I'm so glad you're still here. I need that gown."

Last week as she prepared to head out to purchase a dress for the shelter dedication, she'd been struck with a new idea. If she could find a suitable dress in her closet, she could add those funds to their already sizeable donation toward the shelter's mortgage and tell Dave it wasn't costing him an extra dime. She'd resurrected a floor-length sequined gown in midnight blue that she'd worn to a New Year's Eve party five years ago. It was a little boisterous for the occasion, but boisterous was her new, post-wedding identity. And there might be a few people at the dedication who were at that New Year's Eve party, but their memories would surely be fading by now. Besides, she still fit in the slinky dress; and that fact gave her great satisfaction.

Jimmy frowned. "I've closed out the register."

Brooke reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a fifty. "I've got cash—a little spending money off the books." Dave sometimes gave her envelopes of cash—"From non-insurance customers needing a break"—which she in turn distributed to some of her household help that preferred cash to a check.

Jimmy ignored the bill then turned and went into the back, returning about a minute later with the gown in a tall garment bag rather than the normal thin and clingy clear plastic. He pulled off the receipt taped to the bag then handed the hanger to Brooke. "I'll add this to your next order."

"Thank you so much, Jimmy. You're a prince." She turned and rushed off as her prince locked the door behind her.

An hour later she emerged from her spacious dressing room attired in that sequined gown with sequined half heels on her feet and a gold shawl over her shoulders matching her gold earrings and necklace matching her golden hair.

Dave, waiting in his tuxedo before the bedroom's flat screen television tuned to the evening news, looked at her with a decades-old sense of amazement—his oldest memory of her from that day in computer science class when she'd challenged their professor and won both the argument and his heart—that Brooke seemed to constantly renew despite her presumptive manner and stubbornness and temper. She was his Phoenix, ever rising from the ashes of her actions or fate's. "Don't you look gorgeous," he said then closed the distance between them and wrapped her in his arms.

She silently basked in his adoration.

After he stepped back, he tugged playfully at a fold of loose fabric at the gown's waist. "You losing weight?"

That was always the right thing to ask any middle-aged woman and no different for Brooke. "Just running around doing all your work," she said.

"Oh, yeah. How'd the meeting go?"

She filled him in as they headed down the stairs and to the car, leaving out the part about the added cost for insisting on keeping the meditation garden.

2

Penni's head was in a swirl as she tried to sync her legal pad's list of decisions to be made and subcontractors to be scheduled with the blurry image she had of a beautiful and inviting home. Everywhere she looked in the unfinished condo were more questions than answers, more loose ends than finalized choices, more unease than peace.

She had a firmly established model for managing such diverse demands, and years of close witness, as she'd watched her mom effectively direct everything from the conservatory addition to their house to a fund-raising push at church to her high school class's gift of a computer center (bypassing the PTSA _and_ her class council) to her picture-perfect wedding (and she had the videos and photo albums to prove it, now in storage, somewhere). Trouble was, she'd always _watched_ her mom do her director dynamo act—like watching a juggler keep three bowling pins and two balls in the air while balancing a chair on her head—but never tried out the role herself. She'd never chaired a committee at school or captained a ball team or even served on the church's youth-group planning board. She was a dependable and, if given a task, highly effective and resourceful team player, as in contributor not leader. Leadership was what her mom did; or, if mom was unavailable due to prior engagement, dad or any of her brothers. They could plot the strategy, make the critical phone call, give her the plan, which she would then carry out.

But today there was no one to give her that plan, no one to call for decision-making or guidance. Randall was on rotation at the hospital and in any case had made it clear that he had no interest in or aptitude for decorating a condo. "It's your money," he'd said as a final, and non-negotiable, evasive maneuver, by which he meant it was her dad's money and he would do nothing whatsoever to risk the accusation of squandering or misappropriating those funds. While this was a matter of irrational sensitivity on his part, she'd given up trying to dissuade him (it was their only significant disagreement, and cause of all their tiffs). She now placed her hopes on time, and Randall's eventual earning power, to erase not only his huge student debts but also this marital impasse.

But waiting would not magically resolve the list before her. The painters needed her wall color choices _today_! But to make the wall color choices she needed the carpet (color and pile) decided. But to make the carpet decision she needed the furniture (style and fabric and wood species and stain) decided. And to do that she needed the draperies picked out, each of the bedrooms plus the living room, each their own pattern, color, fabric, and density. Density!

They had a room at the fabric store that allowed you to sit in a chair and see the amount and color of light any fabric they offered would allow through in any compass orientation at any given latitude and longitude at any given time of any given day (or night) of any year. She hadn't known the exact compass orientation of their condo, though the windows did seem to face south. The helpful attendant had said, "No problem" and dialed in their address and came up with GPS coordinates and orientation and showed her scenes from different seasons and different times of day for her five favorite fabrics. She had swatches of those fabrics on the kitchen counter now. But of course she'd forgotten which was darker which lighter, which let in gold light which orange which green, which was soothing in summer which oppressive in winter; and her voluminous notes (three pages back on her pad) were an indecipherable jumble. So now what was she to do?

She sat on the unfinished hardwood floor with the fall's early morning light (south-southwest orientation, forty-two degrees north latitude, seventy-one degrees west longitude, minus three point six degrees solar declination, nine twenty-two AM EST on November twelve) striking the walls primed white to her right but not yet her spot of floor. She crossed her legs, flexed her arms, pressed her hands flat against the floor, and took an instinctive cleansing breath.

She recalled last being seated so in one of her public policy seminars at Georgetown last spring. The fifteen students and their vivacious professor, a woman hardly older than she, were seated cross-legged in a circle not in a classroom or at a retreat center or even in a park. They were sitting smack in the middle of the plaza of Dupont Circle at the height of rush hour. Pedestrians and dogs and baby carriages and bicyclists and skateboarders were weaving around and through their ring. Cars sat stopped or creeping along in the dense traffic just a few yards away. Blaring horns and roaring jet engines punctuated the drone of human voices, car and truck engines, and the gurgle of the Circle's central fountain. And above this noise the instructor announced in a voice that was not loud but nonetheless distinct, "Now close your eyes and imagine the order that defines this human chaos." It was an exercise in group visioning that Penni would never forget, even though it didn't last long as a cop came by and, receiving no assembly permit, told them to disperse—which they did, to seats on the rim of the fountain.

Had the profound if momentary peace she'd felt that day come from some elusive vision of order she'd grasped, or from the collective effort of a disparate group of individuals brought together by circumstance? Penni had always found meaning in shared effort, and her life had provided abundant opportunities—all her years in the heterogeneous pool of public schools; her undergraduate years in college with its mix of suitemates, dorm-mates, classmates; her semesters abroad, first in South Africa then in Prague; then grad school in DC, sharing apartments with different girls each year, and her wide range of acquaintances drawn from both fellow students and the surrounding melting-pot populace. Her purpose came from endeavors with, and on behalf of, others. She had no idea how to act alone and in her own interest. Worse, the process seemed so empty compared with her ideal of communal effort.

The sun had partially cleared the left edge of the living room window and now, unfiltered by any drape, sliced the floor and her seated body cleanly in two. Her right half, from the ankle-high boots to the charcoal stretch-cord pants to her belted plum-paisley peasant's smock and suede vest, seemed on fire, while her left side seemed locked in shadow all the deeper for its contrast to the lit side. She couldn't help but see this cleaving as a sign, but of what? Her present locked in tense impasse? Her premarital life set in stark contrast to her married one? Childhood divided from adulthood? What did this division mean for one who'd always thought herself of a unified spirit and outlook? And perhaps hardest of all to determine, what was the darkness, what the light? And which to be nurtured—fire or shade?

She stood quickly before the sun claimed her whole body and moved into the lingering dimness of the kitchen. The paint color sheets were laid out on the granite counter beneath the low-voltage pendant lights. Each sheet showed a "family" of colors, and the sheets were arranged in ascending order of boldness from left to right. She'd named each family, partly to help her remember the colors but also to help her break from the crushing monotony of this chore. Thus the beige-brown family on the far left were the Smiths, the yellow-golds next in line the Murphys, the aqua-teals the Ridenhours, and so on to the rose-vermilions at the far right labelled as the Hacienda Echeveria. She grabbed the Smith family sheet and quickly wrote the names of rooms on the array of muted earth tones— _kitchen_ on the light beige, _living room_ on the medium beige, _master bedroom_ on one of the browns, until all rooms had colors, albeit nondescript ones, designated. She left that sheet on the center of the counter for the painting contractor to pick up later that morning. She gathered all the other families into one pile and slid them into her soft briefcase. She switched off the lights and was returning the key to the realtor's lock box when she paused, pulled the Echeveria family out of her briefcase (it was on the bottom), wrote _dining room_ on the deep burgundy swatch then tore it free from its kin and clipped it over the _dining room_ designated taupe of the Smith family. "A little cross-cultural fraternization never hurt anyone," she said to the frowning Smith family sheet. Then she left.

She had precisely twenty minutes for the twenty-five minute walk to her meeting at the State Street Tower. But she embraced that challenge with an enthusiasm and a spring in her step that had been missing these past few weeks. If she'd been prone to self-examination, she might have attributed this sudden zeal to the bright and crisp fall day or to her executive decisions on paint colors or to the vague recall of her class in Dupont Circle. But the truth was she had no idea why she felt this burst of energy and optimism, though her mother's image occasionally mixed with the faces in the crowds she joined in rushing along the streets of the financial district.

She was actually a minute early when she emerged from the elevator into the local office of an international development firm. She was there in her job as a part-time intern serving as an informal liaison between developers and the city planning department. Her meager salary was paid out of a pool funded by a consortium of big-time developers, but it was administered out of the planning department. As if this wasn't confusing enough, she was never clear if she was advocating for the developers or for the citizens of the city as represented by the planning department. Her supervisor at the department had answered on her first day, "There needn't be a difference."

But at every meeting since (about a dozen so far) she'd registered countless differences, all revolving around the developers' desire to maximize profits and the citizens' desire to get public improvements for free. The devil was, of course, in the details—which was where she came in: to take the details of a given proposal from the developer to the planning department or vice versa. These preliminary exchanges could have been transacted by legal advisors (at much higher cost) or via e-mail or courier pouch (deprived of the nuance and context of a liaison's summation). Instead, they were communicated by her, along with written requests and proposals, so that the developers could say they were working with the city and the city could say it was cooperating with developers. In the end, Penni figured her efforts didn't amount to much, since the proposals she shared would be extensively reworked before being presented, and maybe reworked again and again, before finally being voted on and rejected or approved. But in the process of all this, she was getting in-depth exposure to both sides of the development equation, at least as practiced in the city of Boston. And she wasn't sure she liked what she saw, on either side.

The young receptionist (she was maybe a few years older than Penni) ushered her into the conference room. Penni declined her offer of something to drink.

The six men seated around the large oval brushed chrome and etched glass table all stood. Five of the men were over fifty and dressed in suits. The sixth man, an administrative assistant serving today as note-taker, was in his thirties and wore a V-necked sweater over his dress shirt and tie.

Mark Duncan, the project manager and also head of this office, left his seat at one end of the table and came forward. "Penni, so glad to see you again." He shook her hand. "Move into the condo yet?"

Penni did her best to match the firm grip of his very soft hand. "Not yet, but soon. Thank you for asking."

"You have any problems with those trades, give Bart a call," Mr. Duncan said, referring to Bart Seiferman, their field enforcer once a project was underway. He'd been at the prior meeting but wasn't here today.

"Thanks," she said. "I've got his card in our apartment."

Mr. Duncan, a lifelong New Englander originally from Connecticut who put on or shed his Boston accent depending on the company, dispensed with it today as he summarily reintroduced Penni to the others in the room, all of whom she'd met two weeks earlier at the first meeting. He then pulled a chair out for her to sit, and slid it gently under her then lightly grazed her shoulder before returning to his place at the head of the table.

Penni looked up and realized she was the only one sitting and felt briefly embarrassed. But Mr. Duncan put her at ease with a friendly grin and a short nod before gesturing for the others to sit and finally sitting himself. Then they got down to business.

The developer already had preliminary approval for an eight-building, four hundred unit waterfront condo project. It would involve the demolition of some old warehouses and filling in a small section of polluted marsh. They'd somehow breezed through the tallest hurdles normally thrown in front of waterfront projects of this magnitude—the environmental and water-quality impact studies. But now a small but committed coalition of neighborhood business and home owners, perhaps sensing that the developer had pulled a fast one with the speedy environmental approvals, were making a loud stink and demanding all manner of concessions—tied to the stated goal of preserving the neighborhood's "tradition and quality of life." Penni and everyone at the planning department not to mention those in this room, understood this claim as a ruse. That section of waterfront had no traditional identity—unless broken warehouse windows and floating litter were an identity—and the quality of life, whatever it was now, would be irrevocably changed—by most measures, for the better—by the addition of four hundred exorbitantly priced condos and the associate upscale services they brought.

But the neighborhood coalition had gained some traction around two requests—that ten percent of the condos be priced below market as affordable housing made available to existing residents by lottery; and that the last building in the string, the one to be built on the filled in marsh, be deleted and replaced by a waterfront park. At the earlier meeting Penni had brought the planning department's suggestion that the developer consider these two requests in greater detail.

At that meeting, there followed an hour-long listing of all the reasons why such eleventh-hour changes were impossible, with each person present at the table offering highly detailed justifications from his area of expertise. But at the conclusion of this unified show of resistance, Mr. Duncan had said, "We are not going to send this pretty young lady back to Planning with a perfunctory 'No'. Run the numbers and check with the bean-counters and prepare a formal response for her to take back to City Hall, to be ready in two weeks."

So today she was here to receive their response—first verbally, then in written form to take back to her supervisor and the department.

They were willing to give on the waterfront park idea, but only in exchange for killing the community center they'd agreed to build on a piece of property they'd optioned across the road from the condo complex. Penni figured this wasn't a concession at all but probably a net-savings to them and a net loss to the neighborhood. A community center was year-round and for all ages. The park would be seasonal and accessible to only the able-bodied with daylight hours to spare. Further, she figured the change of heart was linked to an in-house engineering study she'd inadvertently been given access to, that revealed the challenges, and steep costs, of building a high-rise on the marsh.

On the question of affordable housing, they were adamant in their refusal. They cited numerous studies that such initiatives did not increase diversity but did degrade value for the entire complex. According to their research, in a comparable development in North Carolina, more than half the affordable units were unoccupied after five years, putting a drag on the sale of the market-priced units. "The locals don't want to live in these luxury condos," Ted Riley, head of sales, concluded. "They don't feel at home there!"

Penni nodded but said nothing. Her job was to listen and relay information. But she did write on her pad _Why not?_

At the end of the hour, she thanked the men for their efforts and their time, gathered up the two binders containing the details of the responses, and headed to the door.

Mr. Duncan caught up and escorted her to the elevators. "Who knows? You might like to upgrade to one of these units a few years from now."

She laughed. "I could never afford it. But even if I could, my husband and I will probably be a long ways from here."

He shrugged. "Keep it in mind. It will be a good investment, if you get in early."

She nodded as the elevator doors opened. "Good day, Mr. Duncan," she said from the elevator, without shaking his hand in farewell.

His piercing stare held on her till the doors closed and blocked it.

Her walk to City Hall was somewhat more leisurely than the one down here, as she had no appointment time to meet and happily let the sun, now high enough in the sky to penetrate the canyon of skyscrapers, warm her shoulders and soothe her muscles. Her earlier inexplicable optimism persisted though now was tempered by her reflections on the meeting just completed. She was torn between her indignation at being outrageously manipulated—most overtly by the old-enough-to-be-her-father Mark Duncan with his smooth mix of condescension and flirtation, but also by the entire commercial development industry—and her secret elation at having been the focus of attention of six (well, five and a half) bright and highly paid men for an hour's time on the twentieth floor of a gleaming tower of capitalism with a gorgeous view of the harbor and the airport. At some level, she understood that both extremes of response were inappropriate for her, the one being too cynical and jaded, the other too preening and narcissistic. But her natural identity of affable and enthusiastic cooperation, which had thrived for years—since high school at least—without conscious thought or effort, was under assault in her new life in this harsh and lonely city.

At City Hall she went to the tiny office she shared with three other interns (the others were unpaid—at least she got a little income, a cause for both pride and guilt). The office was empty. She sat down and typed out a detailed summary of the meeting from her notes and fresh memories. At the bottom of her report, under the sub-heading _Conclusions and recommendations_ , she paused for many minutes in silent contemplation. She was once again confronted with her job's ill-defined and contradictory priorities. Was she an advocate, however miniscule, for the citizenry in general—of Boston and perhaps beyond—or for the citizenry of the waterfront neighborhood or for the Planning Department or for Mark Duncan and all his fat-cat cohorts and investors that paid her salary? And what about her—what rights did her conscience and character and education and goals have in this equation? In the end, she summarized these far-ranging conscious and semi-conscious thoughts into the following two sentences: _Push for the park_ _and_ _the community center in return for withdrawing the affordable housing. They'll squawk a little then concede._

She printed her report, slid it into an inter-office envelope along with the developer's detailed responses, and took it upstairs to her supervisor's office. The door was locked with a note on the door pad indicating the planner was out for the day. Penni breathed a sigh of relief, glad not to have to provide a verbal assessment to go along with her written one. Her supervisor, a pragmatist from thirty years' experience in urban planning, had a way of undermining her idealism. She slid the envelope through the slot in the door and ran out into the rest of her day, free from obligation at just past noon.

But free to what end? She considered calling Randall to see if he could get away for lunch, but quickly abandoned that idea. Twice in the first week of his residency she'd arranged to meet him at the hospital only to arrive to find him in the midst of some emergency. The second time he'd totally forgot about the appointment and she'd waited outside his office for an hour, repeatedly calling his phone to leave messages that weren't returned. When he'd finally stopped by his office, to pick something up before rushing off to another set of rounds, he'd spotted her and apologized profusely for his oversight. She forgave him and sent him on his way with a kiss but decided that day not to bother him at work with anything short of a dire emergency.

She could go back by the condo. There were plenty more decisions to be made, and she could check on the painter. But that idea had less than zero appeal and no necessity. None of her other decisions had to be made today, and all of them might benefit by seeing the walls painted in the colors of her choosing—or so she hoped.

She could return to their Back Bay apartment rented on a three-month sublet. She had a stack of books waiting from the Public Library. But the apartment was dark and lonely; and her preferred time for reading was night, in bed with the covers pulled up. She could spend the afternoon leafing through cookbooks and planning dinner and buying the ingredients and making the meal—all in hopes Randall actually got home sometime before ten. But what if he didn't?

So when she hit the broad brick plaza outside City Hall's main entrance, she had no idea what she would do. Worse, she had no idea what she wanted to do. The beautiful day had somehow conspired with her morning activities to bring her drifting life into focus, as sharply defined as the lamppost against the crystal blue sky, that lamppost's black shadow against the earth-toned pavers. For the last two years, she'd seen marriage as her destination and convinced herself that once she'd arrived at that destination her future course would be obvious. Now on the other side of that milestone, she saw that indeed her near-term future was determined, defined by the requirements of Randall's career. But she'd made no provision for her own needs or goals. She could subordinate some of those hopes to Randall's career, was doing so. But was she meant to place her whole life on hold till his settled down?

She sat on the low wall beside that solitary lamppost that seemed now not only a symbol for her plight but at the moment an anchor. She wanted to clutch it. Instead, she pushed her hand hard against its wrought-iron base where it socketed into the brick of her seat. The metal, on the side away from the sun, was cool to her touch and surprisingly rough.

Safely moored, she looked out at the smattering of people scattered about the broad plaza. Most were either head to or exiting from the Government Center subway stop across the way. Some were City Hall employees heading out to lunch. A handful—most solitary, a few in pairs—were eating their box or bag lunches on the plaza's steps or low walls. Penni was happy to see all these midday pedestrians in their wide range of attire and pursuits. She was glad for their companionship, however remote. A year ago this would have seemed a very lean diet compared with her full engagement with roommates, classmates, and friends of wide-ranging background and profession. But a recent hard-learned lesson was that one takes what one is given.

A commotion from the Beacon Hill side of the plaza drew her eye. A young woman leading five nursery-school aged kids had somehow got them across the street and safely into the broad plaza. But once there, the kids decided to scatter in all directions—that is, except for the one clinging to her legs and keeping her from chasing after the others. She was shouting for the rest—one, maybe the group's leader, was apparently named Adrian—to stop running and return to her, even as she tried to comfort the little girl wrapped around her legs with pats to her head and attempts to lift her upright. It almost looked like a conspiracy, with the plaintive girl charged with immobilizing the adult while the others escaped. Unfolding in the unobstructed expanse of brick—the kids knew enough to steer clear of the road—it appeared a harmless game, perhaps one played out many times before, and soon a comic relief as the errant four—two boys, two girls—settled into an undulating line lead by the biggest boy, presumably Adrian, who extended his arms mimicking a plane and swooped teasingly close to the woman, who almost got a hand on him but not quite, as he raced past and out into the plaza trailed by the other three, all now with their arms extended and making the whoosh noises of jet engines in the otherwise quiet mall.

As the line of flying children passed close to her bench, Penni suddenly jumped up and took the lead, extending her arms like theirs and heading back toward the young woman, who by now had given up on shouting commands and had lifted the girl from her legs up onto her hip. The four kids all stopped their flying, piling into a small cluster, and stood staring at the adult daring to play their game. Penni used their pause to swoop around behind the last girl in line to block a possible escape attempt. She stopped her antics and stood smiling as a rear guard to the approach of the woman carrying the last child. Adrian eyed this interloper suspiciously and seemed torn between making a dash to freedom and remaining to protect his peers. In the end he appeared reassured by Penni's smile but remained cautious and watchful.

The woman approached, huffing from her exertions. "Thank you so much," she said to Penni, then looked to the oldest boy. "Are you going to behave or do I have to put you back on the leash?"

Penni saw four short woven leashes hanging from the woman's belt and now understood how she'd got the herd safely across the road.

The boy nodded to the woman with a grin caught between bemusement and grudging cooperation.

"My own son and he's the worst of the bunch!"

Penni nodded. "Of course."

The woman was now close enough to extend her free hand. "Molly Dorsey."

"Penni Redmond; I mean, Penni Coulter."

The woman laughed. "I use to be Molly Brennan. Took me forever to get used to the switch. Took Adrian's birth. If he was Adrian Dorsey, then I must be Mrs. Dorsey."

"Is that what it takes?" The woman appeared a few years younger than Penni, and with a son maybe four years old.

"For me. But everyone's different." She set the little girl in her arms on the ground. "This is Elise." The blond girl turned from Penni and buried her face in Molly's legs. "And Sasha and Lauren and Michael and you met Adrian," she said, pointing up the line of now stationary children all watching this newcomer.

Penni nodded to each in turn, then said, "Not all yours?"

"Oh, heavens no. Just Adrian. He's more than enough. The rest are from our building. I take them on Thursdays."

Penni nodded.

"I brought them out here for a little exercise and lunch in the park." She patted the backpack slung over her shoulder. "Maybe a little too ambitious."

Penni laughed. "I think he's got everything under control," she said, looking at Adrian.

Molly nodded. "That's what I'm worried about."

"What if you and Adrian lead the way, and Sasha and I bring up the rear?" The dark-haired lead girl's dark eyes hadn't left her face the whole time.

"That would be great," Molly said with obvious relief. "You don't mind?"

"What do you think, Sasha?" Penni asked.

The girl nodded enthusiastically.

"Adrian, can you show us the way to the park?"

"Walking, please," Molly added.

Adrian pretended to ignore both women but found his way to the head of their group and began a steady march across the bright plaza toward the green of the park on the far side, beyond City Hall.

Penni grabbed her briefcase from the bench then Sasha's hand, the two of them trailing at the end of the somewhat orderly line.

3

Jodie found herself wrapped upright in layers of diaphanous fabric. This is what it would be like to be in a cocoon, she thought, looking at the multiple hazy moons of the houselights through the pale white gauze. Then she grew claustrophobic and suddenly dizzy, feared she'd fall off the stepladder. She thrashed against the entangling fabric and the ladder did indeed wobble, threatening to tip over. But she managed to keep her balance, barely, as the cloth finally loosened and began to unwind from around her body. She breathed a sigh of relief as the drape fell away to one side, revealing the drab and empty theater in its normal stark desolation. Maybe the cocoon wasn't such a bad prison after all.

Three echoing claps from the shadows startled her and again the ladder wobbled.

"Bravo!" a familiar voice shouted. "Maybe I'll have to work twirling shrouds into Act Three's climax!" It was Martine, the play's writer, director and producer. She said she'd be stopping by to check on the set's progress.

"Next time knock, please," Jodie said as Martine emerged from the entry's shadow.

"What? And miss your heroic birthing?"

"I could've fallen."

"I have faith in your refined art of balance," Martine said from the base of the ladder. She offered her hand up to Jodie.

At first Jodie declined the help but finally accepted it as she climbed down from the ancient and decrepit wooden ladder. "When are you going to buy me a safe ladder?"

"When your set earns me millions, ma cherie!" Martine said. By then Jodie was on the stage and Martine enfolded her in a warm hug followed by a light kiss on each cheek.

Jodie didn't return the hug but did brush her lips against each side of the tall and middle-aged woman's long and horsey face. "What heroic birthing?"

"From death's strong bands, my little Lazarene. You thrust out this way, pushed out that way"—Martine mimicked the struggle in grand theatrical manner—"twisted hither and lo, and all without falling earthward. The outcome seemed in doubt but the heroic Jodie emerged unscathed!" She pronounced the last word in three syllables—un-scay-thed. "I really must add it to Act Three!"

"I'm glad you don't have a videotape."

"In my mind, ma cherie," she purred with a suggestive grin. "All I need."

Jodie laughed. "I'm glad I give you such pleasure, Martine."

"Are you really?" She gazed at Jodie with a quizzical look that might have been teasing or might have been desperation.

Jodie held her stare in a momentary pause that might have been teasing or might have been serious contemplation. Finally she laughed and said, "Sure, Martine. I'm glad." Then she added, "Now if you want this ready for rehearsal next week, I'd better get back to work."

"Can I help?"

"You comfortable on a ladder, a shaky one at that?"

"Terrified of heights."

"Know how to sew?"

"Never learned."

"Wire a light fixture?"

Martine threw up her arms in surrender. "Maybe I should go to the office and collate the parts."

Jodie nodded. "You do your thing; I'll do mine."

"Yell if you need anything."

"If you come out and see only my feet sticking up out of the stage and the ladder overturned, sue the producer."

"No blood from a stone, ma cherie," Martine said as she walked to the office door at the end of one of the four aisles between the circular arrangement of amphitheater seating.

The theater was housed in a metal building in an older residential neighborhood of Seattle. It had been founded and endowed twenty years ago by a fan of modern drama who had made millions in the software business, and its round stage and seating for a hundred were made available free of charge for the presentation of original plays selected by a board that included playwrights and stage actors of national stature. Martine's play _Modern Chastity_ had been so selected, and she in turn had hired Jodie to do set design and construction.

The play in three acts takes place over the course of a single night as allegorical Virginity (named Britomart after the Spenserian champion of the virtue of Chastity) falls asleep at dusk and is enveloped by a series of vivid dreams of increasing erotic intensity and realism, each dream using sexual allusion and imagery from a different historical period. After her full night, sweet Britomart rouses with the unspoken question—Am I still Virginity?—and leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions.

Jodie's set design was simple in concept but challenging in execution, particularly given her budgetary limitations. The entire play would be watched through a circular scrim, a gauze curtain of variable density (determined by the number of layers) and color (determined by lighting). To achieve this effect she would run three parallel curtain tracks controlling three layers of translucent white curtain. The inner two layers would be simple white gauze of a lightweight and open weave; the outer layer would be lace in an Antwerp style. She would add LED lighting to the curtain track to be used in addition to the existing stage lights to create multiple effects in tandem with the layered scrim. She would also arrange several video projectors around the stage to project words and images on the scrim, to complement the actors' performances behind the scrim. This effect would be especially useful in the climactic contemporary dream when sleeping Britomart is wooed and bedazzled not by real human figures in conjugal endeavor but by text messages and accompanying suggestive photos.

Jodie was proud of her concept and Martine loved it. There was only one problem—even in this small theater, it was a fifty thousand dollar set with a twenty thousand dollar budget (including Jodie's salary). "My grant, ma cherie; my grant!" Martine would cry every time Jodie mentioned money. To work within this limited budget, Jodie called in favors from techie friends, searched every remnant rack of every fabric store in the city, and worked as Martine's production assistant to sidestep the Guild's high hourly rates. She also did all the cutting, hemming, and installation work herself, which was why she was here today, hanging the first of the gauze layers. She intentionally did not keep track of her hours, knowing that if she did she would discover that she was making less than the high school girl flipping burgers down the street.

And in the end, she didn't care about the wages. She loved stage design's mix of creative concept and, at least at this small-scale level, hands-on application. And she didn't need the money, as Dave Sr.'s monthly allowance paid most of her modest living expenses. Having a creative job with flexible hours mattered far more to her than saving money for future goals that were vague to invisible. None of these contemplations made their way into her thoughts as she concentrated on proper spacing and attachment of the drapery clips in the top hem of the inner curtain, working in focused blissful silence that let her forget the complexities of her life beyond this stage.

Around dusk—but how would she know? the theater had no windows and she didn't wear a watch and her cellphone was in her rucksack—Martine emerged from the office after rapping lightly on the door to honor Jodie's earlier request.

"Yes?" Jodie said in a sweet and lilting voice.

"You must be starving," Martine said.

Jodie shrugged. "Now that you mention it, I am. I somehow forgot to eat lunch."

Martine clucked in mother-hen fashion. "You must take better care of yourself, ma cherie."

"Looking for a child to raise?"

Martine frowned. "Just safeguarding the production—can't have my set designer collapsing from malnutrition."

"What do you think?" Jodie slid the first layer of curtains back and forth by hand, as the motors weren't yet wired.

Martine stepped to the small lighting booth, cut the house lights and brought up the center stage lights in their silver-white default setting. Jodie slipped behind her curtain and dusted off a few ballerina moves from three years' lessons in grade school. The curtain's effect was indeed dreamlike—the childhood ballerina trapped in perpetual fantasy. Martine moved the lighting from white through yellow to orange to blood red. Jodie responded with a rapid stationary twirl that ended in a quite believable collapse.

Martine brought up the houselights and raced to the stage.

Jodie peeked up from her heap of flesh on the floor. "Swan Lake, anyone?"

Martine shook her head. "More like Salome."

Jodie stood in a graceful reversal of her spinning fall. "I'll keep my day job."

"Earn more from dancing."

"Yeah, but no rickety ladders to climb."

"Suit yourself. Can I buy the rickety-ladder-climber dinner?"

"Will it come out of my salary?"

Martine weighed the offer. "You're a tough negotiator. I think I can get the producer to spring for the meal—call it business entertainment and take it off on her taxes."

"Then lead on."

She did, out the door and to her Mercedes for the short drive to an unpretentious café with a southern theme. When they were seated in a booth at the back, Martine leaned forward and whispered "Make you feel right at home?" referring to the menu's listing of southern specialties like fried green tomatoes, collard greens, chicken fried steak, and hushpuppies.

Martine practiced the now familiar ploy of middle-aged lesbians to lure the object of their ardor into a conspiratorial public intimacy, as a prelude to hoped-for private intimacy. Originally the tactic had confused and troubled Jodie— _Why is this woman whispering to me?_ —and had led to a few monumental blowups and one briefly broken heart (hers). But now she found the method amusing and happily played along. Though she'd eaten several times at this restaurant, as it was not far from where she lived, she feigned surprise. "Fried green tomatoes?" she exclaimed with barely suppressed glee. "I haven't had those since I was a kid!" Manipulation could cut two ways (and she hoped the young waitress didn't recognize her from last time).

Martine sat back with a satisfied nod. "I thought you might like the treat. I'm surprised you haven't ever eaten here."

Jodie fixed her with a steady gaze. "I've passed by many times and always wanted to try it. Thanks so much for bringing me."

"A small gesture for all your hard work. I really don't know what I'd do without you, Jodie."

For a split second Jodie forgot the rules of the game and blushed. Martine sounded so sincere and she was genuinely touched by her avowal. "You've written a wonderful play, and I'm honored to be a part of bringing it to life."

"First life, Jodie!" Martine said, leaning forward and laying her hand over Jodie's resting on the thick wooden table. "We'll see it born together."

Jodie left her hand under Martine's and stared at the woman calmly. That touch had acted like a lightning rod for her briefly confused emotions, grounding them once again in a simple truth— _This woman wants you naked in her bed under her tall if slightly flabby body. You can go there or not, but don't confuse her lust for love or admiration or commitment._ "So which of us will go into labor?" Jodie asked deadpan.

Martine leaned back and laughed loud and long. "You are a little fox, ma cherie," she said when her braying laugh subsided. "You labor now. I'll labor later."

"Wouldn't that be an equitable way to give birth."

Jodie ordered the vegetarian platter—those green tomatoes and collards plus hoppin' john and fried okra—and Martine ordered the Louisiana gumbo—"My DNA attested through my love of Cajun cooking!"—and they ate their meals in quiet conversation that was surprisingly relaxed given the undercurrent of hidden purpose. Jodie described how she'd ended up in Seattle via design school and a brief stint in San Francisco before following "a friend" up here, leaving the sex of the friend and the current status of the relationship ambiguous. Martine described her marriage to a New York stage actor who decided he wanted to be gay full-time only to die of AIDS soon thereafter. "Glad he left you before the AIDS," Jodie ventured. "Oh, we never slept together," Martine said. "I just loved the idea of being married to such a beautiful man!" She continued to describe how she'd kicked around New York after becoming a widow in title if not in her heart, and later LA "when New York became unbearably oppressive" only to eventually wind up in Seattle because the small theater scene was so "vibrant and pristine—at least back then."

They suspended their idle chatter during dessert (a hot fudge sundae for Jodie, her first "in years, maybe decades") and coffee (for Martine—"I need to watch my blood sugar") as they silently gazed at each other across the table with unabashed curiosity. Though Martine's expression was coyly neutral, Jodie knew she was apprising her young assistant as tonight's possible dessert, sweet enough but without the risks of sugar (and willfully ignoring the other risks). From her side, Jodie was trying to determine how much she needed Martine—or, more accurately, if Martine could support the weight of her need. In light of this, she reevaluated the possible meaning of Martine's steady gaze—was she asking herself if she could support the weight of this needful child, should that child choose to remain?

Outside standing beside the car, Martine stated her case bluntly. "I'll drive you to the home of your choice, but I'd rather it be mine than yours."

Jodie chuckled. "That's the sweetest phrasing I've ever heard. You must be a writer!"

Martine frowned in the streetlight's pale glow but said nothing.

"I meant it as a sincere compliment, Martine." Jodie stepped forward and on her tiptoes gave Martine a hug that was far more than friendly but not quite passionate or erotic. She felt Martine's body tense in anticipation. She immediately regretted the misinterpretation, gave Martine a light kiss on the cheek, then stepped back. "Thanks for dinner, Martine. And thanks for believing in me. I'm going to walk home from here. It's not that far and I could use the exercise after that sundae."

Martine sighed, but was it in relief or regret? "You're sure? I'll be glad to drive you."

"I'm sure. Thanks again for everything."

"See you tomorrow at the theater?"

"I'll be there, quivering on the ladder!"

"Maybe I'll see if the producer will spring for a new one."

"What—and take away all my excitement?"

"There are other avenues to excitement, ma cherie."

"Boulevards? Highways? Interstates?"

"Take your pick."

"Maybe one day I will." She immediately regretted that too—a shameless tease. But nothing to do except drop it and move on. "Good night, Martine."

"Good night, Jodie."

When she'd conceived her graceful and, she hoped, neutral extrication at around the second bite of that delicious sundae (the ice cream was pure decadence, not to mention the dripping fudge sauce), Jodie fully expected her walk home in the cool and damp night to be a kind of victory lap at negotiating, for the time being anyway, the tricky shoals of a professional relationship becoming too personal. Or, if not a self-satisfied stroll in the dark then at least a slow decompression from a very loaded day, a time to let more than just her meal digest.

But she hadn't walked a block along the empty street, Martine just now passing with a quick double-toot on her horn, before Jodie realized this solitary walk was going to be anything but self-congratulatory or soothing. The earthquake's rumble had started with the tensing of Martine's body. Why had she given her that kiss anyway? That had ruined the whole plan. In her visceral response to Martine's desire, Jodie discovered she was no longer in control. She might fool Martine into thinking she was in control, play her deftly with her years of training and experience, not to mention the advantage of a lithe body twenty years younger. But she couldn't fool herself. She needed Martine more than Martine needed her.

But why? If she didn't want her body—and how could she, fleshy and overweight and wrinkled?—then what did she want? Her security? Her support? Her encouragement? She wanted all those, craved them every bit as breathlessly and irrationally and passionately as the old woman wanted her body. She wanted Martine's approval. She needed Martine's approval. How fucked up was that? Thirty-five years old and still a little girl after her mother's love.

The night closed in quickly. The solitude she'd thought she wanted was the last thing she needed. She considered calling Martine back—she had her number in her cellphone's list. One press of a button and this would all be fixed—for tonight. But what about tomorrow and tomorrow night and next week and next month and next year? Was this her life here on out—trading sex for love, cheapening both? When did that end—with her body soft and flabby like the women she played? And how far off was that? How many times do you play the same trump card before it shows wear marks at the edges? Was that already the case? How would she know?

She started seeing people in the dark street—first a young couple climbing out of a tiny sports car. Then three guys emerging from a duplex. Then a van disgorging a whole family—grandparents, parents, three school-aged kids. Then a small gang of teenaged street youth that weren't usually in this neighborhood. The scattered groups coalesced into a stream of people, quietly assembling around her in the dark, all headed the same direction as she.

Then she understood—they were headed to Compline at St. Mark's Cathedral. Parking at the church was limited; so people parked on the side streets, anywhere they could find a spot. And now everyone walked along in a hushed silence, as if in reverence for the event to come.

Jodie used to go to Compline almost weekly, when the crowd she hung out with would all get high in the park or at someone's basement apartment then descend together on the dark and cavernous sanctuary to sit, or lie, in the corners (which was permitted, since the pews were full long before the service started and the rector would not allow anyone to be turned away) and let the haunting sounds of the office of hours drift over her, descend on her, penetrate through her—or so it seemed in her varying states of fuzzy brain. She liked being disassembled by the ancient chants and texts, broken down into her constituent parts with her body pressed between the stone floor and someone else's side. It all seemed very elemental and intoxicating in its own substance-free way. But then the chants seemed a substance, something with weight and energy and force—enough to break her apart. She'd several times been wakened by the black-robed rector standing over her in an empty sanctuary now bathed in light, her closest approach yet to Heaven.

But tonight she was not high and there was no crowd of companions to buffer her. She'd not been to Compline in years, since shedding that crowd and their dead-end nihilist ways. She'd sometimes heard a new friend or acquaintance talk about this "haunting ancient liturgy" and invite her to come. But she'd always quietly declined or made up an excuse. She was afraid of what those chants might uncover in her—some old self she didn't want to know, or some new self she wasn't prepared to.

But the crowd carried her along with it. She was powerless to resist, some part of her surrendering to any guidance except self-will. She recalled Renoir's "leaf in a stream" fatalist view of life's destiny and purpose. She wasn't good at such capitulation but tonight she had little to lose—except herself, and what was that?

Inside the cavernous sanctuary was as she remembered—dimly lit and crowded with a soft murmur that might have been human or divine in origin and was somehow more ponderous than silence, an intimation of eternity or oblivion if there was a difference. She followed her adopted family—that is, those who had coalesced around her several blocks back—until they started to fall away, a few to seats on the floor along the wall, others to individual spots that magically appeared on the pews for the elderly or children. One lecherously grinning old man caught her eye and patted a six-inch wide spot on the pew beside him. She stared blankly a second—was he the bit of flotsam where her leaf would lodge?—before nodding a thanks but turning to continue toward the front of the sanctuary, between bodies seated on the floor along a path that grew steadily narrower as she neared the chancel. Finally there was no more pathway, just bodies scattered about, eyes looking up at her.

She fixed her gaze on a massive column supporting the roof and moved toward it, stepping over people to get there. When she arrived she found others leaning against the column. But on the back side in the shadow there was a narrow opening in the ring of watchers. She smiled to the street kids on either side of the gap—a teenaged boy with tattoos creeping up his neck above his hooded sweatshirt and ragged fingerless gloves, and a very young girl maybe not yet in her teens with piercings in her ears, eyebrows, nose, and lips. The boy frowned at her and looked away, but the girl smiled and shimmied aside to create a little more space. And Jodie sat down. The stone floor was cold and the ridges on the carved column hit her spine at an uncomfortable spot. Someone nearby—perhaps the teenaged boy—smelled of body odor. The young girl put her hand, covered in cheap rings, on the knee of her worn jeans to give Jodie more room. But her leg pressed up against Jodie's on that side. Jodie closed her eyes and felt like she was home, but she desperately craved a hit—of anything—to take the edge off.

Just then the service opened with the chanted invocation and antiphonal response. And the male choir at the back of the sanctuary proceeded through their chanted readings, prayers, and canticles. Though sung a cappella in English, Jodie understood none of the words but all of the sounds, which were simultaneously familiar and utterly new. Despite being sober and too tense, those sounds slowly dissolved her consciousness into something like the old daze only without the drugs. Those sounds didn't need chemical assistance to work on her soul, to effect transcendence. No wonder this service was always overflowing. Why hadn't she discovered it clean before now?

She opened her eyes late in the rite. They looked toward the massive round window at the front of the sanctuary. All parts of the window were lit from within and reflected the interior's artificial golden light—except for the small round pane at the center, undivided amidst the larger surrounding window's symmetrical rays. That center circle was starkly black, letting in the darkness beyond. Was that hole at the center meant to be promise or curse? Whichever it was, the sight sent a shiver through her body just as the choir sung the haunting closing canticle—"that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace": words she understood but could not feel.

She looked to her left. The young girl had fallen asleep, her head now lolling against Jodie's shoulder, a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth. Jodie had not noticed when the weight had started and wondered how long the girl had been like that. She waited for the crowd, including the frowning boy, to rise and thin before brushing the girl's cheek to wake her gently. The girl opened her eyes with a fright that only slowly faded as she recognized Jodie and began to place where she was. She smiled then stood and ran after her cohorts.

Back at their apartment, Jodie quietly opened the door to her roommate's bedroom. Andrea lay asleep in her wide bed, dimly visible in the hall's light. Though she and Andrea had ended their romance years ago and settled into a comfortable and independent cohabitation, they'd agreed each to welcome the other into bed, no questions asked, as needed in moments of extreme loneliness or despair. Neither had used the option often, and not for months now. But tonight Jodie closed the door behind her, slipped her shoes and sweatshirt off, and slid under the covers, lying on her side and facing away, only her calf brushing Andrea's shin. It was enough just to be there.

Andrea roused at the touch, rolled sideways and lay her arm over Jodie's shoulder to snuggle her from behind. She kissed Jodie's neck then fell asleep again, her easy exhalations fluffing Jodie's hair.

In the middle of the night or wee hours of pre-dawn darkness, Jodie woke to the touch of Andrea easing off her yoga pants beneath the covers, then her panties. The feel of her former lover's panting breaths between her legs was surreal and mesmerizing and arousing and familiar and terrifying, everything except reassuring.

4

Leah stood on the low rise looking down toward the green line of the creek in gray fall clouds. The orange "tree-planter" truck had backed up to the surveyor's stake marked by the blue flag in the mix of knee-high grasses and wildflowers that had gone brown since the frost last week.

The truck's operator climbed out of the cab and up the ladder onto the seat at the excavator's controls. The stabilizing legs extended out to either side of the bed then the silver, cone-shaped excavator rose from its horizontal transport position to vertical suspension above the surveyor's stake, looking all the world like an inverted spaceship destined to blast-off into the ground rather than outer space—which was basically what it did, only without the roar or smoke. The silver tines separated from a point to form a cylindrical shape then dropped toward the earth then pushed into the ground of the creek bank. As the points disappeared into the soft soil, the tines gradually came back together at the tip so that when the operator reversed the process and raised the excavator, it encased a cone-shaped mass of dirt six feet across and approximately that tall, leaving a gaping hole where field had been.

The operator locked the excavator in its vertical position above the ground, retracted the stabilizer arms, climbed down off his perch and into the truck's cab and drove the excavator with its load of fresh dirt out to the edge of the gravel parking lot. Without getting out of the cab, he remotely opened the excavator's tines and deposited his mound of black loamy soil to be stockpiled for future plantings. Then he drove over to the other side of the parking area where the two twenty-foot tall weeping willows had been dropped off by the landscaper's flatbed delivery truck the day before. The driver stopped alongside those trees with their huge root balls encased in layers of brown burlap. He turned off his truck and rolled down his window and said something to Billy Erwin, the project supervisor standing to one side in his canvas field coat.

Billy said something back then started walking toward Leah. He could've waved to her or shouted across the fifty yards of mowed lawn. But he didn't take that shortcut, instead walked all the way up to her before he tried to communicate.

She liked that about him, the respect and patience it showed. She also wondered if he somehow knew she were once deaf, a time when she couldn't have heard instructions shouted from far away, needed the close proximity of lip-reading or sign language. But he'd only known her since the start of the reclamation late last summer—how could he have known she was once deaf? Then she remembered—her implants. But weren't they well-hidden by her hair? Had she ever referred to them in his presence? Had he guessed their function? Did he know someone who was deaf but now could hear?

"Good morning, Mrs. Monroe."

"Hey, Billy," she said and smiled. "How long will it be before I can get you to call me Leah?" He was only about ten years younger than she, tall and lanky and handsome with brown hair worn slightly too long and big soft eyes that always looked either pensive or sad, or maybe both—sad because they were pensive.

Billy gave her his standard response—a sweet half-smile and the words, "When we toast the completed project."

"Then I'll look forward to that day for two reasons."

Billy nodded. "Me, too." Then he waved toward the parking lot. "Joe wants to know which tree you want to put in this hole and the orientation."

"I get to choose that?"

"With this driver on this day, yes."

Leah laughed. "What an honor."

Billy smiled, "Least we can do for our gracious funding coordinator."

"Can you advise me on the choices?"

"Sure. Come take a look."

Leah was here in her current role as chairperson of Green Ways, a small Atlanta non-profit that raised money to be used to "beautify urban neighborhoods through the addition of plants and greenery." Years ago when she and Jasper had founded the group as his eighth-grade community project, they did little more than plant spindly home-improvement store remaindered trees (acquired by Jasper for free in return for a letter of thanks and a blogpost recognition) in the barren front yards of decrepit mill shacks in rundown, crime-ridden neighborhoods. At the time, Whitfield told Leah that he thought the initiative would "last about as long as one of those poor trees in the Georgia sun." But Jasper faithfully returned weekly to all those trees to refill their watering bladders from a barrel he strapped down on the family's weekend pick-up (driven by Leah, always in daylight). And all of those trees survived except for two—one snapped off by a car that careened off the road and through the tree before crashing into the house's porch, and the other that was chopped down by a drunk with what must've been a very dull axe, or maybe a pocket knife, judging from the frayed stump.

And Green Ways had grown steadily through Jasper's high school years, propelled by his vision and determination and social conscience, until he served as the Board's director his senior year, oversaw a two hundred thousand dollar annual budget and planned the reclamation of a littered and polluted seasonal creek marking the boundary between a poor neighborhood being ever so slowly restored and a hi-tech research park built over the bulldozed lots of a former slum. When he'd headed off to college, he'd handed the leadership of the company over to his mother with the explicit instructions to "make sure the Moultrie Creek restoration is done right."

So here she was, making sure it was "done right," even to the point of orienting the weeping willows in the most aesthetically pleasing manner. She couldn't help but wonder if Jasper would agree with her choices and almost sent him a photo of the process, not to ask his opinion so much as to let him know she was on the job. But she suppressed this impulse. He'd seemed distant the last few weeks, not responding to some of her text messages and being short and curt in his e-mails. He apologized once, saying he was busy with mid-terms and papers. But she knew there was more at work here than simply a full schedule. She needed to learn to let him go, and it was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

Afterwards Billy walked back up from the creek bank where he'd just given instructions to the Hispanic workers mulching the freshly planted willows. Once standing beside her, he turned to survey the morning's efforts. The two weeping willows stood tall and still with most of their leaves, presiding over the natural area bordering the clean creek with its freshly rocked banks, looking like they'd been there all along. "What do you think?"

"It looks wonderful, Billy. Thanks for all your work. Do you think they need watering?"

Billy shook his head. "Not with the winter rains coming. We'll keep an eye on them next summer."

Leah nodded then raised her eyes to the field on the far side of the creek, sloping up to the back side of those research labs. "You think an arched bridge would look pretty there?" She pointed to a spot halfway between the willows.

Billy shrugged. "Might be a nice focal point, now that we have the trees. But we're already over budget."

Leah grinned indulgently. "You let me worry about that."

He laughed. "Always glad to do that. Give me a concept when you're ready, and I'll price it out."

Leah nodded. "I will." She turned to say goodbye then remembered something. "Can you step over to the car?"

"Sure." He followed to the car on the far side of the gravel parking area.

She reached into the passenger seat and pulled out an unopened bottle of store-bought green tea and an empty bottle from the cup holder. She opened the tea and poured half of it into the other bottle, then handed him the fresh bottle.

He looked at her with a child-like tilt of his head.

She smiled, enjoying his momentary puzzlement. "I'm declaring this phase of the project complete—those willows did the trick."

He nodded assent and tapped her bottle. "Cheers." He raised the bottle toward his mouth.

"And?" Leah said with eyebrows raised in expectation.

"And what?"

"And what's my name?"

He blushed and laughed. "Cheers, Leah." He tapped her bottle again.

"Cheers, Billy. And thank you."

He nodded and drank his tea in one long draught.

She sipped hers, letting the moment last just a little longer.

Leah then drove across town to Pritchard Academy, the private school Jasper had attended from kindergarten on, to meet Walton Krey and see that the auditorium was properly set up for the rehearsal today and performance Saturday night of his string quartet. This was another responsibility brought on by Jasper's extracurricular activities. He had played the violin since grade school, the last few years taking master's class lessons from Mr. Krey himself. Some years ago, the school's music director had asked her to serve on the committee planning special presentations in the performing arts. She'd agreed and somehow ended up as chair of that committee. But this performance of the Krey Quartet marked her last event as a member of that committee. She'd hand her three-ring notebook and a full slate of events for next year off to Jack Oliver, her successor as chair and father of a first-rate oboist who still had a couple years left at Pritchard. It was so much easier to fulfill these volunteer duties when the subject of your attention and sacrifice was still in residence.

"How is young Jasper faring at State?" Walton Krey asked as they surveyed the empty school auditorium from the back row.

As always, Walton was wearing a seersucker suit (only the colors changed—green, brown, wine, blue, charcoal—according to a secret schedule) with a precisely knotted bowtie and matching kerchief. Jasper had sometimes complained about Mr. Krey's demanding standards, but Leah always found him amusing in his eccentric pomposity. "Not so young anymore, I'm afraid."

Walton raised his bushy gray eyebrows. "Still in touch?"

"Oh, sure—almost every day. But they do grow up." She stared at the stage and recalled Jasper's crowning recital there last spring, could hear the mournful notes of his Bach concerto. The memory brought tears to her eyes.

"Our cross to bear, Mrs. Monroe," Walton said, almost a whisper.

Leah blinked away her tears. "Ours?"

Walton smiled whimsically. "Parents and teachers: always bidding farewell to our greatest achievements—with smiles on our faces!"

"How do you manage, Mr. Krey?"

He gazed at her with big owlish eyes. "Never stop playing, Mrs. Monroe."

"And if you don't have a talent?"

"But that wouldn't be your problem, now, would it?" he said before heading down the aisle to check on the arrangement of the four chairs and music stands at the center of the stage.

On her way home Leah swung by the retirement community to check on her father-in-law, Cap Monroe. His real name was Wesley but he'd been given the name Cap in his baseball playing heyday when he'd where his ball cap wherever he went, long before it was fashionable to do so. Now everyone called him Cap, even his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and everyone gave him caps for presents, though he rarely wore them.

He'd lost his wife, Whitfield's mother, to a stroke ten years ago, promptly moved into the retirement community and met a widow there, Laurel Jensen, and married her in a quiet ceremony though they kept their separate apartments ("Couldn't fit all our stuff in one place no-how!"). Laurel had died of cancer this past spring and Cap, who turned eighty-nine last month, seemed to give up. Now he only left his apartment to eat, and the community's social worker had suggested to the family it was time to think about the assisted-living facility. He could get around O.K. with his walker, but he didn't have any interest in the social activities that used to mean so much to him.

"How's my big teddy bear?" Leah said as she bent over to give him a hug as he sat in his chair watching the twenty-four-hour news channel with no sound, the closed captions flashing across the bottom of the screen.

"Send him back," Cap said without getting up.

"Send who back?" Leah asked as she sat in the upholstered chair that used to be Laurel's but was now hers, at least during her frequent visits.

"That old wrinkly teddy bear who stays in his chair all day."

Leah laughed. "Can't send him back. Discontinued the model long ago."

"Then send him out to pasture."

"Might get chased by those frisky young fillies!"

"What would they want with a wrinkly old teddy bear?"

"The bear has charms he doesn't even know about."

"Like how to growl in five different languages."

"Would those be bear languages or human or horse?"

"Grizzly, Kodiak, brown, polar, and black."

"And what's his native growl?"

"With a mug like this, got to be grizzly!" He rubbed at his stubbled chin then gave her a smile—first for days.

Leah laughed. "You growing a beard or just taken a day off from shaving?"

"Told you—joining the grizzlies!"

"I'll make sure the kitchen stores their supplies in locked cabinets."

"Too late—already raided the pantry." He waved toward several Styrofoam containers on his kitchenette's counter.

"Doesn't have to go in the fridge, does it?"

"Bears eat rotten food all the time—tastes better."

"Till it hits the stomach." She stood to check out the containers.

"What do I care?" Cap grumbled as she walked past. He hit the mute button on the remote and the news anchor's voice roared out from the T.V.

Leah sorted through the food containers, threw out the ones that smelled bad, labeled the others with a marker and stacked them in his dorm fridge. Then she walked over and gently pried the remote out of his hand and lowered the volume to a more normal level. "I've got my implants, Cap. Can hear just fine."

"But I can't. Got any implants for me?"

"I'll bring them tomorrow."

"Don't bother." He raised the volume again.

Leah walked over and switched off the T.V.

Cap switched it on.

She unplugged the T.V.

"What you do that for?"

"I came to talk to you. I can't talk over shouting news."

He glowered at her. "Ain't got nothing to talk about."

"Not even with me?" She gave him a childish pout as she sat back down.

"What you wasting your time with me for?"

"Maybe I like being with you."

He laughed ironically. "Not even you can make that lie believable."

"You've still got plenty of life to live, Cap."

He fixed her in a hard stare. "I've lost two wives, Leah. The first one took half my heart with her; the second, the other half. I don't have anything left to live for, except sitting in this chair watching all the news of people worse off than me."

Leah looked at him with sadness and compassion.

"And somebody has unplugged the T.V. and deprived an old man of his one consolation." There was no humor in his voice.

Leah sighed. She stood quickly, leaned over and kissed his forehead, then plugged in the T.V. before leaving. In her wake she thought she heard him say "Thank you," but it may have been someone on the shouting T.V.

Back at home she prepared the Chicken Country Captain that was one of her signature dishes. Both Jasper and Whitfield loved the dish and would always cheer upon opening the door and smelling the exotic mix of garlic, onions, curry powder, and thyme. But tonight in the empty house, those pungent scents had more the association of funereal incense than delightful cooking odors. Jasper's cheer would not greet these odors this night; and Whitfield was late again, surely showing a client a property on his way home from work. He kept saying he planned to cut back, had hired a vivacious young office manager with the intention of doing just that. Why then was he always late? The rice would be a ruin.

She covered the two pots on the stove and turned off the burners. She hung her apron on the hook of the two-way swinging door into the dining room, then walked down the hall and into the dark den. She sat in her favorite chair but didn't turn on the light. She stared at the shadows of the gas logs in their granite-framed fireplace. They would leap to life with blue-tipped flames and radiant warmth if she but tapped the remote on the end table beside her. But she left it alone, left all of it alone. As a last gesture of surrender, she reached behind her ears and switched off her microprocessors—first the right, then the left—knew again the freedom of silence.

End of the Strand

The phone's ringer blared into the dark bedroom.

Whitfield reached toward the nightstand without turning on the light and grabbed the handset. "Hello."

"Whitfield, it's Brooke. Did I wake you? It's not that late, is it? I need to talk to Leah."

"Hold on." Whitfield rolled over and shook Leah's shoulder. She was sleeping on her side facing away from him. He felt her roll toward him but still couldn't see her for the darkness and his sleep-blurred vision. "It's your sister," he said.

Leah made no verbal response but he felt her sit up in bed. By then he'd wakened sufficiently to realize that Leah had her processors off and couldn't hear him. He reached behind with his free hand to turn on the bedside lamp; but before he found the knob, the room leapt forth in light from Leah switching on her lamp. He rolled over to face her, blinking his eyes against the sudden brilliance and the thin glaze coating his pupils.

Leah, sitting against the headboard in her flannel nightgown, tilted her head in question. Though she could speak quite well without her processors, she rarely did, a vestigial reticence even among loved ones, from her days of deafness.

Whitfield held up the phone then carefully annunciated, recalled from their days of dating and first years of marriage, "It's Brooke on the phone."

Leah quickly looked at the bedside clock—11:38. At first she was annoyed—Brooke being self-centered, again. Then she became alarmed. Brooke rarely called these days, and never late. She looked back at Whitfield, raised one finger, pointed toward her ears—the missing microprocessors—and then toward the hall study that had been Jasper's nursery but was now her personal space. She'd take the call in there.

Whitfield nodded and put the phone to his mouth. "Leah will put on her hearing and take the call in the study," he said.

Brooke said, "Why do y'all go to bed so early?"

Whitfield knew that if he said anything, it wouldn't be nice. So he said nothing.

Leah jumped out of the bed. She lifted the right-side processor off its charger base on top of the dresser—she'd only need the one for a phone call—and quickly attached its magnet to her implant and hung the microphone over her ear. She raced across the bedroom and down the hall. Just before ducking into the study, she waved back toward Whitfield, still lying flat on his back with the covers to his chin.

He heard Leah say on the phone, "I've got it now." So he pressed the center button to hang up, returned the handset to its holder, and rolled over to go back to sleep. The light bothered him, so he reached across the bed and switched it off. Leah could find her way back in the dark, with perfect cat-like eyesight much refined from her decades of deafness.

On hearing Leah's voice, Brooke said again, "Why do y'all go to bed so early?"

"It's eleven-forty, Brooke. Most of America is asleep by now."

"Not me."

"Clearly. Why are you calling?"

"Can't a Big Sis call the Little Sis just to talk?"

"Not at eleven-forty at night. Not out of the blue."

"Why not? It's a special privilege, being able to talk to you on the phone. Remember all those letters we used to write because we couldn't talk on the phone? Think of how our lives would've been different if I could've just picked up the phone in the dorm hall and called you up and talked about all the day's trials and tribulations. Think of it, Leah. Instead, I had to sit down and pour my heart out in a letter and wait a week for a response and by then all the trials and tribulations had changed."

When Brooke had started what was clearly a diversion, Leah was committed not to fall for the ploy. It was classic Brooke. But somewhere halfway through, she lost her determination. "I still have those letters," she said quietly.

"You do? That's wonderful, Leah! The keeping them part, that is. But don't you dare show them to anyone. Lord knows what I said during those days of adolescent turmoil!"

"I remember a lot of what you said, Brooke."

"You read them again?"

"No. I just remember. You were trying to grow up and discover who you were."

"And screwing up every way I knew how. On second thought, burn those letters!"

"No, Brooke, I won't"

"I lost yours, somewhere in all those moves back then."

"That's O.K."

"At least I think I lost them. Maybe they're in some box in the attic. I don't know what all is up there."

"That's O.K., Brooke."

"I'll have to go up there tomorrow and look for them."

"Why did you call?"

"Maybe they're in with my school papers."

"Brooke!" Leah said with a rare raising of her voice. The word sounded strange at that volume and through only one ear.

"What?"

"Why did you call?" Leah said, her volume back to normal but her words slow and insistent.

"Do you remember that cottage on the end of Bogue Island?"

"The three-story one with the gables and the widow's walk?"

"Hard to forget, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I've rented it."

"It's still there? I figured it had been bulldozed and turned into a development decades ago."

"The opposite. That end of the island is plagued by erosion and storm surges. It was declared off limits to development after Fran cut a channel through the road and took out the bottom floor of that cottage. They tried to get the house condemned but the owners fought in court and won the right to keep the house, for now anyway. They remodeled using only the top two floors, so now the cottage sits way up in the air on piers. It will probably still be there when the rest of Bogue Beach is washed away."

"So how do you get to it?"

"Four-wheeler or walk."

"And you rented it."

"I've always wanted to stay out there, since we were kids."

"I know. You once threatened to drag me out there and break in. It was always empty. I thought it was haunted—scared me to death."

"The idea of breaking in or the house?"

"Both."

"Well, you'd better get over your fears because I've rented it for a girls' weekend."

"What girls?"

"The Fulcher girls—you, me, Jodie, and Penni."

"For when?"

"Week after next."

"That's Easter."

"Duh."

"I've got plans with Whitfield's family. We're taking his dad to church."

"Change them."

"It'll be cold and windy out there."

"We're not going for sunbathing."

"What are we going for?"

"I'll tell you when we get there."

"Brooke!"

"That's why we're going—for me to tell you something."

Leah took a breath to protest, to flat deny Brooke's order to turn her life and plans upside-down without more explanation or justification. But she let her refusal dissipate unspoken. Some long dormant intuition told her that Brooke wouldn't be swayed from her plan, no matter how hard she pushed. And an even deeper intuition, something approaching her genetic wiring, told her that Brooke wouldn't be pulling this outrageous stunt if it weren't important. "When are you going to get there?"

"We've got it from Friday through Monday. I'll be there by noon Friday, in Dave's big-wheel pickup to get us back and forth. There's a parking lot at the end of the paved road where you can leave your car."

"What should I bring?"

"I'll bring everything we need."

Leah sighed. "You're scaring me, Brooke."

"Like when I wanted us to break in?"

"Worse."

"I'll explain when you get out there."

"O.K."

"But you need to do me one favor."

Leah paused. "What's that?"

"You have to get Jodie there."

"Brooke!"

"She won't come if I ask, but she'll do it for you."

"She's your daughter."

"I'll get Penni. You bring Jodie."

Leah didn't know what to say, so she said nothing.

"Thanks, Sis. See you a week from Friday."

Leah said, "I love you," just as the line went dead.

2

Leah parked in one corner of the empty patch of pavement and turned off the car. Beyond the windshield that was already clouded with the haze of dried saltwater, the ocean churned gray and angry under wind-whipped dark clouds broken by an occasional glimpse of blue. Gusts of wind off the water blew a fine spray of sand across the beach and onto the parking lot, the sand piling in small ripples along the leeward side. There's nothing quite so lonely as a beach in winter, Leah thought. Even though it was spring not winter, the scene sure looked and felt like winter. In the middle distance, trapped between the haze of wind-blown sand and the backing of slate clouds was the lone cottage sitting high off the beach on its pilings, looking like a leggy gray heron plodding the shallows for food. She remembered it as being larger and more ominous. Despite, or perhaps because of, the day, it looked to her like an inviting refuge against the cold wind, the only human structure anywhere in sight on this tip of the beach. And as if to affirm her hope, a wisp of pale smoke rose up from the stone chimney and was quickly dispersed by the whipping wind.

"This is what I came three thousand miles for?" Jodie said.

She'd flown into Atlanta yesterday and stayed with Leah and Whitfield overnight. She'd been sullen and angry since arriving, and hardly spoken during the long ride out. Leah accepted that this anger, mixed perhaps with fear, was all about Brooke and her ongoing complicated hold on Jodie's life despite the separation of distance—a whole continent's width—and years. Leah felt helpless to begin to address these issues, particularly since she herself had no idea why Brooke had summoned them out here; so she didn't try. She also hoped that by externalizing some of her anger in Leah's presence, she might have less to direct toward Brooke. Then again, the opposite could be happening, with Jodie's anger only deepening with each passing minute. "You came three thousand miles because I asked you on your mother's behalf, and we both are grateful."

Jodie faced her. "And you're sure you don't know why."

Leah shook her head. "No idea."

"And you do whatever Mom says."

"No."

"Then why are we here?"

Leah was touched yet again by the vulnerability that lurked just beneath the pugnacity of Jodie's stare. She owed her niece an honest response; she just wasn't sure what that response might be. "With Brooke I've always followed my heart. And my heart told me to be here."

"With me in the car."

Leah laughed. "No, Brooke told me to bring you."

"And you do whatever Mom says."

That barb hurt more than Leah would've expected, because it was accurate. Her heart may have brought her out here, to what at the moment appeared the end of the world. But it had been Brooke's forthright command, never really questioned, that had made Leah get Jodie here. Why had she not pushed harder to know why Jodie needed to be here? It was one thing to place herself at the mercy of Brooke's whims, quite another to expose Jodie, with her train-car-full of resentments and hostility. How could she have been so thoughtless? "I'm sorry if I forced you to do something you didn't want to do."

Jodie looked at the churning ocean beyond the windshield. She was again struck by how different the Atlantic, her virtual birthplace and the playground of all her summers till college, was from the Pacific, her adopted home and locus of current meditative retreats. It was perhaps too easy to see in the comparison a metaphor for the upheavals of her youth contrasted with the relative calm (as long as you didn't look too closely) of her adulthood. But here she was again—in the eye of an emotional storm _and_ beside the Atlantic. "If I really didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be here."

"You won't blame me?"

Jodie was shocked by these words. She'd never known her aunt to question her decisions, and had always trusted Leah's wise and careful counsel. "This is Mom's doing, not yours."

As if on cue, a lumbering black pickup emerged from beneath the elevated cottage and made its way toward them over a serpentine path between the dunes. Leah had called Brooke from an hour away to alert her to their arrival time, and Brooke had promised to be waiting at the parking lot. But neither Leah nor Jodie had been surprised when they'd arrived to find the lot empty. Brooke was never on time and always had a long list of excuses for her tardiness. "Speak of the devil," Leah whispered.

"You said it, not me."

Leah smiled at her niece and patted her hand where it rested idly on her knee. "Just a figure of speech."

Jodie nodded. "To some." But her face had lost the worst of its tension. She even managed a half-hearted grin in her aunt's direction.

Brooke pulled the big-tired pickup alongside Leah's car. Its running boards were nearly as high as the top of the sedan, and Brooke had to climb down from the driver's seat using the chrome steps and handholds.

Leah got out of the car and gave her sister a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Brooke's face looked especially gaunt, but Leah tried to convince herself that was the result of the gray day and the biting wind.

Jodie came around the car and gave her mom a one-armed hug across her shoulders and a fleeting kiss to the side of her short-cropped hair with its mix of natural brown, encroaching gray, and gold highlights at the tips.

"I would've been here sooner but that damn fireplace backed up smoke. Every damper I've ever used you push away to open. Isn't that right? But no, not this one. Away is closed, and smoke in your face. Toward you is open, though it's a little tricky with flames lapping at your arms and smoke all in your eyes and throat. But don't worry; don't worry. Brooke has it all under control."

"Where's Penni?" Jodie asked.

"Oh, she was a great help! Ran around trying to turn off all the smoke alarms instead of opening some windows. I told her to forget the smoke alarms! Open some windows, the doors, turn on the bath fan and range hood! But she went around pulling batteries out of the smoke detectors! But don't worry. It's all under control."

"So Penni's at the house?"

"She's keeping an eye on the fire and airing out the rooms."

"That's good," Jodie said.

"And putting the batteries back in the smoke detectors," Brooke added.

Leah stepped forward and gave her sister another hug. "Sorry for all your excitement."

"My middle name."

Nobody present argued the point.

Leah pulled their bags and supplies out of the trunk and Brooke tossed them into the back of the pickup. When Jodie moved to follow, Brooke intercepted her and pointed toward the cab. "There's enough room up there for a small army. Climb in the middle and hold on tight!"

Jodie frowned but said nothing. She climbed up onto the seat and slid across to a spot next to the four-wheel-drive shift lever. Leah followed and pulled the door shut, but it closed on her long raincoat. She opened it, pulled the tails of her coat inside the cab, and closed it again, just as Brooke got back behind the wheel and closed the door on her side. The cab was eerily calm after the howling wind and blowing sand.

Leah and Jodie looked at Brooke and laughed. She appeared comically small compared with the spacious cab and the high seat.

Brooke shook her head. "This is Dave's toy. He says he keeps it to get to the office on snow days, but really he just wants to show off to the neighbors—drives around the block a couple times each weekend with all the dogs barking and everyone trimming their grass pausing to look."

"I imagine he draws lots of stares."

"Talk about stares! You should've seen me and Penni driving down here! You'd have thought we were in a flying saucer for all the gawking. I kind of liked it, but Penni was mortified. And loud! Those tires on the pavement sound like tank tracks. Had to shout to be heard. Reminded of the time I flew in the biplane on Shawnituck. Remember that Leah? Well, of course not, you weren't there. That's the point of the story. I wanted the guy—what was his name? Doug or Donald or something—to fly me home for the day to see Leah who was having a crisis. I kept shouting the request forward and he kept shouting back 'What?' and pointing to his ears which were all but deaf with the roar of the engine blowing back over us combined with the wind."

"He said you'd run out of fuel halfway there," Leah inserted.

"How'd you know that?"

"You wrote it in one of those letters I saved."

"I did? Well, that's right. When I finally got my message across, that I wanted to fly to Charlotte, he said we'd run out of fuel halfway there. So he flew me around Bogue instead, right over this cottage, as a matter of fact, when it still had the lower level."

"Was this before or after you were pregnant with me?" Jodie asked.

"Oh, way before! I wouldn't have been accepting free flights from guys twice my age once your dad and I were—how do they say it these days?— _intimate_."

"Fucking without protection," Jodie growled.

Brooke laughed. "Yes. That's what I meant."

"But you've always said you met him your first day on the island and it was love at first sight."

"That's true. But it took a while for us to get around to expressing that love."

"Giving you time to take free flights from older guys."

"That's not another euphemism, is it?"

"Is it?"

Brooke smiled. "I'll never tell."

"No, Mom; you don't have to."

"Well, if you must know—'free flights' wasn't a euphemism for something more with Donald or Douglas or whoever he was. For all his eyes wanted, his hands were total gentleman, thank you very much."

"Probably first and only with you."

"Can we change the subject, dear? Lovely weather, isn't it? How was your drive down? What's new in Seattle?"

"Was Dad really a virgin the night you conceived me?"

"Jodie!" Leah cried.

"Who told you that?"

"He did."

"Then it must be true."

"Did you know?"

Brooke, suddenly calm, looked steadily into her daughter's flashing eyes, her face not a foot away, their legs separated only by the gearshift. "I was pretty sure, then he told me afterwards."

"So what's that make you—some sort of slutty seductress?"

"Jodie!" Leah said again, but neither mother nor daughter looked at her.

Brooke weighed the accusation then said, "Maybe that, maybe worse. It was a long time ago."

"But the result lives on."

Brooke nodded. "Yes."

Jodie turned away, seemed to shrink inward between the two sisters.

Brooke continued. "I loved your father that night and for months before and for months after. Part of me still loves him. And I've loved the outcome—the 'result,' as you say—of that night for every minute since."

"You still haven't said why."

"Why what?"

"Why you started me."

"I don't know why."

"And you think that's O.K.?"

Leah said, "I know why."

Both women looked at her, as if just now recalling there was a third person in the cab.

Leah gave a sheepish grin, startled by their sudden attention. But she completed her statement. "Because she's Brooke."

Brooke laughed. "So that's it!" She started the truck.

"Got that right," Jodie muttered beneath the engine's rumble and the wind's howl.

They unloaded the truck in the sparse protection of the carport beneath the house, screened on two sides by lattice and straight ahead by storage closets. They climbed to the living quarters via a set of outdoor stairs with a landing halfway up. Brooke had insisted on carrying Jodie's small carry-on but seemed to be struggling and short of breath when she paused at the landing. Leah nudged Jodie from behind, and she quickly stepped forward and took the bag from her mother. Brooke didn't argue.

Inside the house did smell like wood smoke, but it wasn't unpleasant. Leah called it "Brooke's incense."

Penni suddenly appeared and said, "Like at girl-scout camp!"

Jodie said, "I never got to go," but followed it with a laugh and a hug for Penni with a kiss on each of her cheeks.

Brooke said, "You refused."

Jodie said, "I did not. You never asked."

Leah stepped between the two and paused on her way to greet Penni. "I guess we're the referees for the weekend," she said then embraced her younger niece.

Penni said, "It'll be good to have some reinforcements," looking at her mother and sister over Leah's shoulder.

The remodeled cottage consisted of a large open room on the entry level, divided by a built-in dining table at its center with four rough-hewn posts at each corner extending to the ceiling. They'd entered at the large kitchen, with a similarly spacious living room beyond the dining table with a large stone fireplace (Brooke's fire now burning brightly and throwing warmth all the way into the kitchen) at the center of the far wall flanked by French doors out onto a deck facing the ocean. To the left of the open room were two doors, one leading to a pantry and the other to a half-bath. To the right was an open-sided staircase leading to the second floor.

On that floor were two large bedrooms, one facing the ocean, one facing the sound. Each bedroom had queen-sized beds centered on opposing walls, a generous bathroom with whirlpool tub and walk-in shower, a sliding door closet, and a dresser with mirror centered between the large windows facing the water. Brooke had claimed the ocean-front room for her and Leah ("Elders' privilege!") and led her sister in that direction when they'd reached the upper hall, past the spiral stairs that led to a door that opened onto the widow's walk.

"Does it open?" Leah asked, pointing to that door.

"Oh, yes!" Brooke said.

"It's the first place Mom went when we got here," Penni said from her position trailing on the stairs.

"Why?" Jodie asked.

"The fulfillment of her dream," Leah answered for her sister.

Brooke laughed. "My sister knows me better than I know myself."

Leah explained. "When we were kids and vacationed at Bogue Beach, at least once each year Brooke dragged me all the way out here—it was a long, long walk—just to look at this cottage at the tip of the island. She always said 'One day I'll stay at that cottage.' And when I asked why, she said 'To get a look from that widow's walk.'"

"Was it worth it, Mom?" Jodie asked, her first harmless question since arriving.

"Oh, yes!" her mother replied. "Better than I'd dreamed."

"Why?" Jodie said, a renewed edge to her tone.

"Because she's Brooke," Leah said, hoping to head off a new confrontation.

Brooke turned from where she'd been leading the way and looked at the three women—Leah still in her tailored blue raincoat directly behind her, Jodie paused on the landing in her hooded purple U-of-W sweatshirt, and Penni the youngest a few steps below in her lemon-colored sweater over a turquoise blouse. She gazed at each in turn with a serene and enigmatic grin then said quietly, "Freedom."

"From what?"

Brooke laughed. "Wrong preposition, Jodie. You're the English major—try again." But she didn't wait for a response as she turned down the hall and said over her shoulder, "Come on, Leah. Let me show you our beautiful room."

Jodie shook her head then walked in the opposite direction to the bedroom at the back.

Penni caught up just as Jodie entered the room. She squeezed past in the doorway and ran over to the bed she'd claimed with her nightgown and a pillow brought all the way from Boston sitting on the floral bedspread. "I took the right-hand side of the closet and the dresser. I hope you don't mind," she said as she sat on her bed.

Jodie noted that Penni's bed had a better view out the windows and a shorter walk to the bathroom. "That's fine. I doubt I'll even unpack my suitcase."

"You didn't bring much? Mom wouldn't tell me what we'd be doing, so I brought clothes for everything—except this cold weather. I'm freezing!"

"That sweater's nice."

"I've been wearing it since Boston. It's not supposed to be cold in the South in April!"

Jodie tossed her bag on the bed then walked to the nearest window. Beyond several hundred yards of low dunes with wind-whipped dune grass, the sound churned with as much vehemence as the nearby ocean. Out here, on the tip of the island, the two merged and were as one. Beyond the gray water, maybe a mile distant, the shore of the mainland rose in a thin slate-colored line beneath dark clouds moving fast like a convoy of ships along the horizon. She knew they were facing west; and if the sky cleared, the sunset would surely be spectacular—or maybe even behind the clouds, with glimpses of gold sneaking through. She also noted that the sun would rise on the other side of the house, maybe letting her sleep in, if the others would leave her alone.

When she turned, Penni was inches behind her, making her flinch.

Penni either missed or ignored the reaction and threw her arms around her sister and laid her head on Jodie's shoulder. "It's so good to see you. I wish we didn't live on opposite sides of the country."

"That's been the case for years."

"Yes, but I notice it more since I've been married."

Jodie took a step back, out of Penni's embrace. She saw that Penni's eyes were brimming. "We'll have to try to get together more."

Penni nodded to the floor then turned, blinking away her tears. "I told Mom I'd help with dinner." She headed out the door.

Jodie took a minute to duck into their bathroom, noted Penni's long row of toiletries arranged beside one sink of the double vanity. "At least the toilet doesn't have a furry seat," she muttered to herself as she sat down to pee, then wished that it had when the frigid seat hit her thighs.

There wasn't much to dinner preparations. Brooke had mixed up a big pot of her four-pepper and roasted garlic spaghetti sauce—one of her few specialties, refined years ago to accommodate Jodie's vegetarianism—and brought it down in one-gallon zip-seal bags stored in their cooler. She also had sliced and buttered garlic bread wrapped in foil and pre-washed garden-mix salad ready to go in the bowl. All they had to do for dinner was heat the sauce, boil the spaghetti, and warm the bread.

But Brooke said, "What's the rush?" and brought out the wine—both merlot and chardonnay—and cheese—brie and cranberry chevre and smelly Stilton—and three kinds of crackers and seedless grapes and spread it all out with four plates and four wine glasses on the wide revolving server at the middle of the table.

The other three stood by helplessly and rolled their eyes at each other as Brooke declined any assistance and bustled about.

"Now sit," she commanded. "Eat, enjoy, loosen up!" she cried, even as she scurried off to throw another log on the fire.

Each of the women sat at a side of the table, free to see each other and also safely far apart. Brooke returned and took a seat at the open side of the table, nearest the kitchen, and poured herself a full glass of red wine. She made sure the other three had full glasses—Leah and Jodie had chardonnay, Penni water poured from her plastic bottle—then raised her glass. "To the Fulcher girls, all together again."

Jodie said, "I'm Howard. Penni's Redmond."

"Now Coulter," Penni corrected.

"And Leah's Monroe," Jodie continued.

Brooke frowned. "Out here, we're all Fulchers."

"Down deep," Penni granted.

"At the bottom," Jodie conceded.

"In our hearts," Leah said.

"And genes," Brooke said.

Jodie looked under the table and laughed. "In our jeans!" She laid one leg on the edge of the table, showing her frayed jeans.

"Jodie!" Brooke scolded with a voice from long ago, or maybe not so long ago.

Leah winked to Penni across the table; and they joined Jodie by each raising a jean-encased leg to lie on their respective side of the table. "In our jeans," they announced in unison.

"Oh, what the hell," Brooke said as she added her leg, and designer jeans, to the mix. "To the Fulcher girls, in our jeans!"

All four reached toward the middle of the table, with some difficulty given their awkward posture, and tapped glasses together.

Then they lowered their feet and settled in to sharing the cheese and crackers and fruit.

"So what's news?" Brooke asked after a short spell of silence punctuated only by the fire's crackle and the wind's low moan.

The others looked quickly around the table.

Penni took a deep breath and blurted out, "I'm pregnant!"

Brooke beamed.

Leah's mouth fell open.

Jodie said, "Fuck!"

Penni looked at her sister, started to say something but couldn't find her voice, jumped out of her seat and ran across the living room and out onto the deck. The roar of the ocean and the wind grew briefly loud as the deck door stood open until Penni reached back and slammed it shut.

Brooke glared across at Jodie. "Why did you have to say that?"

"I didn't need to fly three thousand miles to hear Perfect Penni tell me she was starting her Perfect Family with her Perfect Doctor Dick husband. A postcard would've sufficed!"

"That's not why you're here. I had no idea!" Brooke exclaimed.

"Yeah, right."

"I didn't! This is the first I've heard. I didn't even know they were trying to get pregnant."

"But you couldn't be happier."

"Give me at least thirty seconds to figure out what I feel before pronouncing judgment, please."

"I've given you twenty-five years, Mom."

Brooke stared at her elder daughter, weighing the merits of refuting again this long-simmering and baseless allegation. She finally turned to Leah and asked, "Would you please go and bring your other niece in from the cold."

Leah nodded and stood. But before heading toward the deck, she came around to Jodie and hugged her from behind, laying her mouth against her right ear and whispering, "Be patient, please." She turned and took a step toward the living room.

"No hugs for the offended party?" Brooke said.

Leah stopped and sighed, then came back around to Brooke.

"I thought Penni was the offended one," Jodie said, though without much conviction.

When Leah reached Brooke's side of the table, she didn't hug her sister but did kneel to her seated height. She waited for Brooke's eyes to come around then said directly into them, "You know full well who loves you more than anyone in the world."

Brooke nodded without a moment's hesitation. "I know. I'm sorry." She brushed Leah's nearest hand with light fingertips. "Now please get Penni before she turns into an ice cube."

Leah smiled and headed for the deck.

Behind her, Brooke said, "Tell her that Jodie was just expressing _how_ she got pregnant, not her sentiment about the news."

Leah laughed. "I'll make sure she knows."

"Jodie's sentiment about the news is pending fuller reflection; but I'm sure it will ultimately resolve itself into joyful support."

"Yes, Brooke," Leah said, just before opening the door to the deck lurking in gray late-day light, the roar of ocean and wind like a formal pronouncement.

3

As with a storm blowing through and clearing the air, following Penni's return to the table and Jodie's tepid apology and best wishes and a light hug, the four managed to navigate the rest of the cocktail hour and the entire meal with no further dust-ups, combining much conversation about Penni's condition (when's the due date?—November 14th; what's Randall think?—he's ecstatic, when home; how's the pregnancy been so far?—only a few bouts of morning sickness; does your condo have room for a nursery?—as long as no one requests an overnight visit) with other small talk about their current lives and responsibilities, their summer plans, their friends and contacts and family life.

Late in the meal, Brooke and Leah told the younger sisters about some of their adventures during vacations on Bogue Beach, including a long tale about how they used to hide far up under the pier and eavesdrop on conversations from above—that is, Brooke listened and mimed the conversations for her deaf sister's benefit. This practice culminated in an incident when a wedding ring quite literally dropped in Leah's lap through the cracks in the deck following an emotional spat and the resulting fracture on the pier above (all elaborately mimed by Brooke—then and again tonight, more than forty years later). The girls had spent the rest of their vacation trying to find the ring's owner (the husband) to return his ring and repair the breach with that simple gesture.

"That's so sweet," Penni said. "Did you find him?"

"How? We had no idea what he looked like or where he was staying or even if he was still in town. I think we'd heard his name—"

"Sean," Leah said.

"That's it. But we couldn't very well go around shouting 'Sean! Sean!' everywhere we went."

"I looked for someone with a pale band of skin on his ring finger," Leah said.

Jodie laughed. "Lots of those in the bars in Seattle."

"And a few that summer on Bogue Beach, as I recall. But none moping over a break-up or their missing ring."

"So what happened to the ring?" Penni asked.

Brooke said, "Don't look at me. Leah kept it, wouldn't even let me hold it."

"What did you do with it, Aunt Leah?"

Leah had never told anyone what she did with Sean's ring. She considered coyly declining the question now but then reneged. "I walked to this end of the island, right out there where the ocean merges with the sound, and threw the ring into the fast-moving current."

"You threw the ring into the ocean?" Brooke exclaimed.

"What did you think I did?"

"I don't know—kept it, pawned it, buried it. Why throw it in the ocean?"

"I didn't want anyone to find it."

"We could look tomorrow," Jodie said.

Brooke shook her head. "You haven't seen how the current rushes past out there. That ring was gone the minute she tossed it—probably buried under four feet of sand and ten feet of water by now."

Leah gazed off into space and said, "But part of me always imagined I'd returned it to Sean and that it patched their marriage and they lived happily ever after."

"Yeah, in your dreams," Jodie said.

Leah nodded. "Or in some better world."

"Where's that?"

Leah took the question seriously. "When I was a deaf child with an active imagination and a void where one of my main senses should have been, my mind created a quite vivid and captivating world where I could go if the real world was too difficult or confusing. I always felt safe there. I guess it was in that world where Sean got his ring and his marriage back."

Brooke stared at Leah with wide eyes. "You never told me about that."

Leah grinned. "There's lots of things I never told you, Brooke."

Brooke grinned right back. "Maybe this weekend we share all our secrets."

The elder sisters looked at the younger pair.

"I don't have any secrets," Penni said.

Everyone looked at Jodie.

"Whoa! No way! You'll disown me and toss me in Davey Jones' locker after that ring."

Leah said, "My dessert's a secret. But I'll share it once the table is cleared and the dishes in the dishwasher."

That freed them all to a harmless task and goal.

Leah's dessert was home-made amaretto cheesecake that she'd kept in the spring-form pan to protect its edges then set in a cardboard box with bubble wrap then in a paper bag with handles. Her reversal of this packing sequence, played out with high drama on the kitchen's granite countertop, was watched with rapt attention and appropriate exclamations from the other three. Jodie especially liked the bubble wrap, which she began popping until Brooke grabbed it away from her and tossed it in the trash. When Leah got to the pan, she displayed the top of the cheesecake—a rich golden yellow with bits of crumbled amaretti cookies neatly ringing the edge—then loosened and removed the spring-form rim. She set the cheesecake on a serving plate and passed it around for all to view.

Penni said, "I hope decadent desserts aren't prohibited during pregnancy."

"Not that I know of," Leah said.

"No," Brooke said. "You get to eat seconds—for the baby."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

The platter ended up with Jodie. "See y'all later," she said, walking away with the cake.

The others all protested until she turned and brought the cheesecake back, still beautiful and fragrant with a wonderful almond scent—and intact. But not for long, as Leah cut four generous pieces and set them neatly on plates.

She handed the largest to Penni after first inserting and lighting a birthday candle she'd found in the pantry. "Congratulations, Penni. And all best wishes for a smooth and uneventful pregnancy."

"And painless delivery," Brooke said.

"And healthy child," Jodie added.

Penni blew out the candle.

They carried their plates and cups—strong dark coffee for Brooke and Leah, herbal tea for Jodie and Penni—into the living room to seats around the fire. Brooke sat in the upholstered chair, Penni took the rocker opposite, and Leah and Jodie sat on the couch facing the fire, kicking off their shoes and curling their feet under them.

By then it was night. The wind had died but the ocean's murmur forced its way through the walls and into their silence. Brooke stared into the dwindling fire, its embers radiating warmth and a deep red glow but no sound or movement. The other three looked at each other and to Brooke with contented but slightly uneasy grins, as if to say, "This is nice, but what do we do now?"

Penni said, "I have a hip-hop mix on my phone." While there was no cable or Internet service, there was a flat-screen TV with DVD player flanked by speakers for digital or CD music.

Leah laughed. "What's hip-hop?"

"How about some EDM?" Jodie suggested. "We could stand to move after sitting all day."

Brooke said to the fire, "I have pancreatic cancer."

The other three froze. Brooke's quiet uninflected tone—as if saying "Let's have chicken for dinner tomorrow" or "How about a game of Scrabble?"—bore no relation to the meaning of the words she'd spoken, or to the woman who'd spoken them.

Brooke looked up from the fire to face them. She took a moment to look into the eyes of each, starting with Penni seated opposite and ending with Leah, just to her right on the couch. "There," she said with a satisfied nod. "Now you know why I called you here."

Penni said, "Does Dad know?"

Brooke laughed. "Are you kidding? You think he'd let me come down here if he knew? You're the first I've told."

They looked at her with something akin to horror.

"Don't worry. I'll tell him when I get back. Jeez."

Leah's eyes were glued to Brooke's face in the way they used to attach when she was little and deaf and dependent on her sister to hear everything she'd couldn't, in a way that made her feel like she could never look away or Brooke would be gone. "How long have you known?"

"Since the day I called you about coming here. I called late because it took me that long to get a confirmation on the rental."

"Oh, Brooke," Leah said, her words barely a whisper as the air had all gone out of her lungs.

"Now enough of that. We're here together and we're going to have fun!" She stood and did a little shimmying dance in front of her chair. "Where's that dance music, Jodie?"

None of the other three moved.

"What's the prognosis?" Leah asked.

"Prognosis-smognosis! You know those doctors—all doom and gloom, as if you might sue them if they're optimistic and get it wrong."

"And treatment?"

"'Existing treatment options for unresectable tumors are more palliative than extendatory.' Can you believe that doc-speak? They actually make up words to avoid saying things like 'inoperable' and 'terminal'. They hold your life in their hands and speak in a language you can't understand!"

"But you're going to do something."

Brooke laughed again, her deep rich former laugh. It had been missing since their arrival. "Leah, Leah—always the fixer. Yes, I'm going to do something. There's a Phase Two trial in 'immunological intervention'—more foreign words but at least they sound better than 'unresectable'—right there at Carolinas. It's a new combination of drugs that showed promise in the initial trial."

"Starting when?"

"It's already started. They've poked and prodded and debriefed me in every way possible. I've made up my own word for all this. I call it 'uploading'—blood, bone marrow, urine, stool, tissue samples. I'm stored in the medical cloud now. If anything happens to this me, you can download a new me out of the cloud."

Jodie jumped off the couch and went out onto the deck. The ocean's murmur became a brief roar until she shut the door, softly but firmly, behind her.

"What is this with storming out onto the deck?" Brooke asked. She looked over at Penni who was sitting on her hands, straight-backed and still in the unmoving rocker, staring across at her mother. "If Leah bolts, we're really in trouble."

"Can I go help her?" Penni asked.

"Good luck!" Brooke said.

Leah caught Penni's eyes and nodded—both affirmation and thanks.

Penni followed Jodie out into the night.

Leah looked at her sister. "This is hard on them."

"I'm the one with cancer!"

"I mean getting them out here for this."

"Better over the phone or in a text message? What would you have suggested, Sis?"

"And Dave?"

"He'll go all to pieces, but he'll be loyal and attentive as a puppy dog once he recovers."

"The boys?"

She laughed. "They'll fly in from all over the country like the damned 82nd Airborne—second opinions, cutting-edge therapies, treatment centers! They mean well, but I needed this so I could handle that."

"This?"

"This weekend."

"The girls are devastated."

"They'll bounce back." She chuckled. "It's in their genes!"

Leah smiled and extended one jean-encased leg onto the coffee table.

Brooke extended hers likewise, crossing Leah's on the table, her bare foot at the end of those jeans in pale and stark contrast to Leah's hiking shoe.

Jodie wasn't on the deck. Penni sensed that fact first then confirmed it as her eyes adjusted to the dark, with just enough light leaking out from the living room to allow her to confirm the wide deck was empty. There was an opening in the railing to the right that seemed to tumble out into pitch blackness but on closer examination revealed stairs leading down to the dunes and the beach beyond. Standing at the head of those stairs, Penni felt dizzy and disoriented. She grabbed the nearest railing post and closed her eyes, waited for her spinning world to steady. The ocean's roar, seeming to come from all directions, filled her head.

But then slowly settled in the more familiar singsong of the crashing of surf off to her left, an elemental rhythm that was somehow steadying. When she opened her eyes the stairs leading to an intermediate landing then on down to the beach were clearly visible. And in the distance the surf, the source of that noise, was dimly sketched with a faint phosphorescence. That would be where Jodie went. She headed down the stairs, holding the railing firmly.

Once on the ground, she kicked off her slip-on canvas shoes and peeled off her socks. The sand was cold on her warm feet but somehow reassuring against her skin, recalling some distant memory. She shivered once, hugged herself, then headed off through the dunes.

Jodie said something from her seat on the sand at the high-water line, but the sound of the surf drowned her words.

Penni sat next to her. She'd braced herself for the touch of cold wet sand against her hands, but the sand was actually warmer than the air and dry. Closer to the ground and below the breeze, the night didn't seem near as forbidding as from the deck. By now Penni's eyes were fully adjusted to the dark and she could make out the water, the waves, the line of the horizon with clouds breaking up to reveal clusters of stars. From up at the house, she'd wondered how Jodie was brave enough to venture out here. Now she wondered how they'd be brave enough to go back.

"I'm sorry about what I said," Jodie repeated, her words now clearly audible.

Penni thought _Which time?_ She initially suppressed the question then said it anyway. "Which time?"

"Am I really that hard on you?"

"No more than any big sister."

"You only have one."

"Thank God!"

This allowed them both to laugh.

Jodie continued. "I meant about your pregnancy. I assumed Mom had brought us all the way out here to let you announce your news."

"She didn't know."

"So I now see. I have this problem with jumping to conclusions."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry for what I said. I'm happy for you, and now I'm happy for Mom. You couldn't have planned it better."

"I didn't plan it at all."

"Just came naturally."

"How do you mean?"

Jodie stared at the dark ocean, the silver curl of the crashing waves. _Combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black._ There was a very good chance that some of the molecules in that mix were here billions of years ago.

"What do you mean 'naturally'?"

_Till human voices wake us, and we drown._ Jodie sighed, the sound in almost perfect harmony with the briefly retreating wave before the next crashed. "We should get back before you catch cold."

Penni didn't move.

Jodie touched Penni's near hand, pale white against her dark knee. "You're living for two now, you know."

Penni thought _Which two?_ but said nothing as she stood, brushed off her hands, then pulled Jodie to her feet.

4

Leah leaned against the headboard trying to concentrate on the magazine article but failing. After a few minutes, Brooke emerged from their bathroom in a dark blue terrycloth robe. Leah watched as she walked across the room and set the toiletries kit on her side of the dresser.

Brooke turned quickly with an old but familiar look caught between indulgence and annoyance. "Not that much like the old days!"

"What?" Leah asked.

"You following my every move. Defined the first twenty years of my life!"

"Maybe the first eighteen. I couldn't watch you once you went off to college."

"First eighteen then. It was a big responsibility."

"You loved it."

Brooke sat on her bed on the other side of the room. "At some level I did. It was nice to matter that much. I think that many children feel they don't matter at all and resent it. That was never a problem for me."

"I lived much of my childhood through you."

"So I had to be on all the time. I couldn't just go somewhere and hide, curl up by myself and be alone."

"You curled up on your bed and ignored me lots."

"I pretended to ignore you, but every minute I felt your eyes on me."

"You're the least self-conscious person I've ever known."

"Learned then. I had to put aside my worries and just do what I needed to do."

"Or wanted to do."

"Least self-conscious and most self-indulgent?"

"I didn't say that."

"Didn't have to, but I'm not offended. It's always been full steam ahead and let the world catch up."

"Or not sometimes."

"Jodie?" Brooke said with rare self-doubt.

She'd stopped by the girls' room after turning out the lights downstairs. Penni had made a point of setting her book aside and getting out of bed to give her a long hug that was by itself worth the price of the rental, this whole crazy plan. Jodie didn't get out of her bed but had said after Penni had slowly backed away, "Goodnight, Mom. It's good to be here." That surprising admission in Jodie's resigned sullenness had opened the floodgates to her greatest failure in life—figuring out her eldest daughter. She'd wanted to run over to Jodie's bed and shake her until she woke up from her funk—thirty-five years of resentment and reservation. Well, maybe thirty—her first five years she'd been ebullient and outgoing. But she'd not run across to shake Jodie. She'd just turned to her daughter and said what she felt. "Having all of you here is how it needed to be." But it didn't stop her from worrying about Jodie throughout her bedtime preparations.

Leah laughed. "I meant me."

"What about you?"

"That I couldn't always keep up with you."

"You didn't need to. You found a way to be your own person."

"Because I realized I couldn't keep up. It's all your fault."

Brooke laughed. "That's what they all say." She took off her robe and set it on the chair beside the nightstand then slid between the covers. She switched off the bedside light. "Good night, Leah."

Leah said, "I still need to take off my processors."

Brooke laughed. "For the longest time I couldn't get used to you hearing, now I'm taking it for granted! Go ahead. You won't bother me."

"First I'd like to do something I always wanted to do."

"What's that?"

"Talk to you in the dark."

Something suddenly caught in Brooke's throat and she didn't dare try to speak for the animal moan that would've surely come forth. She swallowed hard—twice, three times.

"Would that be O.K.?" Leah asked. "Just for a few minutes?"

"Yes," Brooke croaked, barely a whisper.

Leah switched off her light then slid down into the bed till just her face was above the covers, cushioned on the pillows. The room was in total darkness except for the thin silver light of a quarter moon coming and going from behind clouds beyond the unshaded windows facing east, the direction of the blank ocean and the eventual sunrise.

Brooke had regained her voice but was confounded by another tall emotional obstacle—she'd never talked in bed in the dark: not to Leah, obviously, but also not to either of her husbands or her children or the long list of faces she'd shared beds or bedrooms or tents with over the years. She wondered if this too was Leah's doing, the indirect effect of raising a deaf sister. Or was it just how she was?—if talking needed to be done, turn on the light; otherwise, sleep! And today seemed a fraught moment to initiate this questionable practice. "What do you want to talk about?" she asked of the night.

Leah also saw the mistaken timing of her request. Talk in the dark could be dangerous stuff. But there was no turning back now. Had she somehow donned Brooke's impetuousness in this new order? "Did I ever tell you about my white world?" She knew she hadn't—she'd not told anyone about that. She herself hadn't thought about or visited the place for decades, since well before her hearing, before Jasper and Whitfield. She wondered why she thought about it now then instantly knew—it was Brooke, somehow tied to Brooke.

Brooke said a simple "No" out of the dark.

Leah couldn't help but wonder what Brooke's face looked like now. Was she interested or bored, intrigued or confused, grinning or frowning, contented or concerned? Talking in the dark offered some securities but at considerable cost. "When I was a child, there was a place where my mind would go where I could hide from the world."

"Yes—like, all the time! I was forever having to pull you back into reality—literally: pull you back or pull you along."

"Well, maybe some of those times I was off in this other world. I called it my 'White World' because that's what it was—all white."

"Sounds fascinating."

Leah had little difficulty imagining Brooke's expression now. "Actually it was fascinating for me. All sorts of creatures emerged from the white background, and they all spoke to me."

"What sorts of creatures?"

"Horses that could fly. Dolphins that could walk."

"Were they white?"

"Yes."

"Then how could you see them?"

"They were like shadows against the brighter background, but I had no trouble seeing them."

"And they spoke to you? Lip reading? Sign language?"

"No. They spoke to me like people would speak to each other, except I heard them."

"You couldn't hear anything then."

"I heard them but not like sounds when I finally did hear. More like words written out, but heard not seen. It's kind of difficult to describe. I've never tried."

"Wouldn't have guessed," Brooke said with a chuckle. "I'm having a little trouble picturing this, Sis—everything's white but you can see animals clearly; and the animals speak but not in sounds."

"Exactly."

"Glad we got that figured out."

"Have you ever dreamt of someone and know precisely what they are thinking or feeling even though they don't speak in words?"

"Sure, but usually there are actions associated with those thoughts. You know what they're feeling by how they're acting."

"Meaning and action are one."

"Yes, I suppose."

"That's how it was in my White World. The horse would think an action that I 'heard', and it would happen. Dolphin would make a proposal—feelings or thoughts or words or sounds or a combination of all that—and I would nod and the proposal became a reality. I'd be flying through the sky or swimming beneath the seas."

"All white?"

"Well, yes, now that you mention it. But it always seemed so rich and vivid, and somehow more beautiful and pure than the real world."

"Now I know why I had such a time pulling you back to reality."

"I never chose to go there, at least not consciously. And I was never sad to leave. The visits just came and went. I never thought much about that world when I wasn't in it. It was just part of who I was—like you and Momma and Father were a part, like the book I'd read the day before or the sun or the flowers along the walk."

"When did these visions start?"

"Before I can remember. I mean, they were a part of me as far back as I can remember, which is to age three or four."

"And when did they end?"

Halfway through her revelation, Leah had begun to fear Brooke would ask her this question. While talking into the dark, another part of her consciousness was wrestling with how to respond if Brooke asked. She could lie and say she didn't remember or the visions had just faded away or they continued still. How would Brooke know? But she would know, and she'd never lied to Brooke in her life. "They ended the day you sent me and Paul to Windsor's Cove."

"I didn't send you anywhere. I suggested it would be a nice outing for two lovebirds about to head off to different colleges."

"You wanted us out of the way so you could spend the night with Onion."

"The Slutty Seductress making baby Jodie with a virgin lover."

Leah really needed to see Brooke's face now. This talking in the dark was a bad, bad idea. "I didn't say that."

Brooke sighed. "No, I did. It's a fair summary of what happened and why."

"You told Jodie you didn't know why."

"Not the big 'Why?' she wanted, no. But it is accurate to the little 'why?' explaining my reasons for getting you out of the house. I wanted to sleep with Onion. I wanted to stay with him on Shawnituck. And if we made a baby to cement the deal, then so be it."

"And pack your deaf sister off with her boyfriend to an overnight on a deserted island."

"I thought it was what you wanted."

"No, Brooke, it wasn't."

"You could have said no."

"No, Brooke, I couldn't have."

"Why didn't you just let Onion sleep over while you were at the house? Then you wouldn't have had to go out there."

"I wasn't going to be your pawn in deceiving Aunty Greta and Momma."

"It happened anyway."

"Without me in the house."

"What difference did that make?"

"A lot, for me."

Brooke fell silent. None of this was news to her, but she'd managed to avoid thinking about it for thirty-five years. "Was it terrible?"

"What?"

"Your night on Windsor's Cove?"

Leah laughed. "Aside from the thunderstorm and the mosquitoes and the silent treatment from Paul because he didn't score?"

"Yes."

"Had a great time."

"I'm so glad."

Leah waited a few seconds for the irony to subside then said, "At first I was angry with you. Then when you told me you were pregnant and I did the math, I was angry with myself. I replayed lots of scenarios of how I might have prevented it."

"What—my life?"

"Your pregnancy."

"Same thing. I was going to live my life, Leah. You couldn't stop that."

"So I eventually realized. Then I stopped being angry."

"Does it help for me to say 'Sorry' now?"

"For what?"

"For involving you in my mess."

"Your life?"

Brooke laughed. "Yes."

"I'm grateful. I'm beyond grateful. Being involved in your life made me who I am."

"We shaped each other."

"Only each other to blame, then."

"Like how I destroyed your White World?"

"How so?"

"You said it ended when I sent you to Windsor's Cove."

"It did."

"Then my fault."

"No, Brooke—life's. I grew up."

"And I got a baby."

"Never thought of it that way."

"What?"

"The White World exchanged for Jodie."

"Hardly 'white'."

"Still pretty fantastic."

"Yes," Brooke said, then added after a pause, "All of it."

Leah laughed. "Got that right."

"Thanks, Sis."

"For what?"

"Talking in the dark."

"I almost forgot."

"What?"

"To take off my processors. Can I turn on the light?"

"Sure."

"It'll just be a minute."

"Take your time."

Down the hall and in similar darkness, Penni asked, "Did you ever want to share a room with me?"

Jodie's initial reaction was to scoff at the request, mutter some offhand quip to keep her sister slightly off balance. It was a long-held and effective tactic. But not this night in this place on this occasion. "I preferred my own room."

"I figured. But I always wanted to share a room with you. When you were in high school and I was a kid, I'd sometimes sit on the floor with my ear to your door."

"And what did you hear?" Jodie wondered mainly in jest but with a tinge of anxiety.

"It's what I didn't hear that most fascinated me. Your room was deathly silent—no talking on the phone, no music playing, no exercising or walking back and forth."

"Teenaged angst."

"I imagined it as something more, that you had this secret world you would escape to and that it was all in your room but as soon as the door opened it went away."

"And what was in this world you imagined?"

"That was the problem—I didn't know. That was what I wanted to discover, to unlock."

"But you know now there wasn't anything, no secret fantastic world."

"Do I?"

Jodie sat up in bed. "Look at me, Penni! My life's a mess. It's always been a mess, especially compared with your neat and tidy one. There is no secret order or redemptive mystery in my chaos!"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For making you upset."

Jodie slumped back under the covers. "I'm not upset with you, Penni. I'm upset with myself. I wished I could have fulfilled more of the fantasies you had for me."

"You fulfilled them all."

"How?"

"By living your life according to your own rules."

"That's your fantasy?"

"For you."

"I don't understand."

"Our family always made sense—Mom, Dad, the boys, little sister. We fit every hole the world wanted us to occupy, like some big multi-pronged plug inserted into society's outlet in the community—a public-policy major's dream of civic harmony!" She laughed at the idea, not a new one to her but verbalized for the first time. "But you were always the wild card."

"Maybe a little too wild."

"Yes, but I was glad for that. I always saw hope in your unconventionality."

"My screaming matches with Mom?"

Penni chuckled. "You let loose a few times."

"More than a few. I was an awful teenager."

"More like an average one, I think. It was the rest of us that set you apart."

"Sometimes I did feel like I was fighting the whole family."

"I wished I could have helped more."

"You were too young."

"All I could do was watch."

"That couldn't have been easy."

"And wish I could be more like you."

"Why, Penni? You had to know how hard it was. You saw it every day."

"What I saw was the wonder of freedom."

"What you thought you saw was a falsehood."

"Was it?"

"Thirty-five years in, I can offer a definitive Yes!"

"Can you?"

"Yes, Penni. Yes! I'm telling you, there's no secret payoff. My life's a mess."

"Now you know why."

"Why what?"

"Why I wished we could've shared a room."

"To slam our heads together in disagreement?"

"To be sisters."

5

The next morning dawned clear and bright but with a brisk northeast wind blowing off the cold Atlantic. On rising, each woman made a solitary foray out onto the deck, called forth by the brilliant spring sunshine and the sparkling ocean, only to come running back into the cottage after a few minutes, hugging themselves against the wind and rushing for something hot to drink and cut the chill. Jodie, the last to descend the stairs in her baggy hooded sweatshirt from yesterday and knee-length shorts, trudged out to the deck without a word to the others milling about in the kitchen and lasted longer than anyone else, but returned with pale blue lips and a face flushed in cold and gladly accepted Penni's offer of a mug of hot cocoa with miniature marshmallows, a throwback to their childhood days.

By then Brooke, with Leah's quiet assistance, had laid out a breakfast buffet of startling variety along the kitchen's long peninsula, including everything from fresh fruit salad, granola, and yogurt to oatmeal, pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon.

"You think you're cooking for the boys," Leah said as the food kept coming.

"I know who I'm cooking for," Brooke said.

"Whom," Leah said over her shoulder.

"Them too," Brooke said.

And in fact the four women made a substantial dent in the extensive offerings, nibbling away over nearly two hours as they sat around that generous dining room table and caught up on the recent activities in each other's lives like sorority sisters returning after summer vacation, each carefully avoiding any reference to the one sister's monumental news.

Penni was now partners in a small childcare business that operated out of her partner's condominium, splitting its days between morning daycare for their affluent neighbors and after-school care and tutoring of at-risk grade-school kids. This ad hoc model allowed their business to fly under the radar and strict regulations of full-time daycares, and also gave the proprietors flexibility in their midday schedules.

"Do you think you'll expand to hiring employees?" Leah asked.

Penni shrugged. "That would be a big step."

"What about when the baby is born?"

"I'd like to think her presence will fit in perfectly."

"Her?" all three others asked simultaneously.

Penni smiled sheepishly. "Only a wish at this point. I don't know and don't want to know. I told Randall he can ask if he wants, but don't tell me!"

Jodie would be moving to LA for a six-week design gig arranged by the director of her last production. She'd be leaving in two weeks and already had an Internet-arranged studio apartment within walking distance of the theater. She'd had to renew her Guild membership, as this job had to be by the books, and would be working with a director of notoriously short-temper and stringent demands. But it was a good career move and she was ready for a break from Seattle, "Especially with its springtime weather!"

"What about your apartment there?" Brooke asked.

"Oh, I'll keep it. Andrea will be there and take care of our cat."

"Won't she be lonely?" Penni asked.

Jodie weighed the question's possible meanings. "Andrea will find the company she needs," she responded finally while glancing down at her food, chuckling quietly to herself either at the coy response or the apt summation of her roommate's resourcefulness or both.

Leah was in the midst of planning their non-profit's annual azalea giveaway. This included coordinating the contribution of plants from several local nurseries, reviewing and approving recipient requests, and overseeing various levels of follow-up, from arranging to have the plants delivered and planted to publicly thanking the contributors. This year's giveaway was complicated by the addition of a Green Ways booth at the Spring Festival scheduled for next weekend.

"So you're a busy woman for someone who doesn't have a job," Jodie said.

Leah laughed. "Tell me about it!"

"Tell Jasper to come home and run his charity," Penni suggested.

"He's turned it over to me."

"Figures."

"And we've hired a full-time coordinator."

"Really?" Brooke asked.

Leah nodded. "Had to either scale back or expand. The Board decided to expand."

"The Board?"

"Jasper, Whitfield, and two teachers from the school. And me."

"So you decided to expand."

"Well," Leah said slowly, "You could say that. I needed help."

"Who did you hire?"

"His name is Billy Erwin. He used to work for a local landscaper and managed two of our larger projects. He's good. He knows what he's doing."

Brooke smiled across the table, waiting for Leah to look up.

"What?" Leah said as soon as she glanced up.

Brooke said, "Expansion is good" then burst into laughter.

Jodie and Penni looked at each other. Leah looked away.

Brooke's life was full to the max, as it always was. The plans for One Care were nearing completion and would be put out for bids in a few weeks. But there were still many decisions to be made, particularly regarding fixture and finish selections and estimates for allowance figures on such things as landscaping and artwork. Brooke could've turned all of this over to the project architect. By now he was quite familiar with her tastes and desires and could've made initial selections for this phase, decisions that could be and no doubt would be revised later. But Brooke would not surrender even these provisional choices to another.

"What, and pass on a chance to rub up against Greg?" she cried out.

"Greg?" Leah asked.

"The project architect—about forty and cute as a button and smells like gingerbread."

"Gingerbread?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's his wife's cooking—I think she's oriental."

"Wife?" Penni said.

"Yes, dear—wife. You know, like you are to Randall."

"That means hands off!"

"My hands are off. It's just my arm and shoulder and leg that brushes against him now and again."

"Mom!"

"Get off your high horse, Penni. Just a little harmless fun, isn't it Leah?"

Leah was silent.

"Doesn't sound harmless," Penni said.

"You don't think some pretty young nurse is rubbing up against Doctor Coulter right now?"

"She better not be. He better not let her."

Brooke laughed. "Get with the program, Penni. Your innocent romance is over. The rest of your life has begun—learn the rules and play by them." She looked to first Leah then Jodie for affirmation, but both judiciously looked away. So she added, somewhat less insistently, "Or so I would suggest for your future happiness."

Penni stared back blankly.

No sooner had they cleaned up from breakfast—cleared and wiped down the table, rinsed and loaded the plates and silverware into the dishwasher, wrapped and stored the leftovers—then Brooke began planning for their picnic lunch on the beach. She had store-bought fried chicken in the fridge but solicited Leah's help in making potato salad and deviled eggs.

"With sour cream and Dijon mustard," Leah insisted.

Brooke confirmed she had those ingredients then said, "Whatever you say."

Penni went out on the deck. There was no one on the beach in front of their cottage. In the distance to the left were a few fisherman with their poles stuck in the sand and a handful of people walking along the water. All had on sweatshirts or coats and walked huddled against the wind. Nobody was lying or sitting on the beach. "Might be a little brisk out there for a picnic, Mom," she said when she came back inside.

Brooke was undaunted. "That's why you and Jodie are going to scout out a place that is warm and sheltered from the wind."

"Sounds like an order," Jodie said from her spot on the couch where she'd just started reading an article in a left-behind issue of _The New Yorker_.

"A suggested communal activity," Leah said.

Jodie laughed. "Thanks, Aunt Leah," she said as she set the magazine aside and went to pee before heading out with her sister on their reconnaissance mission.

The younger sisters did find a place that would be suitable, a depression in the dunes toward the sound side that offered full defense from the gusts (which were slowly calming) and full access to the warming of the spring sun.

Jodie threw herself down into the sand at the bottom of the basin and actually laid her face on a small mound she pushed up with her forearm. Though the sand below the surface was still cold, that on top was warm and soothing. She closed her eyes and cooed, "I'll stay and guard our claim while you get the others."

Penni laughed and sat beside her. It really was a different world down here out of the wind and hidden from the glittering water and undulating dunes. Even the ocean's resolute murmur was all but inaudible. "I don't know," Penni said. "Kind of dangerous here." She lay on her back, cushioning her head with her arm folded beneath. She closed her eyes against the intense sunlight. Through her eyelids she saw the pink of her blood flowing. Just then she was startled to realize that same blood was now flowing through a second heart. The thought, like everything this weekend, both frightened and mesmerized her.

"I'll be O.K." Jodie murmured, already half-dozing from the sun's warmth and the flush of the big breakfast's carbohydrates through her system.

"Will you?"

Jodie laughed. Her quick exhalation sent grains of sand rolling away from her mouth and nose. "I'll survive."

"Is that enough?"

"Has been so far. Will have to be."

Penni had so many challenges to those assertions she didn't know where to start. So she didn't—start, that is. She sat up instead. She suddenly missed the sound of the ocean, the sweeping view of water and sand interrupted only by their solitary cottage standing like a monument against this eternity. But she wouldn't stand and leave her sister flat, however much Jodie might have preferred that. She reached out and brushed Jodie's silken black hair, still like a child's—thin and flat.

Jodie purred beneath the touch, briefly imagined it as from some goddess or sea nymph. She knew from her mythology that gods and water always led to a bad ending, but couldn't she indulge herself just this once?

"Leah has Whitfield to help her through. I have Randall. But you're alone."

"You assume."

"You're not?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then which is it?" Jodie had never confessed her bisexuality, but Penni had suspected it even before her brief visit to Seattle a few years ago. Though Andrea was absent that weekend (Penni assumed that circumstance was planned) it was clear that only one of the two bedrooms in their apartment was in regular use. At the same time, she knew Jodie was sexually active with males—by inference from the occasional dates or partners she'd brought home or to family functions but more specifically by the witness she bore of Jodie in bed with a high school boy (she recalled his name as Tab—could that be true?) one day when she was in second grade and walked home from school early with a sore throat, didn't know at the time what those undulating movements under the sheets meant but knew enough to keep quiet and invisible, both then and since. So if Jodie had intimate companionship, it might be of either sex. Penni didn't care which, as long as there was someone to help carry her sister through the storms that lay ahead.

Jodie sighed. Though Penni's hand was still on the back of her head, it now felt like a heavy weight, pressing her face, her whole body, into the earth. "I have access to the companionship I need."

"In LA?"

"Jeez, Penni," Jodie cried. She rose suddenly, sloughing off Penni's hand with a shake of her head and pushing her whole body up with her arms and standing in a single motion, generating a minor sandstorm from the effort. "In LA, Seattle, wherever. I find what I need. I can take care of myself." She shook herself like a dog then quickly brushed away the sand sticking to her arms and face.

Penni remained seated and stared up at her sister. Jodie's body aligned with the brilliant sun, giving Penni multiple excuses for her brimming eyes; but her voice remained clear and strong. "I only want you to be—." She paused to consider the word she desired, its necessarily resonant meaning.

Jodie remained standing above Penni. Part of her was touched by her sister's concern, but most of her resented its intrusion and was glad to be standing now, holding the upper ground. "Happy?" She volunteered the cliché after what seemed a long pause then wondered if Penni was still searching the right word or had lost her voice.

"I want you to know you are loved."

Much as Jodie wished she could offer a quick and unthinking affirmation of the fact, she didn't because she couldn't. Instead, she turned and walked to the top of the nearest dune, took great relief in her quick breaths of cool wind, the broad ocean vistas surrounding.

Back at the cottage the elder sisters were just finishing the food preparation. Brooke transferred the potato salad to a plastic bowl and carefully spooned the deviled eggs into a shallow resealable container. As she finished each task, she handed Leah the dirty dishes and utensils for rinsing and loading into the dishwasher.

"You two look like a well-practiced team," Penni said as she hung her coat on a peg inside the back door.

Leah smiled from her place at the sink. For a moment she'd forgot they were at the widow's walk cottage with her nieces, had imagined they were at the old cottage in the second row down by the pier, doing clean up duty after lunch with Momma and Father.

Brooke had been caught up in the same seamless, and silent, recollection. "Before Leah could hear, we had to be very in tune with each other. We functioned almost as two parts of the same body." She stretched plastic wrap over the bowl of potato salad.

Brooke's words caused a wrenching spasm in the pit of Leah's stomach. To hide her reaction, she turned back to the sink and concentrated on cleaning the sticky egg yolk remains from the prep bowl in her hand. The spigot's flow of warm water seemed a thousand tears pouring out of her heart, a million.

"I can't imagine Aunt Leah deaf," Penni said. "She's always in control."

Brooke laughed. "She was that way when she was deaf! Bossed me around even though I was the older sister!"

Leah was silent.

Jodie said, "Just like my younger sister" as she entered the kitchen and closed the door.

Everyone else looked up, startled by the same phenomenon—Jodie's voice in a lilting playful tone.

Penni jumped to the bait. "When did I ever boss you around?"

Jodie laughed. "Little sisters have their sneaky ways."

"See!" Brooke said to no one in particular.

Leah finished loading the dishwasher and faced the others with a forced smile. "I had to use all the means at my disposal."

"And it worked every time," Brooke said. She loaded the food and drinks into the blue and white cooler, then checked the wicker picnic basket for adequate supplies of paper plates, plastic utensils, cups, and napkins.

"Some of the time," Leah reluctantly conceded. "Maybe."

Penni said, "Was I really a spoiled brat?"

The others laughed.

Jodie said, "The 'spoiled' part for sure, but not the brat. Even I had to admit you were cute." By then she was standing next to Leah, leaning against the counter beside the sink.

Leah tilted close to Jodie but didn't touch her. She could smell the salt air and sand on her and maybe a touch of herbal fragrance from her hair. She recalled lightly brushing that feathery hair for hours on end when she'd visit Shawnituck Island and babysit the infant Jodie so Brooke and Onion could have the afternoon to themselves in a futile attempt to save their faltering marriage, or back at home when Brooke was living there and commuting to school and she'd watch Jodie, just starting to walk by then, during her breaks from college. These memories, surely prompted by Jodie's scent, wrenched another silent moan of loss from some place in her she hadn't known existed.

"What do you mean 'were cute'?" Penni asked.

"Well—," Jodie paused for effect. "We'll give you a few more weeks till you begin to blow up like a helium balloon."

"Thanks for the encouragement."

Brooke had finished loading the cooler and adding a few odds and ends—salt and pepper in capped shakers, small packets of mustard and mayonnaise—to the picnic basket and asked, "Did y'all find us a spot?"

Jodie said, "Sure did."

And Penni added, "The perfect luncheon hideaway."

"Then we're almost ready." She disappeared into the storeroom off the hall and returned with a large brown wool blanket to sit on and a smaller red and white checked tablecloth to lay out the food. She set them on the island next to the cooler and picnic basket. "Jodie, you and Penni will carry the cooler. Leah will bring the blanket and tablecloth. And I'll have the honor of carrying the picnic basket." She grabbed it and held it in front of her and made a coy gesture like a child with her lunchbox on her first day of school. "Like Little Red Riding Hood."

"Or the wolf," Jodie said in a stage whisper to Leah.

"No wise cracks from the peanut gallery," Brooke said as she returned the basket to the counter. "But first we each need to pick a bonnet."

The other three looked at her like she'd finally lost her mind.

"I thought that would get your attention. Follow me." She waved them to the storeroom where she opened the door then stood back to let them look. High on the right-side wall, above open shelves of canned goods and cleaning supplies, was a row of ten sun bonnets and hats, each hanging on a wooden peg. They all had wide brims. Some were straw, others canvas, and there was one rubberized foul-weather lobsterman's hat. A few had colored sashes to tie under the chin. One was a white skimmer with plastic flowers arranged around the rim.

"What in the world?" Penni exclaimed.

"Place must be owned by a commune of dikes," Brooke joked.

Leah glared at her.

Jodie rolled her eyes.

"What? Dikes are nice. They left us their hats!" Brooke said, glaring right back at Leah. "Choose your mate," she said finally. "But I've got dibs on Minnie Pearl."

"Who's that?" Penni asked.

"You're about to find out," Jodie said.

The others chuckled in relief.

Penni stepped into the storeroom first and chose a natural straw model with a turquoise (her favorite color) sash. Jodie grabbed a khaki canvas hat and pulled the brim low over her right eye like Ingrid Bergman in _Casablanca_. Leah took a little longer, debating between the Mexican straw sombrero and the white cowboy hat, finally opting for the sombrero.

Then Brooke stepped into the room and closed the door, emerging a minute later with an open-collared gingham shirt (where had she found that?) over her T-shirt, her hair pulled into short ponytails on either side of her head, some horn-rimmed glasses with the lenses missing, and of course the Minnie Pearl bonnet sitting high on her head. "How-dy!" she cried and did a little high-stepping jig over to the island to grab the picnic basket.

"That's Minnie Pearl, or at least Brooke's rendition," Leah said.

Jodie sighed. "Now I've seen everything—Little Red Riding Hood disguised as Minnie Pearl."

"I'm so glad there's no one else on the beach!" Penni said.

Leah shook her head. This was vintage Brooke—doing what she needed to do to lay claim to the moment. In an odd way, it was all very reassuring.

"Come on, troops," Brooke said. "Fall in." The general in Minnie Pearl costume led the way out the door, down the stairs, and onto the dunes. The others followed beneath their bonnets, toting their supplies, Jodie and Penni needing to coordinate their movements on either end of the heavy cooler.

After a few wrong turns—"I thought it was this way" Penni said; "No, this way" Jodie corrected; "Some scouts" Brooke said—they finally found the girls' tracks from the morning and followed them to the deep and sheltered haven in the dunes.

Standing below the others in the flat bottom of the basin just large enough to accommodate the four of them for lunch, Brooke looked up and smiled. "Perfect."

She set aside the picnic basket and waved for Leah, and they spread out the blanket then centered the square tablecloth on top. The two sisters worked together to unload the picnic basket and set out four settings of paper plates, cups, and napkins, and plastic forks, knives, and spoons. Brooke crowned their efforts by placing a white china bud vase with a single daisy—real and undamaged, but from where?—in the middle of the array. Out on the beach, the blanket and tablecloth, not to mention all the paper products, would've long since been scattered by the wind, which still blew vigorously above, though not as cold. But nestled down in this sanctuary, the air was utterly calm and warm. Brooke and Leah stood on either side of their impromptu dining table and silently admired their handiwork.

From the crest of the highest dune and sitting on either end of the cooler, Jodie and Penni offered their applause.

Brooke took a bow at which point her Minnie Pearl hat fell off, landing atop one of the paper plates. "Well, then, I'll eat my hat," she said.

And they all could laugh.

With the food spread out and each sitting cross-legged at her place at the table—each except Brooke still with her hat on against the bright and quite warm sun, Brooke's back to the sun so she could leave her funny hat off, placed now next to the daisy as decoration and humorous reminder, the sun glowing through Brooke's gray-brown-golden ponytails—they paused before beginning the meal, each looking at the others in expectation or maybe awed respect. Though none except Brooke was currently a regular church goer, they all felt the sudden and irrepressible need to offer thanks—for everything. The other three all looked to Brooke.

But Brooke for once was silent, backed by golden rays and smiling contentedly, absorbing every beautiful sight, every passing second.

So Leah without closing her eyes said with a quiet but firm voice, "We give thanks this day for this day, for the beauty of your creation and for the privilege of sharing in it, for these loved ones gathered around this table and for those loved ones not present in body but present in our hearts. We thank you for this food and the hands that prepared it. We ask that you would combine this food with your grace to strengthen us for the days ahead, the task before us. In Jesus name—amen."

Jodie quickly added, "We pray for the fifth one here, that you make her healthy and strong and keep her safe." She stared across the tablecloth at her sister.

Penni stared back, shocked at first, then nodded thanks.

Brooke laughed. "Y'all are worse than Pastor Bob. Let's eat!" She handed the container of fried chicken to Jodie, followed it with the potato salad, the eggs, the rolls.

After serving herself and passing everything on to Leah, Jodie said, "I keep thinking we're trapped in a scene from _To the Lighthouse_." It was one of her favorite books.

Leah laughed. "Then I'm Cam," she said, referring to the Ramsays' daughter Camilla.

Jodie nodded. "Fine by me. I always identified best with James"—the Ramsays' underappreciated son.

"So who am I?" Brooke asked as she spooned out some potato salad.

"Mr. Ramsay!" Jodie and Leah said in unison.

"I'm guessing that's not a compliment."

"Depends on your perspective," Leah said, winking at Jodie.

"Yeah, right," Brooke muttered, vaguely recalling that she'd got about five pages into her sophomore English assignment of the book before giving up and reaching for the Cliff Notes.

"And who am I?" Penni asked.

The others faced the youngest in their group. She looked at just that moment stunningly beautiful and serene, her fair skin glowing in the sun's kind light, her face framed by the turquoise sash of her bonnet.

"The girl with the pearl earring," Brooke said, recalling Vermeer's most famous painting but merging it in her mind with his full-body portrait of the pregnant woman reading a letter. How could this daughter, still so young and beautiful, now be with child?

Jodie laughed. "Wrong century!"

"Wrong medium!" Leah added.

"So?" Brooke said.

"Woolf and Vermeer—not a bad combination," Jodie conceded. "Both fuzzy around the edges and idealized."

Leah shook her head. "You two cut it out. You'll cause me to blow a gasket. Penni can be Lily, painting the scene from afar"—referring to the young woman endlessly painting the scene of the boat carrying the travelers to the lighthouse's island.

"'There, I've had my vision.'" Jodie quoted her favorite line from the book, maybe her favorite line from anything, anytime, anywhere.

"So Lily watches the others?" Penni asked.

Leah nodded. "Simultaneously superfluous and indispensable."

"The great chronicler in the sky," Jodie said, more to herself than the group.

"That's funny," Penni said.

"What?"

"Me as watcher."

"Get used to it," Brooke said, a hint of bitterness in her tone.

The others looked at her.

She replaced her frown with an ironic smile. "Motherhood—doomed to watch them grow up and leave to their own lives." Her eyes were planted on Leah.

"We come back," Penni said.

Brooke faced her and nodded. "I'm grateful." Then she faced the others with dancing playful eyes. "Tomorrow we're _To the Lighthouse_ , if I can find full-length Victorian skirts and parasols."

"And full-body swimsuits for the 'boys'" Leah added.

"Will I have to stand in the distance at an easel?" Penni asked.

"The widow's walk," Jodie suggested.

"Perfect," Leah said.

"But I don't want to be left alone," Penni cried.

"O.K." Jodie granted in her best big sisterly magnanimity. "You can be Mr. Macalister."

"Who's he?"

"The boat captain."

"I like that better."

"Done."

They settled into the quiet of eating their cold lunch in the warm spring sun. Though none of them was hungry after the large and sprawling breakfast, they all ate with acute pleasure and visceral joy, not so much at the tastiness of the fare (though it was all delicious, especially Leah's deviled eggs and Brooke's home-brewed iced tea sweetened with honey and flavored with just the right number of lemon slices) as for the entrance that food seemed to grant to a private realm cut off from the world, from the forward march of time and the dependencies and obligations beyond this small circle. If they ate slowly enough and with sufficient appreciation and satisfaction, maybe they could stay in this bubble forever.

A lone gull circled above then alighted on the crest of one of the surrounding dunes. Unmoving and standing on one leg, it studied the scene unfolding below, as if surprised by the sight, or intrigued or mesmerized. Then it flew off.

Leah said, "How can we help you through this?"

Brooke smiled thinly at her sister across the table, both saddened and relieved to have the spell broken. "You already are."

"How?"

"This," she said, waving an arm as if in incantation over the assembly, their table, then outward above the dunes to the cottage and the oceanfront watch and the brilliant clear sky. "I needed you all here with me this weekend, and you came." Her voice faltered then, so she let her broad smile and glistening eyes speak her thanks.

To the other three, this openly vulnerable Brooke was unfamiliar and unsettling.

"Our pleasure," Leah said.

Both Jodie and Penni nodded assent; but neither could look directly at their mom, looked instead to Leah for support and guidance in these uncharted waters.

"And after this weekend?" Leah asked.

Brooke quickly blinked away her tears and set her face in its more normal hard-edged confidence and determination. She gazed toward the top of the dune and wondered where the sentinel bird had gone. Then she looked across the sand-supported table at her sister. "The trial starts next Friday. They straddle a weekend to better accommodate out-of-town participants and their families. I'm told there will be a minimum of four days of in-patient therapy, including treatments and monitoring. They don't expect any of the procedures to be 'difficult to tolerate or deleterious to normal metabolic function'—got to love the authors of these patient information packets! But in the fine print they're quick to warn you of possible allergic reaction or 'other adverse side effects including possible fatal episodes.'" Brooke paused and laughed. "Didn't we see that episode on _Gilligan's Island_ , Leah?"

None of the others joined her laughter.

"Anyway, I figure Dave and the boys will keep me well tended during my hospital stay. They can sneak in Chinese take-out and Dove candy bars—the dark chocolate ones—and _Cosmo_ and _Playgirl_ magazines. Do they still publish _Playgirl_?"

"Unlimited access on the Internet," Penni said, then covered her mouth.

"How do you know?" Brooke asked.

"She's pregnant, isn't she?" Jodie jumped in.

"By osmosis, in my mind anyway," Brooke insisted.

"Yeah," Jodie said. "Another virgin birth."

"We'll need to get you an Internet tablet, Mom—for your reading, and viewing, pleasure."

"Give me a book or an 8x10 glossy and my imagination, thank you very much."

"There are battery-powered assistants for that as well," Jodie said.

Leah cried, "I believe we've wandered beyond the bounds of propriety."

Brooke laughed. "So what else is new?"

"If my brothers will be there, I should be there too," Penni said.

Brooke fixed Penni with an insistent stare. "Listen, Penni! You took time away from Randall to be here this weekend, and I'm profoundly grateful. You have a husband, a home, and a job to tend to. And now you're pregnant, so you have an unborn dependent to boot. Do _not_ neglect your other responsibilities to come sit and watch me in a hospital bed twiddling my thumbs." She turned her glare from Penni to Jodie then Leah. "That goes for all of you. I will call on you if I need you. You have my word on that. Until then, cards and letters and phone calls—or, if you must, e-mails delivered to my new tablet—will suffice. Understood?"

Jodie and Penni each nodded automatically, relieved as always (if reluctantly, in Jodie's case) by the release from decision-making carried in their mother's clear directives.

But Leah, not saddled with this parental prescription, hesitated. "You've got to let us care for you, Brooke."

"I am. I will."

Leah nodded. "And that's fine. Call on us as needed—we'll be there." She checked this with both her nieces and received their affirming nods. "But you also have to let us care for you in our own ways, as we feel the need."

Brooke stared across at her sister, wondered when the last time she'd let someone freely dote on her, and knew it was decades ago, and the doting attention and care flowed forth from those same eyes gazing across the checked tablecloth at her now, unchanged despite the years, despite the addition of hearing and speaking ability in the interim.

"You have to let us love you," Leah said, mimicking her spoken words with their old child's primitive sign language—her fingers shaping a heart that flowed into hands clasped together in prayer, or an unbreakable bond.

6

That night in bed Jodie was in bad shape. She craved a hit of anything—ludes, X, coke, crack, ox, perc: it didn't matter what, anything to take the edge off. Her symptoms were all psychological—her body was clean, had been since the wedding. But that was small consolation. Her spirit demons were always worse than her body's cravings, rapacious and relentless. How do you think she got here in the first place? And in more than twenty years of battling those demons, she'd still not fully figured them out, had mainly held them at bay by avoiding the circumstances that triggered their appearance.

But this weekend there was no chance for such avoidance, and she'd known it was coming since the day Leah'd called. She'd thought of packing some relief but chose not to take the chance with airport security the way it was. She'd considered sneaking out of the house in Atlanta to try to score, but how stupid was that?—call a taxi from a vacant lot in Leah and Whitfield's upscale neighborhood and ask him or her to drive me to the nearest street corner dealer that might be miles away in a seedy section of town? Yeah, right. She even did a quick troll of the truckstop when they pulled off the highway for gas and did find a glazed hooker by the restrooms, but she was looking to score—her body in exchange for crank—not sell. The girl's hollow cheeks and dead eyes haunted Jodie the rest of the way to the beach; but the image had somehow, in the perverse logic of a former junkie's mind, only heightened her desperation, her need to score, to have a backstop at the ready for whatever was coming.

And now here it was and here she was—in bed in the dark room in the dark and silent cottage miles from anything and no way to get there, with her sister sleeping ten feet away and her mother and aunt just down the hall. She felt like the whole universe was pressing down on her chest and that it would explode out the top of her head. She was sweating despite the cool room; her throat was dry; her temples throbbed. She forced herself to concentrate on the sound of Penni's rhythmic breathing to be sure she was asleep, then rose as quietly as she could and slipped out of the bedroom and made her way down the hall toward the bathroom, the thin silver glow of its nightlight like a beacon.

She closed and locked the door behind her. Her fingers brushed the light switch but didn't throw it on. She couldn't possibly withstand the sudden glare and what it might show in the mirror. The nightlight's few watts of glow provided all the light she'd need. The shadow that was her body moved across the mirror to the linen closet at the far end of the room. She opened its door and reached up to feel for her toiletries kit hidden behind the towels on the top shelf. She grabbed its handle and pulled the kit down and set it on the vanity. She unzipped its top and reached in and felt beneath her razor and shaving gel and shampoo and conditioner to the slick triangular-shaped bottle hidden at the bottom. Though she could've seen what she was doing, she did it all by feel, with her eyes closed, as if denying even to herself that any of this was really happening. The sealed bottle held a week's supply of night-time cough medicine. In a last-ditch summoning of her high-school freshman days, she'd grabbed a bottle of the cough medicine at the truckstop and managed to hide it from Aunt Leah under a big bag of cotton balls bought at the same time till she got it into her toiletries kit.

Though she assumed they'd long since removed the good stuff from this brand of over-the-counter medicine, the scent was the same as she cracked open the seal and took off the top. That smell alone calmed her breathing and slowed her heart rate. She raised the bottle to her lips and took a long draught. The syrup tasted the same and had the same effect of tugging her eyeballs backwards into her skull after she swallowed the burning liquid. She took another swallow then another then another. Then the bottle was empty.

She put the top back on and carefully buried it again at the bottom of the kit. She felt the plastic seal tape on the counter and tucked it into her kit. She felt all around the countertop to be sure she wasn't forgetting something. Then she opened her eyes to look but saw only her ghostly reflection in the mirror's glow. She quickly zipped up the kit and returned it to its hiding place behind the towels on the top shelf and quietly closed the linen closet door, then opened the bathroom door, careful to ease off the lock tab and avoid any noise.

She was halfway back to their bedroom when the medicine, quickly passing through her empty stomach's lining and into her bloodstream, began to flood her senses. She felt dizzy, there was a rushing sound in her ears, and what little she could see in the dim light grew suddenly blurred. She wavered and thought she'd faint and grabbed the nearest hand hold—the newel post on the stairs leading up to the widow's walk. That anchor steadied her through the initial onslaught of the drug, and her spinning head slowed then stopped.

But she was afraid to let go of the post, afraid to try to complete her walk down the hall and through the bedroom to her bed, afraid she'd wake Penni and Penni would wake Mom and then there'd be hell to pay. _Jodie, what the hell did you think you were doing!_ Or, worse, the silent turning of her back in rejection and dismissal. That might be more than she could handle right now.

But she couldn't stay here. What if someone came out to use the bathroom and found her passed out in the hall—more alarms, more drama, more disappointment. The stairs before her, their lower half visible in the nightlight before disappearing into darkness, offered an alternative. But she'd have to work fast, before her legs and her consciousness gave way. Clutching the railing with a life-or-death grip, she mounted those steps one at a time, pausing briefly at each step to steady herself before tackling the next. She expected at some point to pass into darkness as she rose, but that never happened. Light from somewhere guided her way. It even seemed she could see more clearly as she approached the top. Was that some result of the medicine?

At the door at the head of the stairs, she could clearly see the brass knob and matching deadbolt lever, shining in that hidden light. She unlocked the deadbolt and turned the knob and the door freely swung open away from her. She stepped out into the night.

And what a rush! The clear sky's infinite stars leapt toward her and wrapped themselves around in a dizzying twirl. The peaceful lapping of the surf became arms enfolding her, easing her downward. The gentle breeze—warmer than during the day, out of the southwest, coming off the land rather than the sea—swirled around her, completing the seduction, fulfilling her wish.

She pushed the door shut behind and surrendered to the stars, the sea, the wind, collapsed to the wood decking, leaned against the open railing's pickets, laid her head on her arm, and slept.

Leah lay on her back in the bed listening to her sister's slow and rhythmic breathing, each loop punctuated by a high-pitched whistle that might've been a sigh or a moan or a whine or a giggle but was presumably just compressed air being forced through a partially blocked nasal passage. In another time, that sound from the sleeping Brooke might've produced a swell of contentment and reassurance in Leah, an unwitting affirmation of life and vitality in the one she'd known the longest and the best. But on this night the faint whistle made Brooke's breathing sound thin and frail—vulnerable to any disturbance, subject to suspension.

Last night after their bedtime talk in the dark, Leah had removed her processors before realizing that in all of their childhood nights together she'd never heard the sound of Brooke's unconscious breathing. She had many times held her hand just above Brooke's slack mouth to feel her sister's sleeping exhalations wash over her fingertips. Once, Brooke's eyes flashed open and she grabbed that hand, scaring Leah—she couldn't have been more than six—so bad she wet her pajamas. Leah's fear turned to embarrassment as Brooke laughed so hard she looked like she'd pee her pajamas. But then that embarrassment turned to relief as Momma opened the door to ask what was going on and Brooke had deftly covered for her sister's accident and later helped her change her pajama bottoms and the sheet. That incident didn't keep Leah from monitoring her sister's sleeping breaths frequently in the years following. Her instinctive need to know Brooke was alive exceeded her fear of being caught checking. But from that day forward, she'd always braced herself against Brooke's sudden rousing. The funny thing is, it never happened again. Brooke always slept all the way through Leah's vigils, her gentle breaths a dependable wellspring of solace till Leah's suspended arm would tire and she'd roll over and return to sleep.

But she'd never _heard_ that breathing. She'd heard very few sleeping breaths in the years since she'd got her implants, as she always took the processors off before going to bed. But in the first months after the surgery, as her brain struggled to decode the strange and unsettling static flowing in through her ears, she'd sneak into Jasper's room after he'd fallen asleep and listen to his unconscious breathing. That gentle rhythm was a manageable dose of sound for her mind to process, and came to be a source of joy and wonder and calm. In the years since she'd heard Whitfield snoring many times, nights when she would read in bed beside him (that racket made her appreciate how fortunate she was to be able to remove her processors and turn off his gurgling chorus), and often listened to the wheezing of their chronically congested bulldog Orion sleeping in his dog bed in the den.

But never Brooke. So when they'd retired this night and said their "good-nights" (that too was new, for them both), she'd left her implants in. And it wasn't long before Brooke's rhythmic breathing and faint whistling filled the room and her head. Though she'd hoped the sound would reassure her—an affirmation of life, stored for future recollection—it only did the opposite, deepened the dark pool of sadness and fear swelling in her heart. She could end the noise, like Whitfield's snoring, by simply lifting her external processors off the implants' magnets. But she knew that action wouldn't erase the sound, or its disquiet, from her heart. Like Jasper's soft whispers of childhood trust and innocence, Brooke's sighing whistles would be with her from now on.

Then she heard the creaking of the hall's wood flooring, then the nearly inaudible click of the latch closing on the bathroom door. She knew it was Jodie. She didn't know how she knew; she just knew. Those faint sounds were followed by some minutes of silence, as she blocked out Brooke's breathing (or had it stopped?) and listened intently for further hints from beyond their bedroom door. She was, as always since the first time she'd laid eyes on her first-born niece in the Currituck County Hospital's nursery, worried about Jodie—all the more so today, as Jodie's uncharacteristic good cheer seemed, to Leah at least, thin and desperate, hinting at an inner struggle and foretelling, as it always did in Jodie, a crash.

After a few minutes, the bathroom's door eased open—another near-silent latch click, a hinge squeaking ever so slightly—and the floorboards creaked again. Only this time the creaking didn't progress down the hall toward the far bedroom. It rose. How could that be? Was she leaning against the walls? Climbing them? Then Leah remembered—the stairs to the widow's walk. She followed Jodie's halting progress up those stairs. The cottage seemed well-built, but nothing is so well built as to keep third-floor stairs from creaking. And each tread offered forth its own signature note to the dark. There was a pause at the top, then another door swinging open, then the sound of the outdoors rushing into the hall, filling the house for seconds, maybe minutes. How loud were these noises? How was anyone else in the house still asleep?

Then the door shut, and everything grew instantly still.

Leah waited for her own heart to slow and quiet. Gradually the sound of her thumping heart was replaced by the sound of Brooke's rhythmic breathing—slow and measured as before but the frail whistle gone. Leah held frozen in place, she couldn't have said how long. Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen? There was no clock on the nightstand, she didn't have a watch, and she'd certainly not turn on her phone with its deafening activation jingle and blinding screen's light. So she waited in darkness accompanied by the new yet now somehow eternal sound of her sister's sleeping breaths, praying that the widow's walk door would open, the stairs creak in reverse, the floorboards down the hall, the far bedroom door open then close, and she could take off her processors and go to sleep. Beneath her surface anxieties she wondered at how the rest of the world dealt with this profusion of nocturnal noises, was secretly grateful for the oblivion of nighttime silence and the freedom from worry it granted.

But not tonight. As her eyes grew heavy, she feared she might doze off; and Jodie was still out there on the widow's walk. A sudden panic gripped her—had Jodie fallen over the edge? If not, might she? There'd been no loud noises of a fall, but who could say? She might've missed something—a cry, a plea. She needed to go. She needed to save her niece.

She rose from the bed as quietly as she could. The room was cold and she pulled the bed's quilted throw over her shoulders. She could see well enough—but how? starlight through the windows? some light reflected off the sand or water?—to move confidently but still moved cautiously to avoid making any noise and waking Brooke. She eased their door open then shut it behind. The hall was relatively well lit by the bathroom's nightlight and she moved more quickly now though still with her softest footsteps. She'd never known how much noise houses could make in the night! She moved up the stairs, almost running now, her bare feet feeling the rough nosing of every other tread. At the top, she eased the door open a crack, checked the knob to make sure it wouldn't lock behind her, then pushed the door open further.

Halfway open the door bumped against something. In the strange outdoor light, a silver luminescence combining the reflection of stars and surf and sand, she could see Jodie's body laid out on the deck. She quickly stepped over her body, pushed the door shut to give her more room, then knelt down to Jodie's face. She laid her cheek against Jodie's mouth and was relieved beyond expressing to feel her niece's warm breath wash over her cold skin. She looked up at those innumerable stars, so bright and persistent from this lofty perch and in this darkest of settings, and offered a quick and audible thanks that began as an animal's low moan and ended as a sigh.

Then she rolled to the side and sat against the railing. It felt solid and safe. And reaching beneath Jodie's shoulders, she eased her niece's upper body into her lap then pulled the quilt to cover them both. Jodie roused and said something unintelligible into Leah's chest, then nuzzled her face down into Leah's stomach and fell back asleep. Leah lightly brushed her niece's soft hair beneath the blanket. Only then did she become aware that there was sound in this darkness too, the rhythmic lap then retreat of the surf, the world's inhalation and exhalation, strong and sure.

Penni heard Jodie leave the bedroom. She figured she was just going to the bathroom and rolled over to go back to sleep.

She couldn't say how much time had passed when she woke again and rolled onto her back. She knew within seconds that she was alone in the room. She considered rising to check on her sister. But the room was cold, the night dark, and who knows where Jodie might be or what she was doing or if she'd appreciate her little sister's intrusion. This last thought was what kept Penni in her warm bed. She felt more than recalled the disappointment and sometimes shame of her many childhood searches for her older sister. Most times she couldn't find her; and the few times she did, she was greeted with a frown and the exclamation "What are you doing here?" or "Are you spying on me?" She'd not repeat that mistake tonight, risk riling her sister and perhaps rousing the rest of the cottage's occupants.

Instead, her mind and very soon thereafter her body found consolation in summoning Randall. She closed her eyes and discovered first his scent, the fragrance of his face highlighted by the menthol of his shaving cream, the coconut oil of his conditioner, the rich earthiness from his neck down along his arms and flanks, the whiff of hand sanitizer around his well-trimmed nails and between his fingers. Those fingers then began to caress her and it was no longer smell but touch that claimed her full awareness. That touch began at her lips, the moisture from the tip of her tongue then descended ever so slowly and patiently to her breasts, circled her tender and alive nipples, first the left then the right, lingered there. Then began a meander over her taut stomach, circled atop the new and gentle rising that wasn't so much sensitive as surprising, still fresh with hope and promise.

Then that touch moved below. She was by then panting beneath Randall's intoxicating embrace, swaying in tandem with his thrust and rhythm, every nerve ending in her body in tune with his—side to side, back and forth. There was no separation between them. They were one flesh, one spirit. She would remain here forever. She was safe, she was fulfilled, she was ecstatically happy.

Then the inward pressure burst forth in brilliant light. She screamed or thought she did. She collapsed onto the mattress.

She opened her eyes. She was alone in the still darkness but didn't care. She rolled to her stomach, pressed her face into the damp pillow, and slept.

Brooke heard Jodie, heard Leah, heard Penni. It was her fate to know everything about those in her charge, and her obligation to do something about it—keep them safe, make them happy.

But not tonight. The grinding in her lower abdomen was all she could manage, more vicious than ever, almost too much to bear. She tried to calm herself with deep breaths, tried to will the pain away. But it didn't work. The fire couldn't be damped; it could barely be controlled. It was all she could do to keep from screaming.

And all about, her loved ones needed her; but she couldn't rise to help. Worst of all, she knew it would be this way here on out. That understanding was more painful than the wholesale rebellion of her body.

Spring Thaw

Leah sat alongside the hospital bed holding Brooke's cool hand. Her sister was in a drug-induced coma in the ICU ward of Carolinas Medical.

The first few days of her treatments had gone well. Leah spoke daily by phone with her, who in typical Brooke fashion said everything was great, that she was splitting her time between patient shuffleboard in the halls (winner getting a full body massage "if you know what I mean" from male nurse Barry) and five-course gourmet meals complete with battery-powered candlelight "to keep from blowing us all to Kingdom Come" with a real flame next to the oxygen tanks. After maybe five minutes of such glib repartee, Brooke would hand the phone to Dave who would step out into the hall and give a more informative if less engaging report—"The doctors are encouraged there's been no adverse reaction," "Her T-cell numbers are stable," "Her white-blood count is starting to turn up." Leah would've much rather been there to share Brooke's trials, and tribulations, in the flesh. But she'd honored her sister's adamant command that she maintain her own life and monitor developments from afar. After hanging up, she'd relay a summary of the day's developments to Jodie and Penni in shared text messages— _Brooke comfortable and singing loud; All's well—no adverse side effects; A good day, critical numbers improving._ She'd end all her text messages with the short-hand _CFMI-LAL_ , meaning _call for more information, love Aunt Leah_. And her nieces each dutifully responded via text, Penni always with _Thanks for being on guard, Aunt Leah_ (this in addition to having Randall speak daily with the trial's attending physician, some rising young star named Liau) and Jodie with _LOL_ , which Leah sometimes took as _lots of laughs_ and other times _lots of luck_ , depending partly on what she'd said in her text message but more on how she felt in her gut— _did she need laughs or luck tonight?_

That routine had ended suddenly on the fourth day. Leah had called at her usual time—8 PM—only to have Dave pick up the room's phone rather than Brooke. He seemed both out of breath and confused.

"Who?"

"Leah."

"Who?"

"Your sister-in-law."

"What for?"

"What's happened?"

The line went dead for a minute.

"Dave Redmond speaking."

It was Dave and Brooke's eldest son, Dave junior. "Davey, this is Leah. Where's Brooke?"

"They're moving her to ICU, Aunt Leah. She wasn't feeling well this morning. She started throwing up this afternoon. Then she went into convulsions about an hour ago. They finally got her sedated, but it took a while. It was horrible, Aunt Leah."

"What went wrong?"

"They don't know. Could be an allergic reaction to the drugs. Could be an attack of pancreatitis. Could be something else. They've got a rush on the bloodwork."

"So she's in ICU?"

"On her way there now. They had to free up a cubicle by rushing a post-op to step-down."

"Is your father O.K.?"

Davey paused before responding. Leah knew he was looking at Dave Senior and making a professional evaluation (Davey was a psychotherapist). "He'll be O.K. We're gathering up her stuff to clear the room. There's a nurse helping us. We'll store it at the nurse's station till we can get it to the car. Then we'll go see Mom."

Leah wondered if he was talking to her or to his father. "I'm coming up there. I'll leave within the hour."

Davey returned his focus to his aunt on the phone. "Please don't do that, Aunt Leah. Driving overnight is dangerous and stressful. You stay put and call in the morning. We'll discuss what needs to be done then."

"What number?"

"Call Mom's cellphone. I've got it right here and will keep it on."

"You'll call if there's any change?"

"Aunt Leah, everything is changing right now."

"For the worse."

Davey paused. "If there's something you need to know, I'll call. Otherwise, get a good night's rest."

Leah thought _fat chance_ , but said, "You too."

Davey said, "We'll try."

Leah said, "Me too."

The line had gone dead and the dial tone had come on before Leah could say "I love you" to Davey and his father and most of all to Brooke, wherever she was.

She'd opted not to text or call Jodie and Penni. What would she say? What did she know, here two hundred fifty miles away? She assumed Davey would contact them but wished she'd asked him to. She packed an overnight bag before going to bed, lying on her back facing the dark ceiling with her processors on to hear a call. Whitfield had told her to leave the processors off, that he'd answer and wake her. But she'd left them on in silent vigil for Brooke. She was again struck by how much noise there was in the night, and not just Whitfield's snoring. She heard squirrels on the roof or in the attic, owls in the patch of woods behind the house, an occasional car rounding their out of the way cul-de-sac, the fridge cycling on, and of course the furnace's periodic rushing air. She heard the scream of some animal out in the dark. Her throat clenched in dread at the image of a mouse or chipmunk or squirrel seized by a predator.

At some point she dozed off and dreamed of Brooke floating on the ocean. Standing on the shore, she could see her sister's face—the young Brooke with long hair dark and slick as a seal's and unlined tanned skin—when her body rose on each swell. Then her face and body would disappear into the valley of the wave, then rise again. She wanted to call Brooke in, tell her to stop fooling around. But her voice didn't work. Then she realized the whole world was silent, like when she was a child. And Brooke was drifting out to sea, oblivious to her presence and calls from shore. Leah wanted to swim out there and claim her sister back, but she was afraid of the water, the soundless violence of the waves. Then she woke to a darkness as silent as her dream, only the tears filling her eyes a new guest.

She'd called Brooke's number at dawn.

Davey answered first ring.

"You must be exhausted," she said.

"Beyond that."

"How's Brooke?"

"Stable at the moment."

"And?"

"She has sepsis. All her organ systems are impacted. They've put her into deep sedation so she doesn't expend her strength fighting the symptoms or pulling at the tubes."

"The tubes?"

"They're supporting her with multiple IVs and oxygen. They may need to add a breathing tube if her oxygen levels fall much lower."

"That sounds bad."

"It's very serious, Leah. With this kind of infection, an organ can shut down at any time and create a crisis."

"Her prognosis?"

"They need to identify the bug. Right now they're flooding her with a broad spectrum antibiotic mix. But if they can determine the source of the infection, they can target it with large doses of the most effective drugs."

"You father?"

"He's asleep in the family lounge."

"Did you call the girls?"

"I talked to Penni last night. I'll call her with an update a little later. Not everyone is up at dawn like you."

"And Jodie?"

"I left a message. She hasn't called back."

Leah thought to ask what the message was but chose not to intervene more than she already had. "I'll leave after breakfast, should be there around noon. I'll come straight to the hospital."

Davey took an audible breath—perhaps to protest, perhaps in warning. But all he said was, "Thanks, Aunt Leah. We could use your help."

She'd arrived as promised, the mid-morning mid-week drive through clear weather free of incident and largely free of traffic. She'd found her way to the ICU wing on the seventh floor and ran into Davey as he emerged from the large doors marked _Authorized Family Members Only_.

His weary eyes brightened and he gave her a long hug. "Thanks for coming," he said straight into her left processor's microphone.

That close, the words had a strange receding echo, like in a canyon. When he'd straightened and stood above her—he was tall, like his father—she said simply, "She's my only sister. I couldn't _not_ be here," both dismissing his gratitude as unnecessary and establishing her right of presence in whatever would follow.

Davey understood her full meaning and nodded acceptance. He liked is aunt and trusted she'd be a valuable ally if things got bad—well, worse even than at present—especially in dealing with his rogue half-sister. "Dad's in with her now. No change from earlier, which everyone thinks is a good thing. Her blood pressure is still very low and her oxygen absorption is borderline. Dad signed the papers to put her on a ventilator and they'll probably do that this afternoon, as a precaution."

"Can I see her?"

"One visitor at a time, and you need to put on a disposable suit and booties and hair net. They let us leave off the face mask as long as you're not sneezing or coughing."

Leah laughed. "Sneezing into a face mask doesn't sound like fun."

Davey giggled.

Leah had not heard him giggle since he was a toddler, at the family picnics they had back then.

Between giggles he said, "In grade school, we would taunt each other by saying 'I'll turn your nose backwards so when you sneeze it will blow your brains out!'" The memory set off another round of laughter that sounded odd in the sterile and otherwise silent hallway.

Leah shook her head. Such teasing was never a part of her childhood. After her nephew had calmed, she said, "Maybe I should wait to see Brooke. I can get a hotel room then come back later."

"Nonsense. You can stay in Mom and Dad's guestroom. If you don't mind, you could take Dad home now—he needs a nap and a shower—and bring him back later. We can work out an arrangement of shifts then."

Leah had nodded and did as instructed. She'd driven Dave Senior home, set her things in their guestroom, then made them each a sandwich from Brooke's well-stocked fridge. She grinned at the sight of the homemade dinners in microwaveable containers labelled for each day of the week, including last night's. Brooke had thought of everything, except her incapacitation.

Dave was in shock, kept shaking his head and muttering, "She was fine yesterday." Leah had always sympathized with Dave, in part because she understood all too well the controlling force being applied to his life. And now she was witnessing the price of that control's sudden removal. She saw now how fortunate Dave was to have his namesake to watch over him in Brooke's absence—but then that was her sister's planning as well.

After lunch, they'd both taken long naps, Leah lying on her back atop the spread on the guestroom bed, her processors left on in case of a call. She was fast learning a new skill—sleeping unmoving on her back with her head high on the pillow. Only the position was new—she usually slept on her stomach with her face turned to the left on the pillow—but she'd always been a still sleeper, as her world went blank soon as she closed her eyes.

When she woke the shadows were long in the sun's golden light streaming through the room's west-facing window. She'd showered and dressed in jeans and a pullover sweater and comfortable walking shoes. She'd knocked on Dave's half-closed door then peeked in to find him asleep atop their king-sized bed, fully clothed and with his shoes on. She shook him lightly. "Dave?"

He woke wild-eyed. "Where's Brooke?"

"It's Leah. Brooke is at the hospital." She wondered at her choice of preposition. Was it a kindness to him or herself?

Dave winced and shuddered violently. But once his body stilled, his face relaxed and his eyes lost their pain and confusion. "Then you must tell her to come home," he said, managing a sad grin to accompany his words.

"Tell her yourself—I'll take you there."

"Can I clean up first?"

Leah knew he was asking this of Brooke, part of their reflexive dialogue refined and polished over thirty years. "Of course," she said. "I'll pull out one of Brooke's meals for an early dinner." She wasn't hungry after their late lunch but figured they should eat before heading to the hospital. Jasper was hypoglycemic and she was familiar with the risks of skipping or delaying a meal.

"Thursday is three-meat lasagna, my favorite."

"Three meats?"

"Hamburger, sausage, and pepperoni."

Leah smiled. "Leave it to Brooke."

"Yeah."

2

When Leah finally saw her sister, she was shocked at the sight but also relieved it wasn't worse. A young nurse was checking the levels in the IV drips and pumps arrayed on the far side of the bed and recording information into a digital clipboard.

"Can I kiss her?" Leah asked.

The nurse shook her head once firmly.

Leah nodded. It would've been an awkward effort anyway with the breathing tube taped to her mouth. "Touch her hand?" she asked, her eyes and expression raised in a coy child's request.

The nurse—she reminded Leah of Penni with her open and honest face—smiled but whispered, "Sanitizer first" and tilted her head toward a wall-mounted dispenser beside the door.

Leah had flooded her hands with sanitizer just outside the cubicle's door, the pungent fragrance still filling her nostrils. But she silently returned to the door, received a clear dollop on her fingers from the battery-powered dispenser, and vigorously rubbed it into her hands. The fabric of her disposable gown crinkled loudly from the effort. She stepped forward to the edge of the bed, reached between the rungs of the guardrail, and lightly brushed her sister's left hand resting atop the white sheet. It felt deathly cold. Leah thought the sensation might be the result of the sanitizer evaporating from her skin, so she withdrew her fingers, wiped them lightly on the sheet, then touched Brooke again. She still felt cold.

"She's being kept in a minimal metabolic state, to reduce the spread of the infection and buy us time to get it under control."

Leah was reassured, more by the presumption of success in the last words than the explanation in the first. "She'll be O.K.?"

The nurse paused her data entry and looked directly at Leah from across the bed. Her honest and kind face was made at birth for moments like this, but it would also be the cause for her to transfer to a less stressful assignment following the inevitable burnout. "Before I look at the chart, I can tell the severity of the illness by the number of IV pumps." She nodded toward the crowd of digital boxes on several stainless steel IV trees. "Mrs. Redmond has nine."

"That's a lot?" Leah asked, already knowing the answer.

The nurse nodded.

Leah didn't stay long that first time, partly out of kindness to herself—to recover from the initial shock—but mainly to give Dave time in the room before going home to a regular night's rest. She and Davey had decided, with Dave's silent assent, that Leah would take the overnight shift, eleven to seven, for the next few days, releasing Dave and his son from their draining round-the-clock vigil and giving them the time and energy to deal with informing family and friends—and, by implication, preparing for a possible sudden crisis. With that decision, Davey had run home—he lived with his wife Shannon in a suburb of the city, about a half-hour away—to get a shower and a change of clothes. He'd return by eleven to take his dad home and stay with him overnight.

While Leah waited for her shift to start, she gained brief audiences with the resident on duty and the head nurse, arranged through the ICU's family advocate, a kindly retired gentleman named Ralph with a bald head, bushy eyebrows, and a quick and easy smile. She gathered from these interviews that the next forty-eight hours would be critical as the infection would either be brought under control, and they could start trying to bring Brooke's compromised organs "back online," or the infection would worsen and begin to damage her "critical systems" irreversibly.

"What about the cancer?" Leah asked.

The young resident seemed surprised by the question. "One battle at a time," he said before his phone beeped and he rushed off to another crisis.

Leah thought of calling Penni and Jodie, but wasn't sure how recently Davey had called them. She didn't want to overload them with information or anxiety. So she sent them a joint text message— _At the hospital. Will stay overnight. Call if you want to talk. Love Aunt Leah._

Around ten Davey returned. He swapped places with his father and spent a few minutes in the cubicle with Brooke, then stopped by the nurses' station to confirm with the head overnight nurse, a stern woman with close-cropped gray hair named Janet, that Leah would be staying with Brooke throughout the night and would be the family's frontline representative.

Janet nodded but said, "Final decisions are Mr. Redmond's"—meaning Dave senior.

The younger Mr. Redmond nodded. "We'll hope for no final decisions—tonight or ever."

Janet managed an encouraging grin that stretched her lean face. "We'll hope that."

Then the two David Redmonds left and Leah had donned her disposable suit and fabric booties and hairnet and entered Brooke's cubicle. She pulled the room's one chair—armless with a stainless steel frame and gray vinyl seat and back—close to the bed on the side away from all the high-tech equipment and pumps, sat down and leaned forward and took her sister's hand. Brooke, lying on her back facing the ceiling with the breathing tube taped to her closed mouth, gave no sign of recognition or awareness. Whatever sedatives they were pumping into her bloodstream, their effect was powerful, her unconscious, as far as Leah could tell, absolute. She wondered if Brooke could dream, or had any awareness at all; and if she did, would that be a good or a bad thing under the circumstances.

"Her brain is active."

Leah looked up quickly. The voice seemed to have arisen from nowhere.

A nurse stepped forth from the shadows beyond the lit bed. She was young with pale skin and red hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her face and neck were as white as her uniform, giving her a ghostly appearance that was accentuated by the shadowed room and the eerie pale-green digital glow from the monitors. "I'm Sheila McIntyre. I'll be caring for your sister overnight."

Leah started to stand.

The nurse waved her down. "No formalities in ICU," she said with a gentle smile.

Leah nodded and remained seated, still holding Brooke's cool hand. "I'm Leah Monroe, Brooke's sister."

Sheila nodded. "I know. Janet told me. Welcome to the overnight shift." She checked the IV bags and pumps as she talked.

"You work every night?"

"Well, not every night; but only overnight—four days on, three off."

"Must be hard."

"No, not really. Not once you get used to it. And it allows me to get my daughter every day after school. I like that."

"What about mornings?"

Sheila laughed. "My mom. She gets the hard part. I'm not a morning person and neither is Peggy. Mom says morning grumpiness must be genetic."

Leah laughed. "My son got it from his father."

"How old is he?"

"Freshman in college."

"So you're off the hook."

"For morning wake-ups, yes. But now it's done, I sometimes miss it."

Sheila laughed. "I'll tell my mom."

Leah looked to Brooke's unmoving face then to Sheila's ethereal one. "Is she O.K.?"

A flicker of gravity passed over that face. "She's stable at the moment, but we need to identify what's attacking her and where."

Leah nodded. At least all the caregivers had their stories straight.

"You can help," Sheila said.

"How?"

"Talk to her. Your voice will calm her fears and help her heal."

"What should I say?"

"Whatever you want. It's the sound of your voice that matters. And don't mind me. I'll be coming and going all night long, and I'm sworn to secrecy." She made a cross above her heart.

Leah laughed. "That was the most sacred sign Brooke and I had as kids."

"Mine too, with my sister. Now I use it with Peggy." She finished her readings. "Press the call button if you need anything. And you can take that hairnet off if it's uncomfortable. Overnight service has its perks!" She turned and exited, pulling the wide oak door shut behind her.

And so Leah was left alone with her comatose sister. She wasn't sure if it were the time of day, though who would know in this windowless room buried deep in the pulsing heart of the hospital, or the prospect of the long night before them—that's how she thought of the challenge ahead, as being before _them_ , in plural, though how could Brooke know what faced her?—but whatever the reason, this solo visit felt so much more fraught than the earlier one when Davey and Dave were just around the corner in the family lounge, ready reinforcements or consolation in a crisis. This time she was alone, Brooke's sole link to family and past against the ponderous workings of the vast and inscrutable medical system, however personalized its presence in the angel-faced Sheila. Leah was both line of defense against the dehumanization of the pumps and digital readouts, and bridge to the soul of love and life residing within that prone body this vast organism—just then the hospital seemed that, a living though alien being—was straining to keep alive. And how was she to fulfill her role as that defense and link?

_Talk to her!_ Sheila had instructed.

Did she somehow know that for more than half their lives—the formative half, the _close_ half—she'd not been able to _talk_ to Brooke, that their communication had been entirely in sign and gesture and eye contact, methods unavailable now. And touch, available now but only in one direction, as Leah's fingers lightly brushed across the back of Brooke's hand and wrist and eased into the crack between that wrist and the hospital sheet, found the soft inner flesh that seemed both warmer and moister, though maybe that was just the effect of the sheet. Her fingertips paused there at the depression at the base of the thumb, waited for a pulse, some sign of life other than the numbers. But if a pulse was there, it was so faint as to seem imagined, perhaps was imagined. This inconclusive pulse was worse than none at all, and Leah abandoned the search. Instead she ran her fingers lightly along Brooke's wrist the way Brooke would do when Leah felt sad or lonely. Brooke called it tickle flesh; and though it was originally a game they played to pass the time, it had evolved into Brooke's main method of tangible consolation and support to her deaf sister, freeing Leah to close her eyes and cry or sleep or giggle. Tickle flesh had been Brooke's IV pump of love into Leah's vein.

So now Leah strived to return the gift, her warm fingertips lightly rubbing Brooke's cool inner wrist. And she unburdened her heart of words she couldn't speak back then, and hadn't had the chance or impetus to speak since she'd been granted a voice.

"I'm sorry about Danny," Leah said in a firm whisper directed straight at Brooke's unmoving eyelids. Danny had been Brooke's boyfriend during her last two years of high school. A year after Brooke had gone off to college and broken up with Danny, Leah had lost her virginity to him in the cab of his pickup the night before her debutante ball. When Leah told Brooke the next morning, she immediately concluded the exchange was rape and came close to killing Danny in a subsequent confrontation. The sisters had never again talked of the incident.

"I'm sorry I went to his truck that night, sorry I got inside, sorry I betrayed you." She paused and took a deep breath then continued. "But I want you to know that Danny didn't rape me. I'm not sure what it was, but it wasn't rape. Some part of me wanted him to do what he did. I've wanted to tell you that for a long time. I wanted to tell you in fairness to Danny and in apology to you."

Leah's heart was pounding, and she wondered if Brooke could feel the beats through her fingertips and into her wrist. If so, she gave no sign—her eyelids didn't flutter, her eyeballs beneath those lids didn't move. Leah wasn't sure if she were glad for this stillness or disappointed. After all these years, she expected Brooke to sit up in bed, get wide-eyed and scream "What!" And she would lean back, bow her head in contrition, and wait for Brooke's storm to pass before continuing.

But there was no storm. She continued anyway. "I received word through the grapevine what you did. Danny's brother told his cousin who told Jackie who told Marie who told me that you beat the crap out of Danny and gouged his truck. Did you really pull a switchblade on him? Where did you get such a thing? What nobody could figure out is why you beat him up. Only Danny knew, and he wasn't talking. And nobody in a million years would've guessed that Little Miss Perfect Deaf Girl had climbed into his truck that night, let alone what happened once inside. Now Danny's dead, so only you and I know the truth." She paused in silent respect for the deceased. She'd heard from Momma maybe fifteen years ago that he'd died in a grain silo accident on his family's farm. She thought at the time she needed to contact Brooke and set the record straight, for the sake of Danny's memory—or for him, wherever he was, watching her with that penetrating gaze. But she'd never followed up on that intention.

She continued her monologue, her heart rate calmer now, more closely resembling the blips marching past in silence on the screen above Brooke's head. "Well, only I know the truth, which is why I'm telling you now, so you'll know. And maybe you can forgive me. But mainly I hope you'll forgive Danny.

"I saw him once more, that fall in the school parking lot. It was on a Tuesday early in the semester. I know it was Tuesday because I had study hall the last period on that day and left early, before everyone else. Don't ask me how he knew my schedule. Was he spying on me or did someone mention it in passing or was it another example of his unfailing intuition when it came to me? I didn't know then and I don't know now.

"There was a black pickup parked next to the station wagon; and it was backed into the space so that its driver-side door was next to my driver-side door. I still didn't think anything about it till I went to unlock the door and the window to the truck rolled down. I turned at the movement and there was Danny, sitting in the driver's seat, gazing down at me with that same lopsided grin. But the old mocking playfulness was gone from his eyes, replaced by something like sadness and hurt.

"And what I felt seeing him for the first time since The Night was not anger or regret or fear. What I felt was gentleness and compassion and a kind of love—something primitive and elemental and unformed but still love. That's when I knew that what had happened in his truck that night was not coerced or even manipulative, unless it was some hidden part of myself manipulating _him_. I suddenly felt very sorry for him, that he had gotten blamed for something that was outside his control or mine.

"I smiled—I know I smiled because my cheeks hurt the way they did when my smile was bigger than my face—and gestured to his new truck, black instead of red. He shook his head and signed _Not new, just repainted._ When had he learned to sign? Did you know about that? Anyway, I signed back _Why black? Are you in mourning?_ It was a joke, but he nodded yes. And then I put it all together—the stories about you beating him up and gouging his truck with the switchblade, him seeking me out, his sad eyes. If I'd felt instinctively sorry for him earlier, I felt consciously sorry for him then.

"I signed _It wasn't your fault._ His eyes lifted. Danny was the only person I ever knew who talked with his eyes, or at least talked to me with his eyes—and I've watched people's eyes, closely, all my life. He said—his lips moving now, no signs—'Are you sure?' And at that moment I _was_ sure and nodded back. Then his face got somber again as he signed _Tell your sister!_ His gestures were vehement. His sign for sister was followed by a violent whirlwind. I must've laughed because he caught my attention with a slap of the dash and stared at me and mouthed slowly and deliberately 'I am serious. Tell her what you just told me, but do not tell her you saw me.'

"What did you do to him, Brooke? He was scared to death! I nodded slowly and he relaxed just a bit. But then someone came out into the parking lot and he slumped down in his seat and signed from down there _I need to go._ I understood it was for the best, that he should leave, especially since part of me wanted to get back in that truck now painted black and leave with him. But I knew I couldn't, partly for myself but mainly for you—that I knew if I got into that truck with him you'd never speak to me again. And that was a price I was not willing to pay, not for some gut feeling I didn't understand. Truth was, that feeling scared me. I'd never felt something inside myself that I couldn't control. And I wasn't going to risk my whole life for it. So I nodded to Danny's head peeking above the door frame, at my eye level in that tall truck. I signed _It's good to see you_ , ending with my hand flung outward from my heart in a clear gesture we both understood and would not withdraw or regret any longer.

"Then I leaned forward and kissed his forehead through the open window. Can you believe that, Brooke? In broad daylight in a public parking lot seventeen year old Little Miss Shy Deaf Girl kissed a boy! Well, not any boy. I kissed Danny Ashford, the one to whom I'd lost my virginity four months before.

"I'd managed to keep my emotions in check up to that moment, but then I lost it. I felt faint and thank God I'd unlocked the door to the car so that I could open it and fall into the seat, using the steering wheel to steady me because by then my eyes were closed against the dizziness. I pulled the door shut behind me and waited for my swirling head to calm. When it finally did and I opened my eyes, Danny and his truck were gone. Loud as his truck was, I'd not heard it leave, sealed in the bubble of my loss and the station wagon's hot interior.

"When I'd recovered enough to put the key in the ignition and start the car, I fully intended to drive straight home and go up to my room and sit at my desk and write a letter to you at Center and keep my promise to Danny—to explain that the incident wasn't his fault, that he'd certainly not raped me, and that you shouldn't blame him. But instead of going straight home I drove to Memorial Hall, to the very spot in the parking lot where I'd first gotten into his truck, alongside you the night of your deb ball when you were wasted and I was trying to hide your condition from Momma and Father, the same spot where I got into his truck on The Night, before my deb ball. And I realized sitting there in the empty parking lot on a bright Tuesday afternoon in September that I couldn't make sense of all that had occurred on that spot in June darkness, and to try to bring it into the light and sort it all out would fail, would cause more harm than good. So I abandoned the idea of writing you a letter of explanation, betraying Danny that quick out of a desire to protect us, or maybe just out of cowardice, wishing to protect myself.

"But not anymore, Brooke. I'm sorry for betraying you, that night and since. However impulsive and ill understood my feelings were, I should've controlled them, for your sake and mine. And I'm sorry to Danny, for letting you assume something awful about him that was not true. I think in your heart you knew he didn't rape me, that he was not capable of that. But you believed it to protect me, and to protect us. I'm grateful for that sacrifice, from both you and Danny. Only now do I realize just how great that sacrifice was." She paused, thinking the following but refusing to speak it— _And now it's too late for all of us._

Leah glanced around the dimly lit cubicle. Her confession, and all the feeling it summoned from their youth, had not moved the numbers on Brooke's screens or raised the glow in the room one iota. She sighed deeply—a guttural moan of loss and regret. But from somewhere Danny's scent and presence filled the space, provided a palpable pressure, like oxygen pumped into the cubicle. The sensation produced in Leah a swell of joy that originated from the very center of her being. She didn't know who or what was in the room, but she'd trust the force as munificent and accept its gifts gladly.

And she spoke these words as much to that presence as to her comatose sister or even herself. "I didn't have sex again until my wedding night with Whitfield, and then it was different. In my heart and soul, the only time I've fully shared my body and all that I am was that night in Danny's truck."

The room was suddenly empty again of everything except her and her sister. She laughed at her vivid imagination and said to Brooke, "Now isn't that a fine kettle of fish," recalling an old saying of Momma's she'd not used since childhood. The saying served just fine and freed Leah to rest.

Awhile later, the vibration of the cellphone in her lap roused her from her slumber, lying with her head on her arm resting on the bed's guardrail. The vibrations came in two short pulses then stopped. She checked first Brooke's face, hoping again to see her open eyes and signs of recognition; but no change there—the same pale unmoving wax mask of one who maybe used to be her sister. Then she looked quickly about the room, wondering if Sheila or some other nurse or doctor had waked her. But the cubicle was empty, and no sounds or signs of unusual movement from the nurse's station beyond the windows high on the wall.

Then she remembered her phone and fished it out from beneath her sterile gown. The glowing screen announced _message from Jodie's mobile_. Leah glanced at the current time—3:27 AM. Even adjusted for the time-zone difference, it was late. She tapped the icon marked _View Now_.

_Is Mom going 2 die?_ The message glowered in stark simplicity.

The message woke Leah like a slap, not so much for the heightened fear and isolation it intimated from her frightened and isolated niece (that compassion would follow) as in grim warning of what should've been obvious but she'd been avoiding since the call in Atlanta— _Brooke could be gone in an instant._ Leah cradled her phone like a lifeline, Jodie's bald message burning its way into her retinas and beyond.

Then she took a deep breath and focused on caring for her niece across three thousand miles of night-shrouded continent. She slowly tapped out the following response: _Your mom is resting comfortably inches from where I sit, still very much alive._ She briefly weighed the honesty of her message then hit _Send_.

The response was nearly immediate (how could Jodie type that fast?). _Then put her on._

Despite the gravity of the situation, Leah laughed. She then took a deep breath and focused on composing an accurate and concise summary. _Brooke in drug-induced coma. Fighting severe infection. Stable at present. Need to find source of infection. Hope to know soon._ She didn't even reread her words before sending the message.

Jodie's response came after several minutes. _Thanks Aunt Leah. Should I book flight?_

Now Leah's response was nearly instantaneous. _Sit tight._

Let me know.

I will let you know.

K.

Leah took a deep breath, suddenly doubting the decision she'd impulsively and unilaterally made. Shouldn't she have checked with Dave or Davey? What if Brooke took a sudden turn for the worse and Jodie couldn't get here in time? To calm her fears, she focused on Jodie's face, but not of the thirty-five year old set designer in LA but of the two year old toddler running to embrace her legs on her arrival home for spring break. It was that face that looked back at her floating above the phone's screen as she typed. _Are you O.K.?_

I'll survive.

Do you want to be here?

Do I need to be?

Not yet.

Then I'll wait.

_Good._ For the second time Leah could've let the text conversation end. But the toddler's face reflected in the phone's screen wouldn't let her leave. _Still in LA?_

Yes.

Alone?

LOL.

Leah waited. She looked up at Brooke. "Your elder daughter is trying to decide how much to trust me." And she swore she heard Brooke say "Good luck" even though neither her lips nor eyes moved. The response—real or imagined (and who here could say?)—made Leah laugh.

Jodie's follow up came after about five minutes, so long Leah thought maybe she'd opted to drop the matter. _Male or female?_

_You tell me_ Leah shot back.

_It's a girl!_ Then, almost immediately— _Do NOT tell Mom!_

Leah laughed. _I won't. But she knows._

Then why is she always trying to marry me to a penis?

Leah shook her head but wouldn't hide behind prudishness. _Penises produce grandkids._

No. Uteruses produce grandkids. Penises are optional.

I'll tell Brooke.

NO!

Just kidding.

I know. Besides, Penni and her penis have the grandkid angle covered.

Always room for more.

Not from this uterus.

Are you happy?

There was a long pause. Leah wished she could hug Jodie and tell her everything was alright. Was there a text symbol for _embrace_? Finally, Jodie's response came. _Working on it._

That's my girl.

Take care of Mom.

I will.

That's my aunt. XXXOOOXXX!

So there was a text symbol for embrace, or the best substitute available. _XXXOOOXXX!_

3

Davey arrived promptly at seven to relieve her. He'd left his father at home to sleep in for an extra hour then go to the office to check on the business he'd neglected the last few days. "I hope a more normal routine will perk him up," he said without much conviction. He also said that his youngest brother Garrett would be driving down from Philadelphia later today, and the middle brother Brent was trying to book a flight from St. Louis.

"And Penni?" Leah asked.

"We talked last night. She has a prenatal appointment tomorrow. I told her to plan on keeping it, that we'd call if things changed."

Leah nodded. She wasn't sure if Davey was being protective of his baby sister or walling her out. She didn't understand how brothers worked. She'd call Penni later to get her information from the source.

"Jodie has not returned any of my messages," Davey said with a tinge of disapproval.

Leah heard her sister in Davey's tone. "I talked with Jodie last night—well, this morning—via text. I suggested she wait to see what happens before making the long trip here."

A frown passed across his face before disappearing as he said, "Thanks, Aunt Leah. I'll let you deal with her."

Leah suddenly realized she'd unwittingly played into Davey's plan by holding Jodie off. Or had she played into Jodie's plan, or need? In either case, she'd be Brooke's only female guardian for whatever transpired in the coming days. And that was O.K. with her.

Well, not the _only_ female guard, she noted as Sheila passed where they were standing outside of Brooke's door. Leah caught her eye and said, "When do you sleep?"

"In about an hour, after I finish my handoff and get a warm shower."

"Thanks for putting up with me."

Sheila smiled. "No trouble at all, though I wished you'd let me get you that blanket and pillow."

Leah nodded. "Maybe tonight."

"I'll be here."

Leah said, "Me too," then instantly realized she'd made a bold assumption with her remark. But no—not assumption, rather a wish, a prayer.

She drove to Brooke and Dave's house through thin outbound traffic (the incoming traffic was in rush-hour lockdown) and had a light breakfast of toast and herbal tea with Dave who looked vastly better for the full night's rest and morning shower and change into a pressed shirt and neatly knotted tie. Even if Brooke couldn't appreciate her overnight vigil, she reaped ample rewards in Dave's revived figure. After he left for the office, she changed into her flannel nightgown and slid between the covers of their plush and comfortable guest bed. She took a chance and removed her microprocessors from their magnetic attachment behind her ears, partly to let their batteries recharge (though she had spares in her purse) and also to let her sleep in her normal position on her side. But just in case, she confirmed that her phone was still on vibrate and slid it into the breast pocket of her nightgown, just above her heart. Then she fell into a deep sleep.

In her dream she was again in a white world. But this one wasn't populated with the white and talking animals of her youthful fantasies and escapes. This world was utterly devoid of stimuli—no smell or taste, touch or sound. And though she could see, all she could see was white. But then she realized her eyes were closed, that the white was behind her eyeballs not in front of them. This terrified her, as she thought she might be dead or trapped in some solitary blank prison. But why white, and why no sound? She struggled for what seemed ages and finally managed to crack her eyes open just a sliver. Was it her eyelids that she'd pried open or some chink in the wall of white? But then Brooke's face appeared, filling her sight. It was Brooke's face from her adolescence, smiling and confident. She said by moving her lips but with no accompanying sound _Now I know how you survive._ Leah wanted to respond _Not me surviving but you—you survive!_ But she didn't know how to speak and her hands were strapped to her sides or gone, in any case helpless to sign her words, as she used to practice so freely and all but unconsciously with Brooke. Brooke's fearless smile and assurance didn't falter despite Leah's desperate plea that really was a warning. Could she not see it in Leah's eyes? Then Brooke mouthed _Come on; let's look around_ in the long ago but still familiar challenge and dare. Then she turned to leave, forcing her sister to follow or stay. Leah wanted to follow, summoned her legs to follow. But she had no legs and could make no movement. She tried calling to Brooke but her mouth made no sound, least none she could hear. The brown hair flowing down the back of Brooke's head turned white and merged with the white world. And Leah was again alone though no longer terrified. In her heart that had been racing, she now found—or, rather, was granted—a measure of unexpected peace and comfort.

4

Brooke's kidneys were failing. This fact was quietly acknowledged by Sheila during her shift starting patient assessment, echoing what the family (Garrett had arrived late that afternoon, Brent was flying in tomorrow morning) had heard from the resident earlier in that night. And her crouching, cautious eyes that had been so open and forthcoming twenty-four hours before, announced more graphically than the resident's blunt and unemotional phrasing that if they didn't gain control of this infection soon the damage to Brooke's organs would be irreversible, possibly fatal.

Oddly, Leah felt sorrier for Sheila than she did for herself or her unconscious sister—whom she assumed, perhaps wrongly, was beyond the reach of pain or fear. "This must be difficult for you," she said, looking up at the nurse while holding Brooke's cool hand on the far side of the bed.

"What?" Sheila said, an angry edge to her word.

Leah flinched but persisted. "Watching this. Getting caught up in the struggles of your patients and their families."

"My patients are almost all unconscious. And I work graveyard." She hesitated, regretting the inapt use of professional slang. "I have very little interaction with family on this shift."

"I guess that's easier."

"Maybe for me, but not for the patients."

Leah tilted her head. By now her fingertips had found their way to Brooke's fingertips. She felt there on the pad of her sister's left middle finger the ridge of the scar from the time they'd used one of Momma's sharp knives in an effort to cut off a candle tip they'd burned without permission or oversight. The knife had slipped and left a deep gash in Brooke's finger, adding lots of blood to the already fretful scene. They'd managed to clean it all up, and Leah had played nurse—cleaning the cut with antiseptic (she was glad that time to be deaf and oblivious to Brooke's screams) and wrapping it tightly with a double layer of adhesive bandages. "How so?" she asked.

"My patients without family wither away. Most could make it, but they don't try. The ones with family do try, and it makes a big difference in the results."

"Why?"

Sheila smiled, her eyes finally shedding their anger. "You know why, otherwise you wouldn't be here."

Leah nodded. She knew it mattered and she knew why it mattered.

After Sheila left she launched into her quiet monologue without the prior night's hesitation or uncertainty of subject. She'd known since her dream earlier in the day what she needed to tell.

"When you first wrote to tell me you were taking a leave of absence from college to live on Shawnituck Island, I thought it was one more of your power plays—Brooke proving to herself that she, not Momma or Father or society or the world, was in charge of her destiny. That is to say, I figured it as a passing self-indulgence, like one of your hobbies in junior high (remember rollerblading? you must still have the scars on your knees and elbows!) or crushes in high school (what ever became of Bradford Harrington? I recall you contemplated eloping even to the point of asking if his brother would drive you); and you'd either rush back to Center a few weeks late and just under the deadline for maintaining enrollment or, worst case, resume school the next semester after a boring and lonely fall on the island.

"Then I got your letter telling me you were pregnant. It was my second week in school and it really knocked me for a loop. I think I must have walked about ten miles around the perimeter of the campus that night. You know how I hated walking alone in the dark back then. I was always on edge, fearing someone would run up behind me and scare me half to death. But that night I don't remember anything except just walking and walking along the path that ran just inside the stone walls of Drewry. During the day, there'd be joggers on that path; but that night it was deserted, which pretty well matched my heart at that moment. To that point I'd adjusted quite well to college life, had none of the homesickness I'd heard about and feared. But your announcement stirred it all up. Not only did I acutely feel the distance between us, I began to wonder if the Brooke I knew had ceased to exist. Pregnant? I couldn't fathom what that meant to your life. Worse, I couldn't fathom what it meant for mine.

"I wonder how things might have been different if I'd been able to pick up the phone and call you that night. Letters had served us well the previous two years, allowing us the freedom to dig deeper into our daily activities and all the passionate feelings that surrounded those events. But with something big like this, the delay of days or longer kept the confusion and fear locked inside. I thought of catching a bus home, but then I just would have been sitting around with Momma and Father, and how would that have helped? I quickly realized that you would not have told them yet, were testing the announcement on me. So I would've been left to explain why I'd ridden through the night just to be with them, and wouldn't that have been a fun challenge?

"What I really needed was to be with you, talking this through or more importantly just lying beside you. Somehow your presence in my sight would have made everything all right. That physical presence and reassurance had got us through so many scrapes before. Why shouldn't it resolve this one?

"But you were a ten-hour bus ride and a one-hour taxi ride (if you could even find a taxi in Siler Sands) and a two-hour ferry ride away, and that trip wasn't going to be tackled by shy little deaf girl who to that moment had thought the current biggest challenge for her life was learning how to sign what she wanted for lunch in the cafeteria line.

"After I recovered from my initial shock, I became angry with you. At first my anger was all directed at the letter. How could you divulge something like that in a letter my second week at school? Didn't you know how upsetting it would be to me, and that I couldn't do anything about it and wouldn't have anyone to lean on? I'd long taken your selfishness for granted, had seen it as the essential flip side of your boldness. But this latest example was off the charts. You had with one word turned my more or less stable and orderly world into chaos.

"But what could you have done differently? Not tell me till we were next together? That probably would've been Thanksgiving. Or made the long trip down to Drewry to tell me in person? That would have been nice, but at that point you were anchored to Shawnituck and Onion and your life out there. And I also think you secretly feared that if you left the island at that time, it might cause you to question the life-changing events you'd set in motion. And you never could handle self-doubt. Brooke with a head of steam could be a formidable force. Brooke with misgivings was a recipe for disaster, for herself and those around her.

"I then grew angry with your willfulness. While you could pretend to Momma and Father and anyone else who would listen that your pregnancy was an accident, I suddenly realized you'd planned it, planned it at least since your eye and heart had fallen for Onion, maybe since you'd decided to spend that summer on Shawnituck, maybe at some level all the way back in childhood when you set your eye on Shawnituck as your Eden. None of this had been an accident, right down to your scheming to get me out there as your chaperone while Aunt Greta was away then get me out of the house so you could spend that night with Onion. I think I had known of your plan all along—I knew you that well, Brooke. But I'd suppressed this knowledge because I didn't want to have to deal with it, had my own adolescent tempest to endure and survive.

"But once I accepted my foreknowledge, I began to feel somehow responsible, or at least complicit. You know me—the one charged far back as I can remember to watch over you and keep you from messing up too bad. And boy had I dropped the ball on this one. How could I let you go out to Shawnituck? How could I let you settle in there so comfortably, writing those letters that suggested you'd found your life's calling? Why did I go out there in implicit endorsement of all your actions? And most of all, why did I let you convince me to go out to Windsor's Cove with Paul so that you might spend the night with Onion? Why did you include me in your plan, Brooke? You could've snuck off with Onion to Lord knows how many secret hiding places available across the island. I'm sure you knew them all by then. But you had to include me in your plan, and I let you do it. Why?

"That was the worst part of your shocking news—my acceptance of direct responsibility. It took a while for me to come to that understanding—all those dazed circlings of Drewry's walls. But once I reached that conclusion, I set about to undo my mistake and make it right.

"I was, as you so often reminded back in those days, largely ignorant on the subject of human sexuality. But I knew about abortion from the chapter on human reproduction in senior-year Biology and from the discussion of the Supreme Court's decision during 'Current Events' in Civics. That is, I understood the concept of abortion from a detached intellectual standpoint—how it was done and why it was legal. I also had been told rumors that several girls in our graduating class had had abortions, to no visible damage or side effects. From all I could tell, and as much as I'd thought about it (which, to that point, was very little), abortion was a safe and harmless and relatively inexpensive procedure. More importantly to me at that moment in my life, it was a means of reversing your catastrophic mistake and my participation in it.

"Looking back on it now and given the vehement debate that has raged around the topic for decades, I find it amazing that the subject of the morality of abortion never occurred to me back then and was never discussed, either in class or at church or with the few friends who brought the matter up in passing. I can only assume that for me, and probably for most people, the topic was still too fresh and fraught with emotional uncertainty and peril, to even begin to contemplate. I'm guessing that, left alone, we would still be avoiding the shoals of that debate had the issue not been forced on us by radical outsiders on either side of that moral divide. I'll only add that in retrospect the understanding that I assiduously endeavored to plan a process that would have culminated in terminating the seed of life that grew into Jodie sends a shiver of terror down my spine.

"Yet endeavor I did. I contacted a local family-planning clinic near Drewry and got them to send me all the relevant information. I could cover the costs from my savings, so we would not have to approach Momma and Father for assistance and you couldn't plead poverty on me. That had been a common excuse for you at the time—that you had no money to do what I suggested you do, and you refused to ask Father for help. Well, this time that excuse wouldn't work. As for the scheduling of the procedure, the clinic would not perform an abortion on an initial visit; but in special instances they would make an appointment for the following day. That meant if I could persuade you to visit for three days, four tops, we could schedule a preliminary consultation one day, have the procedure done the next, and send you back to Shawnituck or Center or wherever it was you wanted to on the third.

"I know—it sounds crazy talking about it now, like I was planning a surprise pedicure or something. But it didn't seem crazy then. I even went so far as to ride the bus downtown to the clinic to check it out in person. It was part of a new strip mall in a nice part of town, tucked off to one end and marked only by lettering on the door. But there were no bars on the windows and no protestors outside. I walked right in and handed the receptionist a note explaining that I was deaf and would like to consult with a doctor. Within five minutes I was sitting across a desk from a middle-aged woman with a kind and gentle face and impeccably clean hands with the long fingers and close-cut nails. I'd written out my questions one per page, and handed them to her in sequence. At first she started writing her responses. That was an oversight on my part. I handed her one of the cards I always carried explaining that I could read lips if one spoke slowly and directly to my eyes. She gave me a big smile and said, 'What a marvelous skill.' It was the first time in my life anyone had praised my lip-reading; and I was convinced at that moment that this woman would take good care of you, and me. She patiently answered all my questions about 'my friend' wishing to end an early stage pregnancy, explaining that the risks were minimal and 'infinitely less' (I remember that phrase exactly) than the risks of continuing an unwanted pregnancy. I felt at that moment that she had endured those 'infinitely greater' risks earlier in her life, and had set as her cause relieving other young women of that traumatic burden. At the end of our interview, she had the receptionist schedule an appointment for a Thursday two weeks out, and allowed that she could perform the procedure the following day if there were no complicating circumstances.

"All that remained was for me to get you to come visit. So I wrote you that letter, my slightly delayed response to your shocker. Part of me is glad you've lost my letters, so that no one will ever read that one. But part of me would like to see it again, try to understand the person who wrote it. I recall responding with neutral calm to your news, but all the while gently but firmly pushing for you to come visit so that we could discuss the matter in person, and to delay announcing your condition to anyone until we'd had a chance to talk about it. I was of course assuming you hadn't yet shared that news with anyone else, knowing that if you had my plan would be greatly complicated. But something told me that it was still our secret. I ended the letter with a line I'd never used on you— _You owe it to me!_

"And, wonder of wonders, you agreed, undertook that long journey to visit me at school for four days. Because I was deaf, they'd granted me a private room. And I requested a rolling bed from building maintenance and set it up adjacent to mine in the cramped space. And then I waited. Though it was only about a week between your response and your arrival, I recall it as being the longest week of my life to that point.

"I was early to the bus station or your bus was late, and while sitting in the small and grungy waiting room in one of those awful plastic chairs the weight and the stress of the previous two weeks must have finally caught up to me because I dozed off amidst the silent bustle swirling. This was certainly a first—me falling asleep in a public place while alone and vulnerable. But then everything that had happened in my life over the last couple months starting with my trip to see you on Shawnituck was unprecedented.

"And my first impression when I opened my eyes to see you sitting beside me beaming with some new radiance was that I had been transported to some better world—your glow was that profound and transformative. My second thought, clear as a flashing neon sign after you leaned over and kissed the side of my head and mouthed 'I guess you were counting on me to watch over you' was that your life didn't need correcting, that you were doing exactly what you wanted to do and needed to do, pregnancy and all. And with that understanding I was totally absolved from responsibility for contributing to a catastrophic mistake. Come to think of it, maybe I had awakened in some better world."

Leah paused and looked up to Brooke's face for the first time since beginning her monologue. Though her sister was still fully unconscious and had not moved in the interim, she now saw in her repose a beatific calm that she was certain hadn't been there before. In her mind she understood that this impression was likely a reflection of her own feelings being projected on Brooke's blank features. But whatever the reason, she suddenly felt certain in her heart that Brooke would survive this current crisis, and that somehow the words of her confession had critically aided that survival. The intuition, whether baseless or accurate, lifted her heart and released her from the dread she'd felt for days.

"So the four days of your visit were spent sharing your elaborate plans for your happy future—that is, you shared and I listened. You would marry Onion later in the fall in a quaint but beautiful ceremony in the island's Methodist church with a reception at his family's restaurant. The two of you would live in the small cottage next to his parents' house that was usually vacant in the off-season anyway. You'd convert the small second bedroom of that cottage to a nursery, decorating it in a seaside theme to match the views outside the window. You'd deliver your little girl—you already knew it was a girl even before your first obstetrics' exam and long before ultrasound was used in pre-natal care—and would name her Jodie. I wondered if the androgynous name you'd chosen was a hedge against being wrong about the baby's sex; but you said no, that in your mind Jodie was the name for an adventurer and would inherit from birth the adventure of her creation and fulfilled through her life on Shawnituck. You had it all planned out, to the color of the umbrella you would plant on the beach to protect your infant daughter in your long days out there the following summer—and the summer after that, and the summer after that. I think even then, that early, I was aware that these elaborate plans were your attempt to remake your staid and cushioned childhood into something exotic and thrilling through this as yet undifferentiated cluster of cells dividing in your uterus.

"I know. That last sounds like retroactive rewriting of history. Surely the girl who had just days earlier unilaterally arranged the termination of your pregnancy could not have seen her way through to such a clear-eyed understanding of her own complex motivations, let alone yours.

"My point is only that your visit was an epiphany for me, opening my eyes to the irreversible changes that had occurred in our relationship. I'd wanted to, indeed needed to, cling to our former total dependence and bond, when we were two appendages of the same body, the same heart. But that condition had not existed for months now, maybe years—at least since you'd packed up and headed off to Shawnituck and maybe since you'd gone off to college over two years before. I'd continued to pretend that it was in place for my own sake, to spare me the trauma of separation. But now you were an adult, with your own life and dreams. And so was I. And I discovered during that visit, our last sisters' weekend off by ourselves, that not only could I survive this separation but I could possibly even thrive out on my own. And I discovered this not in myself but through your excitement and enthusiasm for your new life. As usual, you led the way. It just took me a little while to catch up."

By now the beatific contentment Leah had seen on Brooke's resting face had transferred itself to her own, so much so that Sheila stopped in her tracks when she entered the cubicle and exclaimed, "What savior have you seen?"

Leah could grin at that. "The one that says Brooke will be O.K."

Sheila looked at her patient and, despite her persistent doubts regarding Mrs. Redmond's prognosis, had to grant that she did look better—the skin of her face had more color and had lost some of its tautness and strain. As one familiar with such subtle changes and their implications, she marked this as an auspicious turning point. "What happened?"

"Life won."

Sheila nodded. Clearly Leah was correct. But she could not help but add the disclaimer of an ICU nurse. "This round." She was sorry soon as the words leaked out.

But Leah was unfazed. "And others."

The nurse nodded then went to record the readings she knew would confirm her, and Leah's, intuitive assessment.

Later, as Leah was reading her worn paperback of _To the Lighthouse_ she'd pulled off her study shelf just before leaving home, her phone jiggled with the two-pulse vibration of a text message from Jodie's cell.

Should I come?

Leah typed back _Do you want to?_

Davey said Mom's worse.

She was. But better now.

That's fast.

Sometimes.

Who's there?

Davey, Garrett, Brent on the way.

Ugh!

Leah laughed.

Jodie's retraction followed almost instantly. _But I didn't say that._

My lips are sealed.

Is Mom awake?

No.

When will she be?

I do not know.

There was a long pause. Last night a similar pause had produced anxiety in Leah, fearing for her niece alone and confused a continent's width distant. But tonight she had no anxiety. She knew Jodie was weighing her options and making her decision.

Let me know when Mom wakes and the shock troops go back to their barracks.

K.

I love you, Aunt Leah.

I love you too.

Give Mom a kiss.

Done.

Thanks.

Leah dropped the phone back in the pocket of her open and loose sweater. By then Sheila had completed her rounds and quietly left with a smiling two thumbs up. So Leah stood and made good on her promise to Jodie, leaning forward over the bed with her hands on the guardrail and kissing her sister on the cheek. That close she thought she saw Brooke's eyeballs shift beneath her closed lids. She took that as a sign of some level of awareness (had it been there all along, as Sheila had suggested the night before?) and let her face slide a few inches father down till her lips were just above Brooke's ear. She whispered, "I'm always with you" then added the qualifier "Even if I'm not."

She stood upright, half-expecting Brooke to sit up in the bed and rail against her conditional vow— _Which is it, Leah? Are you_ always _with me or not? Don't rein in your heart with pedantry, Girl. Let it sing!_

She laughed out loud, the sound startling in the silent cubicle, the whole quiet overnight ward. Brooke's face gave no sign, but still Leah knew—her vow of permanent presence was reciprocated, no strings attached.

5

On returning that evening after another good daytime sleep (and no haunting dream this time) and a brief phone update to Whitfield and voicemail to Jasper (he seemed less and less available to her calls), Leah sat with the family that now included Brent and Garrett for the resident's daily report. He was all smiles, in sharp contrast to the gloom and foreboding of twenty-four hours earlier. He explained that the night before they had added an anti-fungal agent to the mix of intravenous antibiotics they were giving Brooke. The suggestion had originated with Randall, Penni's husband, in one of his calls to get the latest medical update on his mother-in-law. Apparently Randall had recently treated a similar case—a young alcoholic with pancreatitis that had morphed into sepsis—and had lost the patient only to learn, post-mortem, that the source of the infection was fungal, not bacterial. The anti-fungal drug had worked almost immediately on Brooke's infection. All of her critical data was improving. Even her kidneys were showing signs of "coming back online." If the readings continued to improve, they might remove the breathing tube as early as tomorrow and raise Brooke back to consciousness. "The sooner we wake her up, the less rehab will be required." The pessimistic doctor was suddenly talking about a future for their mother-sister-wife.

The family's relief was palpable, in hugs and smiles and joyful phone calls home. Dave called Penni, who was wait-listed to fly down tomorrow, with the hopeful news, suggesting she delay her flight till her mother was conscious and the boys had left (their house was currently full!). "And thank Randall for saving Brooke's life," he managed to get out before emotion clogged his throat. Penni laughed and said, "Grandma Brooke." Dave lost it then, in tears of joy; so Davey took the phone from his father and finished talking with his younger sister.

After he ended that call, he looked to Leah and whispered, "Jodie?"

Leah said, "She already knows."

Davey tilted his head.

"I've been texting her overnight."

"This good news?"

"I knew last night—I mean, this morning."

"How?"

How indeed. She couldn't begin to explain. So she shrugged and said, "Sisterly intuition."

Davey smiled as he shook his head in wonder.

After all "the boys" (that's how Leah thought of them because that's how Brooke referred to them—including Dave) had taken their turns sitting with Brooke then left for the night, Leah settled into her now familiar seat beside the bed, her right hand cradling her sister's left.

Sheila came in all smiles. "I'll miss not seeing Mrs. Redmond awake."

"Why?"

"Tonight's my last shift before three days off."

"She'll be here when you get back?" Leah said, more question than assumption.

"Probably not. At this rate of improvement, they'll step her down fast."

"You need to see her after she's better, a reward for all your care." She was thinking but didn't add— _small adjustment for the inevitable losses on this floor._

"I've already received my reward."

Leah's eyes made their old unspoken question.

Sheila said, "In you."

After the nurse left, Leah discovered the subject of what she assumed would be her final monologue. Maybe it came about as a result of her brief exchange with Davey earlier, or maybe it had been ordained long before that, days ago or decades.

"I was home the summer between my sophomore and junior years. You were there too, along with Jodie—permanently separated from Onion while you awaited the final divorce. You were watching Jodie during the day and taking nighttime classes to try to finish your degree. Those classes were your excuse for leaving Jodie with me almost every night. But those classes weren't on weekends and didn't last till midnight or one in the morning when you'd sneak into my room and untangle Jodie from my arms and sheets. You'd either forgotten about my acute sense of smell or didn't care. I could smell the cigarettes and alcohol and scent of different guys on your clothes and skin. When I called you on it, you said something like 'A girl has to study.' And I asked _In a bar?_ And you responded 'Depends on what you're studying.'

"I didn't object to your late-night carousing. I'd long since grown used to it from your days in junior high and high school and college. But in light of your failed marriage, I thought it showed a serious lack of self-control and maturation. Most of all I felt bad for Jodie. I know you spent your days with her, and I know you loved her. But at night it was like she ceased to exist. When I asked if you told your new guy friends about your daughter, you said, 'Are you crazy?' I felt like you were two people, and Jodie had fallen into the chasm between those identities.

"I also resented your presumption that I was always available in the evenings. It's true I didn't have many friends in town, and my summer job shelving books at the library hardly put me in touch with lots of new and interesting people. But how was I going to meet anyone if I was playing patty-cake with Jodie every night? I should have just told you _no_ —that you would have to find another babysitter at least some nights or, Heaven forbid, spend a night or two at home with your two-year-old daughter.

"But I didn't tell you that, for two reasons. First of all, I loved Jodie. That summer I came to think of her as my daughter. I'd always wondered if I would ever have children. There weren't exactly a lot of guys lining up to marry me and father a child with me. And even if I could find a husband and potential father years hence, could I be a good or satisfactory mother if I couldn't hear my child cry out or talk back when spoken to? Are children with deaf mothers verbally stunted for life? I came to see in Jodie the only child I might ever have, and I feared that if I protested your behavior, you might react by withholding her from me. And I couldn't risk that loss.

"But beneath that concern was a more fundamental impasse—I couldn't tell you _no_. All my life I'd dutifully followed you, living _through_ you. I became quite proficient at covering for you and cleaning up after your mistakes. And sometimes I could anticipate your worst choices and nudge you toward some better (in my mind at least) compromise. But I could never say—or sign, back then— _Stop!_ or _Don't do that!_ or simply _No._ Would you have listened if I had?

"So with very little protest, I dutifully watched over your quick-as-a-whip and lively daughter. She was fun, if at times demanding—like the time she decided I was going to be her pet dog and put a collar on me using your rhinestone belt and made me crawl around on four legs and lap water out of a bowl on the floor! I enjoyed being with Jodie but still resented your presumption and absence.

"Those feelings only grew as the summer wore on and I became more possessive of Jodie. At some point we started getting out of the house, after Father complained that we were making too much noise—but how would I know? The funny thing is, I could 'talk' to Jodie, and she would 'talk' back. I would move my lips and tongue and make what must have been odd animal-like noises and Jodie would respond in kind, exactly mimicking my lips' movement and, I assumed, whatever sounds I was making. I'd always refused to take speech therapy when growing up because I didn't want to sound foolish and be judged as slow or retarded. But with Jodie I had no such fears, and we'd babble away for hours on end. Maybe that's what Father found objectionable—my gibberish and its confirmation of the deafness he tried so hard to deny.

"Whatever the reason, we started spending more time outside the house. At first it was playing in the yard or walking to the park for a turn on the swings (Jodie loved pushing me as much as she liked being pushed) or that foot-powered merry-go-round where we'd race to get it going fast as we could then count to see how long it kept spinning. We got up to one hundred thirty-five seconds, but I believe that was with Jodie sneaking in a few little pushes to keep it going as it slowed toward a stop. She'd point to something in the distance, and I would look then feel the merry-go-round speed up a bit.

"To extend our playtime till after dark—even then, Jodie hated going to bed (but how would you have known?)—I'd strap her into the car seat in the back of the old station wagon and we'd take a little drive. Our first stop was always at the Dairy Queen for a cone and lots of napkins to mop up the sticky mess. Then we'd ride around town or sometimes out into the country to watch for shooting stars at the recreation area by the lake. I remember trying to explain what we were doing lying on our backs looking up at the night sky. At first I used, or tried to use, our babble language, but to no effect (and Lord knows what I sounded like, to the odd passing deer or raccoon). I tried to use sign language then finally miming—all unsuccessful. But as I was talking, Jodie suddenly pointed to the sky behind my head and drew a short straight line across her hand. I turned quickly, but the shooting star I'm sure she saw (understanding all along what I was trying to convey) had by then disappeared. So I stopped trying to explain what we were looking for and simply lay down on the blanket beside her, our adjacent hands palm to palm. Not two minutes later, a bright meteor crossed above leaving a trail of sparkles. I'm sure we both made a sound of exclamation with our mouths, but all I remember is her finger making a quick streak across my palm. I gave her that one, so now she was ahead two to nothing. Over the next hour or so, we stared at the sky; and I would feel her finger cross my palm every so often, or I would cross hers. Most times I would see the meteors she claimed, but less and less so as the watch wore on and my eyes grew heavy. I always wondered if her eyesight was keener than mine, or if she was making up those ones I didn't see. It never occurred to me that the truth might have been somewhere in between, that her imagination—like mine throughout childhood—was creating something that was real to her—flashes across the heavens—but not to the rest of the world. If so, where was the truth of those moments? And who would define it?

"One night late in the summer, with my return to school only days away, I got on the interstate headed for a new ice cream parlor that was on a dairy far out in the county. Maybe I missed the exit by accident or maybe by subconscious desire. Whatever the reason, what I recall is singing—that is, moving my lips and feeling vibrations in my throat—non-stop out into the hot August night rushing past the open window. It was the nearest thing to uninhibited freedom I'd ever felt—to that point and, I now realize, since: singing out into the dark, and the dark welcoming me in, no questions asked.

"I don't know what brought me back to reality; but by the time I realized what I was doing, we were nearly halfway to the beach, as marked by the signs that were familiar from our regular summer trips but somehow strange and dreamlike in the dark. My first reaction wasn't _How did I get there?_ or _Oh my god, I've driven way too far!_ No, I clearly recall my first reaction as being _Let's go to the beach._ I was, in effect, kidnapping Jodie—for her benefit and mine. I knew I had a little cash in my wallet, enough for those ice cream cones we were supposed to be getting, and the credit card Father had given me for college expenses. So I figured we could make it to the beach and get a motel room and I'd figure it out from there. It was the strangest feeling, Brooke. I was like an actor in the dream of parallel life, one that I might have had if I'd been born with hearing, been born a little bolder—like you.

"But that dream of a parallel, assertive life only lasted a few minutes—until the gas gauge flashed _empty_ , and us miles from nowhere on a deserted interstate deep into rural countryside. I nearly panicked then, as all my thoughts of escape quite literally went out that open window and into the night. I knew nothing to do except keep on driving and pray for an exit with an open gas station. And my prayers were answered, by a glow on the horizon that turned into a gas station at the end of the next exit ramp. They were closing up; but the attendant, a white-haired old man who turned out to be the owner, saw me and saw my desperate, pleading look. He smiled reassuringly and unlocked the pump.

"Then he gestured toward the back seat. I looked back quickly and with a new panic. I'd totally forgotten about Jodie! Normally when I drove, I kept an eye on her with frequent glances in the rearview mirror. But between the darkness on the highway and my self-absorption, I'd not checked her in who knows how long. She was a mess. I don't know how long she'd been crying, but her face was wet with tears and her nose was running and long strings of drool ran down her chin. And she was still screaming, a fact confirmed by the old man's alarm and her wide-open mouth. I lifted her out of her baby seat and tried to calm her and promptly discovered, in odor and feel, the cause of her agitation (or perhaps a symptom)—she'd pooped in her shorts. And I hadn't brought a spare diaper, didn't think we would need one for the short trip to the creamery. Now what was I going to do?

"I shuffled off to the door marked _Women_ at the dark end of the garage, only to find it locked. I almost lost it then, surrendering to the stress and guilt and fears. But someone's hand lightly touched my shoulder and I turned to see a kind-faced old woman smiling and holding out a key that she used to unlock the door. She switched on the light to the small but clean bathroom, and I stepped inside and gave her a nod of thanks before closing the door. I did my best to clean up Jodie using the available toilet paper and hand towels soaked in water. I started with her face then worked my way to the nether regions, with her sitting patiently on the toilet seat. She'd stopped crying by then and was actually smiling and giggling as I played our clean-up game that included little tickles behind her ear and at the back of her neck and interspersed butterfly kisses of her eyes and face.

"Over the summer I'd grown quite proficient at cleaning up her poops, and wasn't bothered by the mess or smell. But I hadn't figured out what to do about the lack of a clean diaper. I'd just about resigned us to using no diaper and risking an accident in the car when I saw Jodie look up toward the door. I followed her signal and opened the door to discover the old woman standing outside with a two fresh diapers in her hand—one to use and one for a spare. She looked a little frustrated, presumably from knocking on the door or calling out for some time. I gave my standard _I'm deaf!_ sign—pointing toward my ears then shaking my head. I accepted the diapers with a nod of thanks then closed the door to get Jodie put back together and presentable.

"When I came out, the man and his wife were standing beside the station wagon. She had a pad with a gas company's logo at the top and wrote as I approached _Can we call someone for you?_ and handed me the pad.

"I nodded thanks but shook my head.

"She mouthed, forgetting my condition for a moment, 'You're sure?'

"I nodded and wrote _I am O.K. Thank you for your kindness._ I loaded Jodie back into her seat. By then the smell had pretty well dissipated—and there were no stains on the seat's cover, thank God! When I stood back up, I found the couple still standing there, attentively watching. Then I remembered the gas and looked at the pump. The total was considerably more than I had in cash, so I took out Father's credit card. But the old man waved it off. _And the diapers?_ I signed, making a loincloth gesture across my midsection. The woman shook her head—no payment required. I wished I could've have spoken my thanks and verbalized my relief, but realized my smiles and nods would have to somehow suffice. Then I stood there for an awkward moment, not wanting to leave their oasis of safety and light but knowing I had to get home before Momma and Father started to worry.

"The woman somehow understood and wrote: _May God bless and keep you and your daughter, this night and always._ She handed me the pad.

"I cried then, first time in all that summer's craziness. But they were tears of thanksgiving. When my eyes had cleared enough to see, I tore off her message (and kept it—I have it still) and wrote one of my own: _He has. He will._ I handed the pad back to her.

"I returned to school. You met Dave later that fall, married him the next year, and began turning out playmates for Jodie, though by then she was in school and already beyond your reach in some ways. I've rarely thought about that night, and then always in the negative—How could I have been so foolish and irresponsible? But just now I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't run low on gas, if I'd had a full tank and kept on to the beach and made good on our escape? What would have happened if I'd met your impulsive and selfish actions with one of my own? I suppose Jodie would have been caught in the middle. But she would have been my only purpose and care. No matter what, she never would have gone to sleep without me there to tuck her in. That's not a claim you can make." Leah thought of Jasper, knowing that she tucked him in every night from his second day on earth (the first the nursery attendants at the hospital tucked him in while she slept in exhaustion from the long labor and grogginess from the pain medication given for the episiotomy) until he went to summer camp when he was eight years old, and every night he was home until he reached puberty and gently suggested maybe he could put himself to bed and sleep with the door closed.

She looked now on the sleeping Brooke. There's no doubt she'd _heard_ what Leah had said—sound waves striking the eardrum and vibrating through the cochlea and triggering impulses transmitted by the auditory nerve to her brain. But had she comprehended any of those words? Would she recall the confession, and accusation, on waking? And if she did, what would she say? There was no telling with Brooke. She always shot from the hip, even now in her middle age, even more so. She might berate Leah for her accusation of neglect, or berate her for the tardiness of the claim— _Why didn't you tell me then, when it could have made a difference?_ —or acquiesce with a quiet _Why didn't you steal Jodie? It would have done all three of us good—most of all you, forcing you to make a stand._ Or, in the wake of her cancer diagnosis and this recent near-death struggle, she might open her eyes with a fatalist's resignation and speak simply the truth— _You've been linked to Jodie since her conception, in ways we've always known but never understood._ If Brooke said that, would the antecedent of the pronoun be two or three people? How much of this common past did Jodie know?

Leah looked at her phone. It was past the hour when Jodie had contacted her the last two nights. She typed out a text— _I'm missing our late night girl talk!_ —and sent it without pausing to reflect on its propriety or potential implications. "Are you happy now?" she said to Brooke.

Jodie's response was swift and prescient. _Mom will be jealous._

I already asked her. She said it's O.K.

You get her permission on everything?

Caught, Leah backed up. _Brooke is still unconscious. Your secrets are safe with me, always have been._

I know. Why do you think I'm talking to you?

Thanks for the trust.

Been there forever.

Can you come here this weekend and stay a few days? Brooke should be awake and the boys gone or on their way out.

A few days?

I'd hoped we could take a short trip after you saw your mom. Just the two of us.

Where?

_Ever been to Richmond?_ It was a spontaneous suggestion. (What had Brooke, or these overnights, done to her caution?) She'd been there only once, years ago during Jasper's junior-high fascination with the Confederacy. She remembered a fine old hotel in the center of town and lots of historic sights and charming small restaurants within walking distance.

No.

Then let's go.

There was a pregnant pause of perhaps a minute that felt like days. Toward the end of that wait, she made another confession to Brooke. "I don't know if I will be able to bear it if she says no." She heard Brooke's response in her head if not in her electronic ears— _Then don't let her._

Work is jammed. A few days will be tough.

Please.

There was a shorter pause then, _I'll see what I can do._

Thanks.

Remember what I said.

What?

I trust you.

Now it was Leah's turn to pause. She typed out several conditional responses and erased each before settling on this last— _I won't let you fall._ She looked up at Brooke and added, "I hope."

I know. That's why I'm coming.

Good. I love you.

Love you back.

6

By the weekend Brooke was awake and surprisingly resilient in her private step-down room, sitting up in bed and bossing around nurses and family members alike—"Got to get my money's worth for all this is costing the insurance company!" The sepsis was under control. Her lungs were at full capacity and her kidneys eighty percent and improving. She was still weak and needed help getting to and from the bathroom. And speaking of going to the bathroom, she hadn't had a bowel movement since before the crisis—"But don't any of you dare say I'm full of crap." But the doctors weren't overly concerned about this "normal" reaction ("Easy for them to say!") to extended anesthesia.

Everyone was mainly ecstatic to see her bounce back so quickly from her brush with death. Brooke was nonchalant about the incident—"I don't know what y'all were so concerned about. I just took a long nap."—but also seemed to find renewed energy and vivacity in the attention and the increased family intimacy. When several others remarked on Leah's faithful overnights, Brooke beamed as she made light of the attention, "Returning the favor from all my nights watching over her growing up." Leah could only nod in silent acknowledgment and pleasure.

"The boys" did leave late in the week, freeing some bedrooms in Brooke and Dave's large house. Penni arrived Friday night, claiming her old room, and was sitting in with Brooke and Leah in the spacious hospital room when Jodie made her surprise entrance, having caught an earlier flight and taken a cab straight from the airport. Leah was surprised (she'd planned to pick Jodie up at the airport later that afternoon) and so were Penni and Brooke (Leah had not told anyone of Jodie's planned visit, fearing she might back out at the last minute). Their stunned reaction was fortuitous as it helped mask Jodie's quick frown at the sight of her sister and short-lived glare in Leah's direction.

But Brooke took all the initial awkwardness onto her narrow shoulders. "The prodigal daughter returns."

Leah truly thought Jodie might bolt, disappearing as quickly as she appeared; and she stood to head her off if she made good on that impulse.

But after a moment's hesitation in the doorway, Jodie glued a grin on her face and strode to the bed. "Glad to see you too, Mom." She leaned over and brushed her lips lightly against her mother's cheek then started to stand upright.

But Brooke threw her arms around her eldest daughter and pulled her face to her chest and held it there. "Why don't you know I love you?"

Jodie held her silence for long seconds. It was unclear if it was by choice or due to her mouth being pressed into her mother's small breasts.

"Why?" Brooke repeated.

Leah walked around the bed to stand beside her eldest niece. "She just got off the plane, Brooke."

"That means she can't talk?"

"And you're suffocating her." Leah started to pry apart her sister's clenched arms wrapped around Jodie's neck.

"Do I have to die to hear it?" She released her grip.

Jodie stood upright, tears streaming down her face. "I know you love me, Mom. I hope you know I love you."

Leah and Penni both teared-up at that unlikely admission.

Only Brooke remained dry-eyed. "Since we can't be beside the ocean, I guess y'all decided to bring the ocean here."

Leah laughed through her tears. "Saltwater either way."

Jodie said, "I heard you were in a coma."

Brooke laughed. "Missed your chance."

"Damn."

Brooke shook her head with a stunned expression. "You were there," she exclaimed, looking at Jodie.

"Where?"

"In my coma."

"I was there, Brooke," Leah said. "Jodie was in California."

"No, she was there, inside my unconscious."

"No doubt doing something bad," Jodie volunteered.

"No. Calling to me."

"What was she saying?" Leah asked, trying to link Brooke's imagined memory to a real sound or action.

"I don't know."

"Was it good or bad?" Penni asked.

"It gave me peace."

"Now I know you were dreaming," Jodie said.

"Was I?" Brooke said, genuinely stymied for the first time since coming out of the coma.

Leah looked from Brooke to Jodie to Penni then whispered as if to herself, "Give me some of those drugs."

Jodie said, "I'll see what I can do."

That freed them all to laugh, a sound both reassuring and haunting, given the setting.

7

That night Leah and her two nieces were sitting around Brooke and Dave's breakfast table in the little breakfast nook off the kitchen with floor to ceiling windows on three sides looking out on a turquoise twilight fading at the edges to an indigo night. There was a near empty bottle of red wine and a completely empty pizza box from the neighborhood Pie Shoppe, a long-time favorite. The box had held a single large pie split evenly between Jodie's favorite spinach and garlic with white sauce, Penni's ham with pineapple and Leah's Italian sausage and red pepper. It seemed odd to all three to be sitting in Brooke's kitchen without Brooke gossiping away from the stove or giving them assignments or insisting on pouring more wine.

Dave was at the hospital with Brooke and Leah's aging parents who had made the long drive from the coast to check on their eldest daughter now that she was safely recovering. Leah had set them up in a handicapped accessible room (Momma had recently started using a walker due to peripheral neuropathy) at a hotel convenient to the hospital, then escorted them to the hospital room to see the subject of their visit. Once Dave arrived, Leah excused herself to "go look after the girls" who were back at the house. It was difficult for her to see her failing parents (Father had trouble finding words, a new trait that caused him great frustration) in a hospital room with her sister who had been so close to death. "Make sure they clean their rooms," Brooke had yelled as Leah left, her bluster maybe tinged with regret at not being free to join them.

While eating they'd avoided discussion of Brooke's health, focusing instead on mundane details from their personal lives far from this house. But once the pizza was gone and the wine had soaked in and the day outside the window had gone almost completely dark, Brooke's looming presence was unavoidable.

"She looks a lot better than I expected," Penni said.

Leah nodded. "And a lot better than she did."

"After one of his consultations, Randall called me to say I needed to get down here. He didn't say as much, but I could tell he thought they'd lost the battle."

Jodie gave Leah a puzzled look. "Was it that bad?"

"One night, yes."

"And you didn't tell me."

"You two talked?" Penni asked.

"Texted," Jodie corrected, though her gaze never left her aunt.

"It was a calculated risk, Jodie. I could tell you to rush home only to have her recover later, or tell you to rush home only to arrive too late. Instead, I told you to stay put and wait for the right moment."

"When did you text?"

Leah laughed nervously, facing first one niece then the other. "Jodie would text me in the middle of my overnight stays, and I responded."

"You initiated it after a few nights."

"I wanted to share the good news of your mother's improvement."

"What about me?" Penni asked.

"I knew Davey was keeping you informed, and you had Randall's consultations."

"Davey didn't call you?" Penni asked Jodie.

"I maybe forgot to return his messages."

"Mom was in Intensive Care, Jodie!"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Girls!" Leah said sharply.

Both nieces looked at their aunt.

Leah blushed. "Never thought I'd sound like your mother."

Penni reached across the table and cupped Leah's hand loosely. "Sorry, Aunt Leah. I know you would have called if I needed an update. But I wish you had anyway. I got tired of Davey's clinical summaries and terrified of what I assumed Randall was holding back."

Leah shrugged. "Davey told me he had it under control."

"Don't ever listen to him," Jodie said.

"I tried my best."

"Thanks for being here, Aunt Leah," Penni said. "Mom might not have made it without you."

"And thanks for protecting me," Jodie said.

The other two women looked at each other and laughed.

"What?" Jodie asked.

Penni looked from Leah to her sister. "Mom calls Aunt Leah 'Jodie's Guardian'."

"Since when?"

"Since far back as I can remember," Penni said.

The sisters looked at Leah. "Since you were a toddler and started giving your mother fits."

"Glad to have someone watching over me."

"Always," Leah affirmed.

"What about me?" Penni asked.

Jodie rolled her eyes. "Everyone watches over you."

"Not like that."

"You'll always be well loved, Penni," Leah said. "Speaking of which, how's that baby doing?"

"My fourteen-week fetus?"

"Is that what you call it?"

"That's what they call it. I call her my baby."

"Her?"

"Till I'm told otherwise."

"Be hell on him if he comes out to pink ribbons and bows."

"Thought you of all people would like gender-neutral," Penni said.

Jodie bristled. "I don't know that 'me of all people' ever mentioned what I think on the subject of raising babies. And in any case, pink is not a neutral color. Try green or yellow."

Penni flinched. "I'm sorry. I only meant that you've always been so open-minded. But I won't use pink. We'll start off pastel green and go from there. O.K.?"

Jodie glared back. "You don't need my permission."

"I'm asking your support."

"Pastel green is good," Jodie said without enthusiasm.

Penni looked calmly at her sister across the table for a long time. Jodie stared back, but as if not seeing her, as if looking through her. Leah recognized Jodie's retreat in that stare, her flight from family confrontation. But she thought Penni might cry and wondered if Jodie could remain gone in the face of such emotion.

Penni's eyes remained dry; and she eventually said in a quiet and neutral tone, "I think the reason I want it to be a girl is to find in her the love I always longed for from my sister."

Leah saw Jodie's eyes flinch then retreat deeper inside herself. She saw Penni's eyes begging for some response, any response.

Penni added after long seconds of silence. "I know that's wrong. A mother needs to give her child unconditional love, not look for her or him to fill some gap in her life. I trust I'll come around to that view over the next six months."

"But in the meantime you decided to use your pregnancy as a convenient excuse to bash your sister," Jodie growled.

"Jodie!" Leah cried.

Now tears did rise into Penni's eyes. She blurted through her tears, "I'll use my pregnancy and Mom's illness and this opportunity to be alone together to tell my sister I love her and have loved her every minute since I saw her standing over my crib. And if that doesn't meet with her approval then too bad for her." She stood and rushed out of the kitchen.

Jodie and Leah listened to her shoes cross the entry hall's marble tiles and climb the stairs. In the quiet house, they could hear her run down the upstairs hall and into her bedroom and close the door. The carpet of her bedroom muffled any further movements but both women accurately envisioned Penni collapsing on the canopy bed from her youth and burying her face in her fluffy pillows and the crowd of stuffed animals Brooke kept arranged in a semicircle at the headboard.

Leah took a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. She stared at her remaining niece in silence.

Jodie kept her eyes fixed on the ghost of Penni's sudden exit, still fleeing in her mind past the prep island and the big refrigerator. Finally she released that vision and turned toward her aunt and the reproach she knew was waiting there. "I thought you were my guardian not my accuser."

"I am."

"Then why the 'You should be ashamed' look."

"Ashamed of what?"

"Being cruel to my little sister—again."

"How about being cruel to yourself?"

"I'm not the one who ran away in tears."

"No?"

"No, Leah! Penni's the one upstairs bawling her eyes out!"

"You fled years ago. You've been crying out so long you don't even know it anymore."

Jodie considered these claims for several seconds before rising from the table, sliding her chair carefully back into place, then walking briskly across the kitchen and up the stairs, trailing Penni's ghost of flight down the upstairs hall and past her sister's room to her room at the far end. The sound of her footsteps ended at the carpet there, but then resumed a few seconds later as she retraced her steps along the hall, down the stairs, across the entry tile, then out the front door.

After she heard the door open, Leah said in a whispered shout from her seat at the breakfast table, "Please don't!"

But the door shut anyway and the house was gripped by a new silence.

Later, after several failed attempts to lose herself in the biography of Sylvia Plath she was reading and no response from Jodie to repeated text messages, Leah finally gave up waiting and readied for bed in the bath of her guest suite at the far end of the upstairs hall. Before retiring she emerged in her flannel robe to check Jodie's room in hopes maybe she'd quietly snuck back in. But no—the room was empty and dark.

She paused outside Penni's door and knocked lightly.

"Come in, Aunt Leah," Penni said in firm clear voice.

Leah opened the door and stepped into the large room painted in a pale apricot with matching carpet. The wood trim and furniture were all in a glossy white finish, and one wall was covered with large stencils of fantasy animals—unicorns, friendly dragons, anthropomorphic fish rising out of a turquoise sea. Penni had changed into her pajamas and was lying in her bed with a maternity magazine open on her lap. Her stuffed animals had been carefully arranged on the chair beside the bed. Leah finished surveying the room then said, "I don't remember when I was last in here—ten years ago, maybe. But I don't think it has changed a bit."

Penni laughed. "Mom doesn't want to give up her baby. She's had it repainted and the carpet replaced, but she went to great lengths to match the old colors exactly. It all seems a little weird for a girl who's married now and expecting her own child. But truth is, I'm glad to have this room to come back to. It makes me feel safe."

"Like some things don't change."

"Yeah, I guess."

"You're lucky to have something like that."

"Till this visit I took it for granted. Now I'm terrified of losing it."

Leah desperately wanted to offer some words of reassurance but at that moment could not think of any. "Your father called to say he was spending the night in Brooke's room."

"Why?"

"He said she asked him to."

"But there's no place to sleep."

Leah shrugged but couldn't stifle her giggle.

"Are you serious?" Penni said. "Do they allow conjugal visits in the hospital?"

"Your mom will find a way."

"I don't doubt that."

"A sure sign she's getting back to normal."

"The surest." She had a vision of illicit "conjugal visits" in Randall's hospital—in available stockrooms or the residents' cat-nap lounge, panting nurses interlocking with hidden-faced doctors.

"At least we won't have to explain Jodie's absence to your father."

"He wouldn't have noticed. When it comes to Jodie, Dad has always turned a blind eye."

"I should be so lucky."

"Don't worry, Aunt Leah. She'll be alright. She knows these streets like the back of her hand."

"It's not what's outside Jodie that I'm worried about."

Penni studied her aunt for a few seconds then said, "Please sit for a minute, Aunt Leah." She gestured toward a Queen Anne's chair at the foot of the bed. "You can set those dolls on the floor."

Leah did as directed, sliding the chair so she had a clear view of Penni lying in the bed. She sat, straight-backed and alert.

"I've always known Jodie was your favorite," Penni said. "I used to be jealous. Now I'm just glad Jodie has someone in the family to turn to. She needs you. Without you we might have lost touch with her long ago."

"It has never been easy for Jodie."

"Why?"

Where to begin? Leah thought. "Her early years were full of change and major transitions. She was such a happy and adaptable child, we all thought she was doing fine. But maybe not. Then again, maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe she would've ended up on the outside no matter what her upbringing. Brooke was like that. Always had to do things her own way."

"But Mom ended up O.K."

"After a time, yes." Leah considered all the upheavals and ghosts and scars that brief statement encompassed, not the least of which was Jodie herself. "Having all you kids to focus on helped."

"A calling to match her energies."

Leah grinned. "How did you become so perceptive?"

Penni laughed. "Everyone thinks the baby of the family only takes attention. What no one tells you is that at the bottom of that food chain, you have to be a good observer to survive."

"Having a doting father and three doting brothers didn't hurt."

"I guess. But it was Mom and Jodie I watched the closest, and needed the most. One out of two ain't bad, I guess."

"More than some."

Penni's face donned an atypical hardness. "Jodie has always had me. And she could've had Mom if she'd given her half a chance. Still could, but she'd better hurry up."

"For both their sakes," Leah said.

"Make it three."

Leah smiled. Her younger niece was surprising her at every turn. "Make it four."

"Now if you can just convince Jodie."

"We're going to take a ride up to Richmond tomorrow, spend a couple days together. If she comes back."

"She'll come back. Maybe a little worse for wear, but she always comes back."

"I'll count on that. I didn't know you'd be here when I suggested the trip to Jodie."

"That's alright, Aunt Leah. I've got to get back to the daycare. And the last thing you and Jodie need is me tagging along."

Leah was suddenly deeply grateful to have such a stable and wise presence in the midst of their quaking lives, and she said so. "You've always been a wonderful person, Penni; but you've become an extraordinary mature and caring adult. Thank you for being the calm in the midst of our storm."

Penni smiled and lightly patted her still flat stomach hiding beneath the plush and frilly bedspread. "You can thank her after she comes out."

Leah stood, closed the two yards between them, and bent at the waist to kiss her niece on the forehead. "I'll thank her then, and now."

Leah stood beside her bed debating in her mind whether to leave her processors on. On the one hand, she could only hear Jodie's return, and ease her anxiety, if she left them on. On the other hand, she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep if she kept them on, lying on her back facing the dark ceiling. In this silent debate she had a glimpse of the challenges that had faced Brooke in raising five children, especially the subject of her present anxiety, the headstrong Jodie. By comparison it had been so easy raising Jasper, who had been an obedient and even-tempered child who had grown into a smart and level-headed young man. Leah couldn't help but wonder if her sister's recent idiosyncrasies were the result of managing the stresses of parenthood, or if her children's behaviors were reactions to their mother. She concluded without much analysis that their family dynamic was a product of both, a complex series of actions and reactions played out across seven egos. But in this mix she pictured Jodie at the center, ever dueling with Brooke for dominance of expression. She opted for sleep over awareness and removed her processors, trusting Penni's assurance that Jodie would find her way safely home, on her own schedule and by her own volition.

Yet in the middle of the night something roused her. It couldn't have been a sound. Maybe it was a vibration in the floor or some subtle change in the light, though the room was near completely dark, barely lit by a faint silver glow creeping in around the windows' shades. In a state not fully awake, Leah rose from her bed, padded across the room's carpet to her door and out into the hall. In the absence of sound, all her other senses were more fully alert. She saw everything clearly despite the very faint light, felt the carpet's individual fabric strands on her toes and the pads of her bare feet, the door knob's intricate filigree on her fingers, the hall's wood flooring grain and joinery, could smell the pizza box in the kitchen's trash can beneath the sink, the taste of sausage on her tongue, the faint odor of burned dust from the gas furnace's blower, the scent of lavender from the aerator Brooke had left in the half bath under the stairs.

She turned the cool knob of Jodie's door and eased it open. She immediately knew her niece was there from the scent in the room, a wonderful subtle earthiness that Leah stored in some obscure corner of her memory when snuggling Jodie as a toddler, still present these decades later. She stepped into the room and saw her niece's muted silhouette on the bed, curled on its side and facing away. Leah was nearly awake by now but still guided by some hidden need. She walked across the room to the edge of the bed, found there enough room to hold her and a spare pillow waiting, and lay down beside her niece atop the covers. She rolled onto her side, leaving just a fraction of an inch between her body and Jodie's, smelling Jodie's hair, the faint whiff of her breath tainted by wine and beer and something else Leah couldn't place. In a final desperate act of fulfillment, she extended her arm out over Jodie's shoulder and slowly lowered it to rest there. She felt sudden profound gratitude and relief. Jasper's image passed before her eyes in the gray dark before disappearing, replaced by Jodie's all-enveloping scent and warmth. Now she could rest.

Sometime near dawn Jodie woke. She recalled her prior night as in some fuzzy dream. After walking an old familiar loop that used to go through a sleazy neighborhood full of nocturnal intrigue but now took her past restored houses and prissy storefronts, all dark and empty this time of night, she'd pulled out her phone and dialed from memory the numbers of some long ago contacts. The first three numbers were no longer in service and the fourth yielded a message machine for a bakery. But the fifth reached Jason Terry—and yes he remembered who she was and yes he would like to get together. "When?" "Now?"

He'd picked her up twenty minutes later. They'd driven to some old haunts—not everything in town had been gentrified—and engaged in some old amusements. No matter that he was married ("to an old friend of yours from school" though he spared them both her name) and father of two daughters in high school, he traded her two hits of X for the favor she'd always done better than anyone else and, as it turned out, still did—better than anyone else, that is (and he'd had a fair sampling in the years since, both before and mostly since his marriage), and helped along by the fast-acting drug. As of old, he'd dropped her off two blocks from her house—"Your parents still alive?"—and no kiss or parting good-bye. Despite the blurring effects of the X, she still felt dirty and used. But at least she'd lost her tension, and forgotten what it was that had sent her out into the night.

She'd found her way back into the house by the back door and up the stairs and down the hall while deftly avoiding all the loose and creaky floorboards and collapsed into bed, letting the X perform its final good deed by sweeping her off into dreamless oblivion.

Then she felt the hand curled up under her chin. She quickly inventoried her two hands. One was up under her face, slightly numb but unquestionably hers. The other was tucked between her knees in an old fetal repose she'd never quite been able to abandon. So whose hand was under her chin, whose arm over her shoulder? For a second she wondered if she and Jason had ended up in motel. It wouldn't be the first time. But this hand was not rough and callused like Jason's, the arm not fleshy and heavy.

Then she knew, from some ancient scent or stillness or touch. "Leah?" she whispered.

There was no response.

"Aunt Leah," she said, a little more firmly and louder.

Still nothing.

Then she recalled from her infancy how she'd communicated with Leah then, through all manner of subtle signs and gestures, no sound required. She eased out from under the arm then rolled over so she was facing her aunt.

Leah opened her eyes and looked at Jodie without lifting her head off the pillow. She smiled sleepily in the gray light.

Jodie smiled back. "Still watching over me," she mouthed.

Leah nodded and signed _Always_ —a double loop with the hand that had been draped over Jodie's shoulder, now freed.

Jodie whispered, "Thanks." Then she recalled her previous night's petulance. "I'm sorry I left," she mouthed, glad not to have to speak the sounds.

Leah leaned forward and kissed her niece's forehead in her surest sign of forgiveness.

Jodie nodded contritely.

Leah fixed her in a stare, all the more potent for the dim light and hour of day. "Stop running away," she said aloud, trusting her sounds despite not hearing them.

Though a frequent suggestion or command from various advisors, this rendition's combination of Leah's intense stare and the mechanical sounding words in this dim dawn light struck Jodie as never before. How much of her cherished self-expression had really been reactive, flight from confrontation and contingency? And why had it taken so long to discover the flaw, let alone correct it? She gazed a long time at Leah before nodding once and whispering "O.K.," not sure of what she was committing to but sure it was right, somehow.

Leah nodded.

Then Jodie saw Leah was outside the covers, surely freezing in the cool room. She eased the bedspread, blanket, and sheet out from under Leah's body, then held it up for Leah to slide under.

Leah gestured toward the door— _I should return to my room._

"Please," Jodie said.

Leah swore she hear the word. She smiled—acquiescence and thanks—then slid under the covers.

Jodie let them fall back in place, rolled over on her side, back to her aunt, and curled into her fetal repose.

Leah slid her arm back over Jodie's shoulder, her hand lightly up under her niece's chin to where it could feel the pulse of her young and ardent heart.

8

That morning, Brooke was released to go home later that afternoon (after finally having a bowel movement—"It's amazing the effect Dave has on my body!") but would arrive to an empty house, as Leah and Jodie would head for Richmond after lunch, dropping Penni at the airport to fly back to Boston on their way out of town.

At their meeting in Brooke's soon to be vacated hospital room, all three women offered to remain as long as needed to help Brooke get settled back into her house; but Brooke would hear nothing of it. "What do you think Dave's for?" she asked rhetorically. "He'll tend to my every need!" Then she winked suggestively and whispered, "And certain needs are best tended in private!" To that Leah smiled, Jodie shook her head, and Penni groaned "Mom!" But the statement had its intended result—all three women left the hospital and their recent lodgings confident that Brooke was safely on the mend, her near-term medical prognosis good, her spirits high. Leah promised to visit on her way back to Atlanta, Penni said she'd call every night till told to stop, and even Jodie offered to check-in at regular intervals. Everyone was near-giddy at the crisis just averted; and all colluded to avoid discussion of Brooke's cancer prognosis, now that the experimental treatment had nearly killed her. There wasn't anything new to say on this point anyway, as all prospective cancer treatments were on hold pending her body's full recovery from the infection and termination of the antibiotic and antifungal regimen. Her next appointment with her oncologist would be late in the coming week.

As they rode to the airport with Leah driving, Jodie in the front passenger seat, and Penni in the back seat flanked by her two bags, their conversation focused on Brooke's amazing recovery. Both Jodie and Penni were having trouble grasping just how close to death their mother had come. And Leah refused to dwell on the matter, saying only "it was touch and go for a day or two." They all acknowledged that it was Brooke's indomitable spirit that had saved her, that same spirit that could be so overbearing at times.

Penni asked, "Could you sense it even when she was unconscious, Aunt Leah?"

Leah had not considered that. By all external appearances, and apparently also according to the numbers documented on the screens and in the electronic charts, Brooke was as frail and vulnerable and helpless as anyone else would have been in her situation. Yet despite the apparent fragility and vulnerability of her critically ill sister, Leah had emerged from each of her overnights stronger than when she'd gone in—and apparently Brooke had too. Sure, the drugs did their work—the antifungal IV in particular—and so had the doctors and the heroic nurses. But none of those efforts would have mattered if the part of Brooke that made her Brooke had been missing. She would've succumbed. And how much of that grit and will had been transferred to her—in those overnights and over a lifetime? How much of that spirit resided now in these two sisters—by different fathers but of the same mother, of her will and determination? The world had always seen it in Penni, even if Penni secretly doubted it. But no one, not even the endlessly sympathetic and supportive Leah, had seen it in Jodie. But maybe, just maybe, Jodie had seen it in herself, glimpses of it when off on her own in hostile or indifferent environs, struggling to find her way, prosper or just survive. Leah caught Penni's eye in the rearview mirror. "Now that you mention it, yes, I could feel it—not in any measurable form but like a spirit in the room."

"A will to live," Penni suggested.

"A love of being, I think," Leah said, not quite sure what she meant.

"A silent guardian," Jodie laughed.

"That's it," Leah said.

Penni only smiled. No one had mentioned Jodie's blow-up or prolonged absence the night before. This was consistent with past such incidents throughout Jodie's high school and college years. In her mind, she called it the Redmonds' "see-no-evil syndrome." But this time she—and, more importantly, Jodie—had Leah there. While sipping herbal tea in the kitchen that morning, she'd heard two sets of footsteps emerge from Jodie's room—first Leah's unfamiliar and nearly silent padding to her room at the end of the hall, then Jodie's heavy-footed elephant thumps plodding to the hall bathroom. She was again briefly jealous of Jodie for having Leah's devotion. But then she recalled that she had Randall, and realized she'd see him tonight. The thought produced a strange flutter in her stomach and other body parts—or was that the baby stirring? No matter the feeling's origin—she had both, Randall and the baby growing. She could afford to be glad for her sister that she had Leah.

After dropping Penni off at the airport's Departures terminal with an exchange of hugs at the crowded curb (during her hug, Jodie had pressed her mouth to Penni's ear and whispered "Take care of that baby" to which the startled Penni could only reply "I will"), Leah directed the quiet smooth-riding sedan back onto the lightly travelled interstate for the four-hour drive to Richmond.

Not long into that drive, Jodie looked to Leah and asked, "All right if I zone out?" She held up a pair of white earbud headphones to indicate her version of zoning out. "I think I still have a bit of jetlag."

They both well knew that Jodie's fatigue had little to do with the time-zone shift, but Leah didn't challenge the assertion. "Sure," Leah said. "Get some rest."

"You'll be O.K. without someone to talk to?"

Leah laughed. "Jodie, I lived in a bubble of silence for over forty years, including while driving. I'll zone out in my old way."

"But keeping us on the road."

"I promise."

Jodie nodded, popped in her earbuds, and was asleep within five minutes. Glancing every now and then at her niece, Leah drove through the overcast afternoon feeling an unprecedented mix of contentment and purpose, both feelings emanating from the sleeping child at her side.

9

They arrived at the elegant nineteenth century hotel with its gilded age feel and its ornate lobby at around dusk. The bellman escorted them to their plush and spacious suite that Leah had negotiated for the regular room rate. Jodie maintained her nonchalance and her silence through the beautiful lobby and the polished brass elevator and into the regal room. But once Leah had tipped the pleasant and efficient middle-aged white bellman named Lee ("Like the general!") and closed the door, her stored excitement and wonder burst forth as she trotted about the room touching and admiring everything from the heavy velvet drapes to the antique writing desk, Tiffany lamp, and leather-seated chair.

But she grew quiet when she opened the curtained French doors into the bedroom and saw two queen-size beds separated by about four feet of carpeted floor.

"Something wrong?" Leah asked as she came up behind her.

Jodie hesitated for just a fraction of a second then blurted, "I liked having you near me last night." She'd not realized till just that moment how important Leah's physical presence in her bed had been to her quick recovery from last night's demeaning detour. In her mind, there was nothing inappropriate or erotic about that contact. She simply wanted—indeed, craved—the sense of safety and love that Leah's physical presence had provided. She didn't pursue this thought process to its next determination—that it was exactly this sense of safety and implied love that had led her into the beds of every female lover she'd ever had.

Jodie's disappointment triggered a knee-jerk reaction in Leah as well. She actually took a step toward the phone on the sideboard to call the front desk and request a room with a single king-sized bed. Then she reined in that impulse. She came alongside Jodie and touched her hand lightly. "I figured two beds were better. Whitfield says I can be a restless sleeper." This was a fib. Whitfield said she slept like a rock, never moving an inch in the night.

"I guess," Jodie said, retreating to a safer place.

"And these beds are plenty big. If you grow frightened or lonely in the night, I'll come sleep beside you."

"How will you know?" Jodie asked.

Leah grinned as if keeping a secret. "We'll figure something out."

They quickly unpacked, splitting the bedroom's beautifully crafted dresser down the middle. Leah got the shallow walk-in closet to herself, as Jodie didn't have anything requiring hangers. They ordered room service—Jodie a vegetarian cobb salad, Leah a turkey club sandwich—and watched a second-run action thriller on the large flat-screen TV in the sitting room, leaving the sound switched off and providing imagined commentary and dialogue to the vivid scenes.

At some point Jodie asked, "Is that what you did with all TV shows and movies when you were deaf?"

Leah laughed and quipped, "All of life!" Then she offered a more honest answer. "No, I watched and waited. Sometimes it took a while, but sooner or later the world opened up before me."

"I wouldn't have had the patience."

"First skill I learned."

Jodie was in her sweatpants and tank top and swallowed by the cushy mattress and plush covers and countless fluffy pillows when Leah emerged from the bathroom in her full-length flannel nightgown. Before climbing into her bed, Leah tied a piece of thread from an emergency sewing kit she carried in her travel bag to the headboard post on Jodie's bed.

"When Jasper was an infant, I'd tie a piece of yarn from his crib or playpen to my finger when I was reading or resting in the chair. He quickly learned he could get my attention by simply tugging on that piece of yarn."

"Probably about pulled your finger off."

"No, hardly ever used it. He was always good at amusing himself; still is."

Jodie laughed from her cave of bed linens. "I'd have pulled it off."

"You threw stuff at me."

"I did?"

Leah laughed at the unexpected recollection. "Stuffed animals, your Raggedy Ann doll, pillows. Those were O.K. The wooden blocks hurt!"

"I'm sorry."

"You always needed attention."

"Still do."

Leah laughed. "Well, if you need attention tonight, pull on this thread. After I take off my processors and get into bed, I'll tie it to my little finger. One tug—or maybe two or three—and I'll be up and checking on you."

"Thanks, Leah," Jodie said, though she knew she wouldn't use it.

Oddly, neither considered the far simpler solution to nocturnal needs—that Jodie cross the narrow chasm between beds and slide into Leah's.

10

The next morning they rose early and, after breakfast in the hotel's cheerful café, headed out for a day of touring. It was a glorious spring morning, fresh-washed from showers overnight but now bright and clear and warming into the seventies. Both women felt the flush of youth and freedom at this unlikely situation—alone together for the first time in over thirty years, no commitments except to enjoy each other's company and explore this strange and strangely inviting city. They acted more like sisters than aunt and niece in there trusting and playful interaction, and more like children than grown adults in their occasional skipping down bright lit and empty walks, in the daffodil Jodie plucked from the hotel's driveway border and slid into Leah's blond hair mixed with a dusting of gray, in the jaunty sun bonnet Leah bought for Jodie from a street kiosk and carefully adjusted atop her niece's dark brown hair with its gentle wave.

They walked the half-mile from the hotel to the state capitol building through streets nearly empty of pedestrians this early on a weekday morning and only thinly travelled by mainly delivery and maintenance traffic. Though the capital building sat bright white and inviting atop its grassy hill, they were turned away from the front entrance by a large sign reading _No Admittance_ and directed around back to an elaborate and no doubt enormously expensive post-9/11 tunnel entrance bored into the beautiful hillside.

This detour briefly darkened their spirits as they passed through metal detectors and had to open their handbag (Leah) and canvas tote (Jodie) and Jodie was even asked to remove her bonnet, to which she muttered "Darn, that's where I always hide my bombs."

The short-haired and heavyset female security guard eyed her sternly, as if contemplating whether or not to slap the handcuffs on this troublemaker, until Leah laughed nonchalantly and said, "Bon-bons! That's where she hides her bon-bons! You're such a devil, Darling!" and thus freed the guard to excuse Jodie's threat to national security.

As they climbed the stairs from the underground tunnel to the original capital building, Leah whispered, "Let's not end up with you in jail today," following the admonition with an attempt at a light-hearted chuckle.

To which Jodie replied, "Wouldn't be the first time."

Leah said, "First time with me."

And Jodie said, "I'll be on my best behavior here on out," just as they reached the landing with its sudden flush of natural light pouring in through the lofty rotunda.

They recovered most of their former high spirits as they toured the public areas of the ornate building that housed memories and mementoes from the colonial, antebellum, reconstruction, and twentieth century periods as well as functioning as the current seat of the Virginia State Government. This last somewhat explained the elaborate security procedures—the governor's office was open today and the legislature would be in session next week—and the women were forced to acknowledge they were part of living history as well as observers of a bygone eras. They kept their childish shenanigans under wraps as they were the only tourists amidst the numerous security guards eyeing them suspiciously—or was it flirtatiously, as most of the guards were males of ages that might be riveted by one or the other or both attractive women.

At the end of their tour they sat on a wooden bench in a hall off the south portico, trying hard but failing to imagine Thomas Jefferson or Henry Lee walking past or leading a debate as their attention was resolutely tugged toward the tall windows and the sunny portico beyond the locked doors. A young family—husband, wife, three kids under age ten—had climbed the long steps to that patio and were gazing into the room through the windows with their hands shading their eyes. Jodie ran over and squatted down and made a funny face through the glass at the youngest child, a girl of maybe four. The girl jumped back and ran to her mother in tears.

Jodie mouthed, "I'm sorry" through the glass but to no avail. The family headed back down the countless limestone steps to the inviting green lawn below.

Leah said, "Let's get back outdoors."

They both looked longingly at the glass doors that would have led directly to that outdoors except for the sign that said _Emergency Exit Only—Alarm Will Sound_.

Leah said, "Don't even think about it."

And Jodie said, "You're no fun" but had already turned to retrace her steps past the restored Old Hall and to the stairs leading to the tunnel entrance and exit far below.

Leah followed in short order.

By then it was noon and, after sitting a few minutes on a bench soaking up the spring sun, Jodie commissioned an Uber car via her phone. The car driven by a middle-aged Pakistani took them over the interstate to Church Hill and dropped them off at The Hill Café, a small but highly regarded restaurant recommended by the hotel's concierge. After a delicious lunch they walked the few blocks to St. John's Church (the building giving Church Hill its name), a parish dating to the early eighteenth century and where Patrick Henry proclaimed his oft-quoted "give me liberty or give me death" incitement to rebellion. They took a quick circuit of the grounds but, having just missed the last tour, opted to skip the history lesson and tour of the interior of the church and instead found a bench in the shade of a just-past-peak ornamental cherry tree at the edge of the church's cemetery.

Looking at the blank back of a worn and tilting gray tombstone, Jodie said, "I wonder who she was?"

"How do you know it was a she?"

"I don't."

Either could've risen to discover the name and sex of the person buried beneath their feet but neither did. "It's hard to think of death on a day like today."

Leah nodded. "All of this past only makes me feel more in the present."

"Tell me about Mom's youth," Jodie said suddenly.

Leah flushed, startled that she'd not thought about Brooke once since dropping Penni off and a bit resentful that she was forced to think about her now. "Which part?" she said finally.

"Any part. It's a total black hole to me."

"She never talked about it?"

"No. She'd sometimes make passing allusion to 'my wild youth' but then would drop the subject. No amount of prodding would get her to give up her secrets."

Leah laughed. "She was a lot like you—strong-willed, single-minded, contrarian."

"Contrarian?"

"Always going opposite the crowd. She made a virtue of being an outsider."

"Could have fooled me, with her Miss Civic Duty routine."

"That's all since marrying Dave. Before that, she always broke the rules. How do you think you came into being?"

"I figured that was a one-time mistake."

"No, that was the culmination of a lifetime of rebellion to that point."

"What did she do?"

"What didn't she do is more like it. She smoked and drank."

"Everyone tries that."

"In grade school?"

Jodie's eyes betrayed surprise the rest of her body attempted to hide.

"She was always attracted to bad boys from the wrong side of town, guys far outside our social circle."

"Like Dad."

"Yes, or even farther out than that."

"What else did she do?"

"Snuck out at night, skipped school, shacked up with boys."

"When?"

"Whenever she could. One night she left me alone at the State Fair and ran off to who knows where with a farmer boy named Danny. I had to drive myself home, and this was before I had a license."

"What else?"

"She smoked dope. She got so stoned at her debutante ball I had to figure out a way to get her home without Momma and Father finding out."

"Did you?"

"Somehow, yes."

"Why didn't Grandma or Grandpa stop her?"

"They tried, and had about as much success as Brooke and Dave had with you."

"I hid my mess."

"I helped Brooke hide hers."

"So you enabled her."

Leah flinched. This succinct summary of a complex adolescent relationship struck to the heart of a deeply buried sense of guilt—that she had somehow caused or at least facilitated Brooke's life-upheaval on Shawnituck, an upheaval that produced Jodie, Brooke's first marriage, her subsequent divorce, and all manner of family distress and embarrassment. This upheaval also marked the break between their childhood closeness and their remoteness since. It was painful even now to recall how severely Brooke's self-indulgent actions had shaken every part of their family, and how deeply it had shamed Momma and Father. "I was only protecting Brooke," Leah whispered in a half-hearted defense, gazing toward the old clapboard church.

"Your life's calling," Jodie said. She turned to face Leah with a full smile.

"Protecting Brooke?"

"Protecting—first Mom, then me."

Leah nodded slowly. Jodie was right—first Brooke then her first-born daughter. A shadow passed over her face. "I fear I've failed in both instances."

Jodie leaned over and hugged her aunt. "Don't say that," she whispered into Leah's left ear, close to the microphone there. "Mom's done just fine," she added when she sat up straight again. "And so have I, thanks to you."

Leah nodded slowly, trying hard to believe her niece's generous assessment but unable at just that moment to shake the image of the moldering bones beneath their feet, marked by a blank and leaning headstone.

11

The next morning they rose late and ordered room-service continental breakfasts that Leah signed for at the door then carried the wide silver tray into the bedroom and set it in the middle of Jodie's bed. She then climbed in beside her niece and they spent the next half hour nibbling on the various pastries and fruit salad as they watched a local variety show that included a field trip to a tulip farm and tips on how and where to hang a summer hammock. Neither of them were quite sure if they were sisters sharing an upscale version of Saturday morning cereal while watching an adult version of Saturday morning cartoons (neither had ever watched cartoons, for divergent reasons—the animated chaos too silent for Leah, too loud for Jodie) or mother and daughter engaging in some "quality time." Or aunt and niece on an idle frolic with a not so idle purpose.

At the end of the meal, Leah suggested they use the balance of the morning as "personal time."

"Like apart?" Jodie asked, propped up on a wall of cushy pillows mounded against the headboard.

"Is that O.K.? I really need to check in with Whitfield and Jasper and a few others."

"Mom?"

"I thought I'd give her a call, yes."

"Tell her I said hi."

"I'll call her now. You can tell her yourself."

"I thought I'd go running, work off some of these carbs." To enforce the statement, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed then headed for the bathroom.

"Run off a few calories for me," Leah said as she sipped the last of her cool coffee beneath the drone of a TV ad for age-defeating facial cream.

After Leah had dressed and completed her calls to Whitfield ("When will I again wake to you beside me?" "A few more days, please?") and Jasper (leaving a message, again—was he always in class?) and Momma (safely back with Father at their home in a retirement community along the coast) and Brooke ("You'd love Dave in his little French maid outfit. "I guess that means you're feeling better." "Better every day, now that I'm home.") and Billy Erwin, her Green Ways project coordinator deep in the fray of their busy spring season of plantings and upgrades ("Sorry to be away so long at a bad time, Billy." "Take as much time as you need, Mrs. Monroe. I'll hold down the fort." "Leah." "What?" "I'm Leah, Billy." "I know.") and made a to-do list for whenever she did get home, and Jodie had returned from her run on a trail along the river and taken a shower and dressed in her jeans and U of W sweatshirt, Leah called down to the concierge for a hotel courtesy car to take them to The Fan section of Richmond.

The car dropped them off in front of a neighborhood eatery called simply _Joe's_ at just past noon. Last night over a light dinner in the hotel's café, they'd decided to make an outing to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which was not far away in The Fan. When they asked the concierge if there was a restaurant in the museum, she said yes but then suggested this "quaint little pub" just a few blocks away. They were seated at a tall booth in narrow and dim "old side" by a perky receptionist. A smattering of locals sat at the nearby bar eating French fries and sandwiches and drinking dark beer from frothy mugs.

Jodie looked toward the bar and said, "That looks yummy" under her breath.

Leah looked in that direction to see a tall dark-haired man in his forties with a ball cap and a sawdust-flecked denim shirt lifting a dripping monster burger to his lips. "The guy or his food?" she whispered.

Jodie laughed. "You guess."

"I thought you were a vegetarian?"

"Only till I get a hankering for a juicy burger."

Leah shrugged. "You surprise me every day."

"Why didn't you think it was the guy that I thought was yummy?"

"Do you?"

"He is kind of cute" then added with a wink, "For an old guy."

Leah looked again at their subject, who'd polished off his burger with startling speed and was downing the last of his beer. He reminded her of Billy in his rugged masculinity. "I'll take that as a no."

Jodie said in a tauntingly loud voice, "Bring me the burger all the way, hold the guy" to both her aunt and the young waitress approaching their booth.

The waitress said, "Guys are only on the dinner menu," which freed them all to laugh. Then they ordered lunch.

After lunch they walked the few blocks to the museum past beautifully restored and brightly painted row houses, passing parents pushing infants in strollers under the warm spring sun, including two sets of clearly homosexual couples—one male, one female—as well as young mothers pushing their carriages alone and maybe one nanny, based on the age and ethnicity and reticence of the attendant adult. On the museum grounds they wandered the outdoor sculpture garden for a short time to extend their enjoyment of the sun before finally surrendering and entering the cavernous and sparkling glass and limestone building. They meandered through the diverse collections at a leisurely pace, sometimes together, sometimes separated, rarely speaking and then only in whispers in the hushed halls. As yesterday at the capital, there were few others touring and the guards far outnumbered their visitors.

Near the end of the tour, Leah caught up with Jodie who was lingering in front of a painting by Jackson Pollock.

"What do you think?" Jodie asked.

"Abstract doesn't do much for me."

"That's because you don't let it in."

"In where? To my nightmares?"

Jodie laughed. "Into your soul." She proceeded to give a brief summary of Pollock's action painting approach and the abstract expressionists' view that their paintings are eternally imbued with the energy of its creation and its creator. "It's meant as a living thing," she concluded.

"I guess I still prefer seeing living things over feeling them, at least in my art."

"That's funny," Jodie said. "I thought you named your son after the artist."

Leah laughed. "No, from the verse 'walls of Jasper'."

"What verse?"

"In Revelation."

Jodie was still perplexed.

"The last book of the Bible, Silly. The writer has a vision of Heaven with streets paved in gold and walls of jasper. Didn't they teach you anything in Sunday school?"

"I quit going at age seven."

"Brooke let you?"

"She had no choice. The teacher threw me out."

"Why?"

"I kicked him in the shin."

"Jodie!"

"He deserved it. He called me a little heathen."

"Maybe you were."

"I didn't know what a heathen was, but I didn't like the way he said it."

"So you never went back to Sunday school?"

"Not to church either."

"That couldn't have sat well with Brooke."

"What did she care? She had all her chubby little angels to keep her company."

"Cherubim."

"What's that?"

"Chubby little angels."

"Oh. What's jasper?"

"A green gemstone much prized in the ancient world."

"And always thought my cousin was named after a gay contemporary painter."

"Another expressionist?"

"No, quite the opposite. Johns strives to hide his ego beneath optical tricks and cultural symbols." She grabbed Leah's coat sleeve and gently led her the few yards to the exhibit's lone painting by Jasper Johns, a monochromatic display of dark cubes and angular lines. "Rather than trying to project his will and life force, he plants his painting like a seed inside you, to grow into whatever you and it deem appropriate. He said 'to view a painting is one thing, to interpret it quite another'."

Leah smiled at her niece, startled by her learning but even more impressed by her passion for her design vocation. Then she looked at the painting. "I prefer walls of jasper."

Jodie shrugged. "Suit yourself. But I'll still think of my cousin as named after a gay neo-dadaist."

"What's that?"

"Don't even get me started," Jodie said over her shoulder as she headed for the museum's atrium and the exit beyond.

Leah lingered in front of the dark painting for just an instant before following two strides behind.

Back at the hotel they stopped at the front desk before heading up to the room. That morning Leah had made dinner reservations at the hotel's main restaurant titled simply The Veranda, a large and bright room off the main lobby decorated in an Edwardian theme. She stopped now to check if there was a dress code for dinner at the restaurant.

"Business attire or nicer requested for dinner," the young woman said in a well-rehearsed monotone.

"Business attire," Leah repeated.

" _Or nicer_ ," the desk clerk said with emphasis.

Jodie glanced down over her clothing as if seeing it for the first time. "I guess jeans and a sweatshirt don't quite measure up."

The clerk frowned but said nothing.

Leah said, "We can switch reservations to The Grill"—another hotel restaurant on the lower level.

"They'll take anything," the woman said then raised her hand to her mouth. "I mean, there is no dress code."

Jodie gazed at the clerk calmly, almost serenely, more amused than offended.

"Or, if you wish," she added quickly, "You can visit our clothing boutique downstairs. They have some beautiful dresses and eveningwear. I know because I've looked."

Leah looked to Jodie. "What do you think?"

"Sure," Jodie said. "Let's try to clean up the street urchin."

The clerk blushed. "I'm sorry. That's not what I meant."

Jodie beamed a bright smile to the young woman's eyes. Something about her reminded Jodie of her sister. "I'm just teasing. I could use a new dress to fill out my spring wardrobe."

Leah nodded and said, "Thank you. We'll check out the boutique." A few seconds later as they crossed the ornate lobby toward the stairs leading to the shops, she whispered to her niece, "Do you have a spring wardrobe?"

"I'm wearing it."

"And your last dress?"

"Not counting the wedding?"

Leah nodded.

"None."

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the two enjoyed themselves as Leah draped dresses one after the other over the dressing cubicle's saloon-style doors and Jodie tried them on in rapid succession, modelling each with bare feet in the dim space in front of the doors before ducking back inside to try the next. Jodie had a perfect size 4 model's lean figure and the shop had an ample inventory of dresses in her size.

They settled on three favorites from the dozen or so she sampled. Jodie leaned toward the two in colors—salmon and turquoise—mainly because they had short sleeves that covered her shoulder tattoo. But Leah preferred a black sleeveless evening dress that beautifully set off Jodie's fair skin and, yes, her tattoo.

"You don't think they'll stare?" Jodie asked, studying the person reflected in the full-length mirror mounted between two racks of blouses.

"At someone as beautiful as you? Of course they will."

"I mean the tattoo."

"So what if they do?"

Jodie continued to gaze into the mirror, as if looking at a stranger.

Leah added. "I packed a black shawl you can borrow, in case the evening's cool."

Jodie nodded. "That'll be good."

That evening in the lavish dining room tended by waiters in tuxedos and wearing white gloves, Jodie was stunning in her black dress with her dark hair pinned up on her head by Leah to show off her graceful long neck. She kept the shawl draped across her shoulders as she walked the length of the large room with an insouciant confidence and sat primly on the cushioned chair that the maître d' slid gently under her. Though there weren't many in the restaurant on this weeknight, Leah noted with pride that everyone there did look up and stare at the striking woman crossing the room. She couldn't help but think of the younger Brooke, though that Brooke never wore an evening dress or sat in such a dining room. There was that same devil-may-care haughtiness and magnetism. Where had Jodie kept it hid all these years?

After communicating their choices for each of the five courses from the prix-fix menu to their waiter named Royster ("Not to be confused with rooster"), a gentle and dignified black man with snow-white hair, Leah looked across the table sparkling with its crystal and gleaming silver and asked, "So which are you?"

Jodie said, "I'm innocent" with a sly grin then added "Which 'which' are your referring to?"

"Of the modern paintings—the one that reaches out and grabs you or the one brooding behind the surface of the canvas?"

"Pollock or Johns?"

"Yes."

Jodie donned a provocative air of mystery. "Which do you think?"

Leah thought to herself that at just that moment—with the shawl just starting to fall off her tattooed shoulder, with the striking contrast between the dark dress and her fair skin, and with her confident but enigmatic expression—her niece would make a marvelously complex subject for the right portrait painter: a highly skilled and realist artist, no room for abstraction here. Though she wasn't exactly sure how to respond to this new and gently ironic Jodie, she responded as she always had to Jodie's queries—with unvarnished honesty. "I always thought the one brooding behind her surface, but just now I'm not so sure."

"Why the change?" Jodie asked, holding her cool aloofness a little longer.

Leah paused as the wine steward brought the bottle of champagne she'd requested and patiently went through his routine of showing her the unopened bottle, uncorking it with the always tense and viscerally exciting _pop!_ , pouring her a small but very fizzy sample in the tall tulip-shaped flute, and nodding stone-faced to her smile of approval before pouring a glass for Jodie, the bubbles almost but not quite running over the rim, then topping off Leah's partially full glass. Immediately after the steward set the bottle in its silver ice bath and draped the neck with a napkin then silently disappeared, Royster showed up with their first courses—paper-thin smoked salmon for Leah and chick-pea croquettes with a chipotle dipping sauce for Jodie.

After Royster departed, Leah raised her champagne glass. "To expressionism."

Jodie laughed as she tapped her aunt's glass over the candles at the center of their table. "I thought you didn't like abstract art."

"I'm coming around. I've got a good tutor."

In the pause between their second course—pasta putanesca for Leah, pasta primavera for Jodie—and entrée—pine-nut encrusted grouper for Leah, grilled Portobello mushroom "steak" for Jodie—Jodie asked, "Do you remember when I showed up on your doorstep when I was twelve?"

Leah laughed. "And said nonchalantly 'I just happened to be in town so I decided to stop by' even though it was ten o'clock at night and you were soaked from walking in the rain and I had no idea you were coming?"

"Yeah, that time."

"No, I don't remember," Leah teased.

"You never asked how I got there."

"I figured you'd tell me what I needed to know."

"I'd bought a ticket for LA but got scared a few hours into the trip. So when the bus stopped in Atlanta, I got off and walked to your house."

"I assumed it was something like that."

"You never scolded me or lectured me."

"What good would that have done?"

"And Mom?"

"If she was missing you, I would've been the first one she called."

"She never knew. She thought I was spending the weekend at Jennifer's."

"I dried you off and put you to bed."

"We went to the zoo the next day, then the arcade."

"I put you back on the bus on Sunday morning."

"I cried all the way home. I wanted to stay with you and Uncle Whit."

"I called Brooke that night and at the end of the conversation asked to speak to my favorite niece. She yelled for you to pick up the line and we talked for an hour but never once mentioned your unplanned visit—talked about school and boys and your new interest in drawing."

"It was like we both pretended it hadn't happened."

"I was so sad after I hung up. I told Whitfield I wanted a child. Jasper was born about a year later."

"Because of my visit?"

"I guess. We'd talked about having children before then, but I wasn't certain till that weekend."

"And me?"

"I was worried about you Jodie, at times even terrified. Jasper helped distract me from those fears once he came—had enough to worry about with him. And I made sure to keep in touch and remind you that you were always welcome in our house. But I'd learned from growing up with Brooke that you couldn't force someone to change. You could only be there to help out when called upon."

"Why didn't Mom take that attitude?"

"She had her hands full."

"Yeah, I know—the Boy Scout troop and mascot."

"And don't forget Dave," Leah said with a laugh.

"But what about before then, when it might have made a difference."

"I figured you hardly remembered those days. You were so young."

"I remember being left with you and Grandma a lot. I remember wondering why Mom went out so much."

Leah sighed. "That was a tough time for Brooke. She'd lost her dream and her pride. She was starting over."

"Except for the one little loose end named Jodie."

"I'm sorry if you felt neglected or confused. If it helps, I can say in all honesty you were the most loved child I've ever known."

"Except by the one whose love I needed."

"Jodie, cut your mom some slack. She did the best she could with a bad situation, and she rebuilt her life."

"She caused the bad situation. And she abandoned Dad."

Leah hadn't thought about Onion for years. "Do you still see him?"

"Every summer."

"How's he doing?"

"Not good. Island sickness."

"What's that?"

"Alcoholism."

"Is he alone?"

Jodie shook her head. Her face had lost its animation some minutes earlier, but now it went slack in sadness and regret. "He remarried, but she's not a lot of help. His parents are still alive, but his dad is worse off than him."

"I'm sorry."

"Does he know about Mom?"

"I don't know. Brooke never mentions him."

"I don't think they've talked since I moved out of the house and she stopped coordinating my summer visits."

"Would he want to know?"

"He's still in love with her."

"He says that?"

"No, but I can tell. You should see his face when he talks about the summer before I came along."

"That was a long time ago."

"Not to him."

"Are you going to tell him about Brooke's cancer?"

"Nobody else will."

"How?"

"I need to tell him in person. And I need to tell him before there's another crisis and it's too late."

Leah nodded. "Can I help?"

Jodie thought for a minute. "How far out of your way is it to drop me at the ferry slip?"

"Not that far," Leah said (actually, it was the better part of a day's drive).

"I think I should go and see him."

"I thought you had a full slate at work."

Jodie grinned sheepishly. "That might have been a little fib."

"No need to rush back?"

"I was working as a stage hand between design gigs. I told them I needed some time off and they hired a replacement the next day. I was looking for an excuse to go back to Seattle anyway."

"I take that to mean you don't have a return flight booked."

Jodie laughed. "You're so twentieth century, Leah. Nowadays you book your flight in the back seat of the cab—"

"Or Uber car," Leah interjected.

Jodie nodded then continued. "—on the way to the airport."

"And if the flights to your destination are all full?"

Jodie shrugged. "You'll be surprised how comfortable three airport seats can be, if you get your legs turned just right."

Leah shook her head, trying hard to keep the image of her niece sleeping alone in an empty airport terminal from lodging in her mind. "So you want to go see your father?"

"I think I need to," Jodie said, suddenly looking older and more responsible than at any time in Leah's presence.

"When?"

"Tomorrow?" she asked with a hint of apology. She knew Leah had booked their room through tomorrow night.

"O.K." Leah said. "We'll tell the front desk on our way back to the room and check the map for the best route between here and the ferry."

"The phone will give us the directions," Jodie said, her voice regaining its earlier lilt. "Do I need to teach you everything?"

Leah managed a grin and said, "Apparently" but was already beginning to miss her newfound niece.

Despite Jodie's suggestion, Leah insisted on getting the road atlas she carried in the trunk of the car "to verify the Internet directions."

Jodie rolled her eyes in her best recollection of adolescent petulance then burst into laughter to show Leah she was just teasing.

So after stopping by the front desk (attended by a new clerk—a handsome thirty-something man who eyed Jodie with keen but polite approval) to cancel their reservations for tomorrow night, they walked out to the parking garage to retrieve the atlas. On the way back Leah pointed toward a bench in the garden adjoining the entry circle, and the two sat for a few minutes in the still warm spring twilight.

Staring across the low rooftops to the rust-colored line that marked the earlier sunset fading now to mauve then navy then black where the evening star—surly a planet, almost certainly Venus—glowed bright, they felt in unison the wave of the recent past break over them—not just the delicious and elegantly served lavish meal or their full day or the full trip here, but the entire previous ten days' mix of high emotion, dark fear, and subtle affirmations since Leah had stood her first overnight watch and Jodie had initiated that transcontinental text exchange. The still unfolding complexity of that experience—risks, both imposed and accepted, survived; rewards garnered and stored—combined with the all that rich food and the champagne left them in a sated daze. Leah knew she was happier than she'd been for years, maybe since Jasper's birth. And she would've been content to sit there for minutes or hours in silent thanks, till the world did what it always did and pushed her forward.

But Jodie wasn't nearly so reticent. "So did I pass?"

"Pass what?"

"My put-on-a-dress-and-act-ladylike-in-a-fancy-restaurant trial."

"With flying colors! You were the most stunning person in the restaurant. Brooke would've been so proud."

Jodie looked back toward the distant horizon, now almost completely black. "I doubt I could've done it for Mom." She added after a few seconds, "Don't ask me why."

"But now?"

"Too soon to tell. Check back in a few days."

"Hold on to the dress," Leah said.

"And the shawl?" she asked. It again draped her shoulders in the cooling night.

"Keep the shawl. But in case you're wondering, I think you're prettier without it."

"More Jodie."

Leah's silence was taken as affirmation by both.

Leah had planned a daytrip to Williamsburg and Jamestown, about an hour east of Richmond, for their last day in Virginia. On checking her trusted road atlas when they got back to the room, she discovered that the most direct route from Richmond to the ferry embarkation terminal for Shawnituck (as she recalled, a two-room modular building next to a tire-cushioned dock carved out of the otherwise unspoiled vast coastal marshes) took them directly past the museum and excavations at the Jamestown Settlement. She checked the distances and did a little math. "If we get an early start," she told Jodie, "we can take a quick tour of Jamestown and still get you to the three o'clock ferry with time to spare." She'd spontaneously unlocked the ferry schedule from some tiny compartment in her brain and was pleased to have her memory confirmed by the _Ferry Schedule_ box to the side of her road map (who needs those stupid smartphones, anyway?).

Jodie said, "How early?"

"Nine?"

Jodie laughed. "No problem. I thought maybe you were talking about five or something."

Leah shrieked. "I'd be more useless than you at that hour."

"We'd both be lost."

"Together."

So they settled on an itinerary and rough schedule. Jodie confirmed her plans with a series of text messages to her step-mom Stephanie on Shawnituck. Leah rounded out her revised schedule with a decision to ask her parents if she could stop and spend the night. It was either that or a lonely motel somewhere along the coast, as the drive from the ferry to Brooke's house would've had her arriving around midnight—maybe not too late for Brooke under normal conditions but too late in her current recuperation, and in any case too much night-time driving for Leah.

Without pausing to consider her choice, she pulled up her parents' number from her phone's directory and hit _send_. In the few seconds it took for the phone to make the connection and the line at the far end to pass through three familiar purrs, a wave of anxiety passed over her as she couldn't decide if she were more frightened of a night with her faltering parents or a night alone in some anonymous motel. Her thumb moved to end the call. Her hand, her whole body, was shaking where she sat on the side of the bed. She dropped the phone in her lap. She looked around and was glad to confirm that Jodie was in the bathroom, couldn't see her in this unprecedented condition. She took several deep breaths to try to calm her pounding heart and ease her shaking.

Suddenly her phone lit up, both vibrating and ringing in her lap like a live creature. She jumped at the triple assault to her senses. The words _Mom-Home_ broadcast by the phone's screen calmed her only slightly. She picked up the phone after several rings, as much to quell its chaos as speak to her mother. "Hi, Momma. I worried I was calling too late, so I hung up."

"You know I don't close an eye till the eleven o'clock news signs off, dear. It's getting to the phone that's a little slower these days." Her mother's voice was as clear and sharp as ever.

"Sorry to make you get up."

"Don't be silly, dear. I'd walk from here to Atlanta if it meant hearing your voice—might take me awhile, though."

"Thanks, Momma. How's Father?"

"Snoring in his chair with the TV blaring. Can't say which is louder. Can you?" She held the phone out to the room.

Leah heard only an ambient murmur and static.

"See?" Momma said.

"Sounds normal to me."

"He is, more or less," her mother said, with the briefest of pauses before continuing. "Is something wrong with Brooke?"

"She sounded fine when I talked to her this morning."

"Jodie?"

Leah laughed. "She's great, Momma. We're still here in Richmond. We've had a great visit."

"Then why are you calling, dear?"

"I'm going to drop Jodie at the Shawnituck ferry tomorrow afternoon and was wondering if I could stop and see you and Father, spend one night before heading back to Atlanta via Brooke and Dave's."

"That would be wonderful, Leah. I felt we hardly talked at the hospital."

"I know, Momma. Me too. I look forward to spending time under less hectic conditions. I should be there around dark tomorrow."

"I'll save you a plate. I'd say we'd wait, but I believe your father would perish if he didn't get his supper at exactly six o'clock."

"That's alright, Momma. I can grab a bite on the road."

"There will be a plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and butterbeans warm in the oven when you arrive. The cornbread I'll heat up once you get here."

"O.K." Leah laughed. "Thank you."

"Are you alright?" her mother asked.

"I'm fine, Momma. Couldn't be better. I'll see you tomorrow."

"That's good."

"I love you."

"I love you too, Leah."

Leah ended the call and released a long slow sigh. Her shaking had ended anyway but was replaced by a vague sadness. Neither the anxiety nor the melancholy were familiar emotions. What was going on with her?

Suddenly the bed quaked violently as Jodie jumped on the middle and gave her aunt an impassioned hug from behind. "Thank you so much, Leah. You're the best third mom a girl could ever ask for." She kissed Leah's cheek.

Jodie's face felt soft and smelled of moisturizing cream. Her hair, released from its pins, flared out around Leah's head in the soft feathered curls that Leah had snuggled endlessly when Jodie was a toddler. Leah's vulnerable emotions didn't know if this hug marked a beginning or an end, but her heart didn't care. She bowed her head to kiss her niece's beautiful long fingers loosely twined at her chest.

12

They arrived at the Jamestown Settlement mid-morning the following day under cloudy and threatening skies but no rain yet. They did a brisk walking tour of some of the Settlement's outdoor exhibits but skipped the museum and recreated sets for lack of time. They did pause above the site of the original fort and looked at that frail and vulnerable outpost set against the wide and spring-swollen James River flowing past in the background.

"How did they survive?" Jodie wondered aloud.

"Most didn't," Leah said.

On the way back to the car, they paused in front of the tall bronze Pocahontas statue set on its rough stone platform. Jodie took the cue to step up beside the statue and mimic the arms-forward, hands-open gesture of welcome and assurance from the Indian princess with surprisingly European features. Leah snapped a photo of the two princesses—one flesh, one oxidized metal—with her cellphone then proceeded to relate a thumbnail history of the brief life of this human bridge between two cultures.

"She was one of many children of the native chief Powhatan. At the age of thirteen she intervened to prevent the execution of the captured English settler John Smith. She herself was later captured and held for ransom by the settlers. During her captivity, she was baptized and married John Rolfe. She bore him a son. The family sailed to England where she was greeted as something of a celebrity, either as a princess or as a curiosity or maybe both. She even had an audience with King James. She died at the age of twenty-two early in the voyage to return to her native land." Leah had spoken this summary to the statue in a reverent tone, recalling the facts from a teenage fascination with the tragic heroine's short life. She'd visited Jamestown then, with her high school history teacher Miss Peacock, and even had a snapshot taken by Miss Peacock of her standing beside this very statue, though at the time it was on a taller granite pedestal and located opposite a statue of John Smith positioned outside the village's brick church.

She turned to Jodie, who had descended from her perch and stood now next to her. "Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away by the past," Leah said.

"It's sad."

Leah laughed. "My story or hers?"

"She didn't belong anywhere."

Leah's face shed its mirth. She looked again up at the statue, Pocahontas's far-seeing gaze backed by gray clouds. "She belonged where she was placed."

"At the crossroads of history?"

"In her life."

Jodie shrugged. "Guess you can say that about all of us."

They drove onto the small ferry that carried them across the James River. They stayed in their seats for the short trip, rocking from side to side as the car and the boat beneath it vibrated in the river's white-capped chop.

Ashore on the far side, they headed east through flat muddy fields planted to soybeans and brown marshes still clinging to winter's dormancy. Unlike three days earlier, Jodie was wide awake and talkative during the drive. She told Leah how she was looking forward to her return to Seattle, how her long-time housemate Andrea had held her room despite her uncertain return, how there were several productions in the early planning stages and she had the inside track on set design for each. "If it all works out, I might even have to hire some employees. Can you imagine that, Leah? Me a boss!"

Leah nodded. "I can imagine it quite easily."

"Would you want to work for me?"

Leah thought a minute then said, "Your passion would be worth the price of your expectations."

Jodie laughed. "Ever the diplomat."

"Just telling the truth," she said, then added, "But make sure you hire someone who shares your passion."

"Need to get the jobs first."

"Do you need money to help tide you over?"

"I'm O.K."

"You've missed a lot of work, and now this travel and the move back."

"Thanks, Leah. But I'll be fine. I live cheap and Dave has me well cared for."

"Really?"

Jodie laughed. "How do you think I've survived all these years? Not on a stagehand's wages. I think Dave is trying to make up for all those fights, and I'm glad to let him."

"That's generous."

"Me or him?" Jodie said, holding her straight face just long enough to illicit a frown from Leah before saying, "I'm joking. I thank Dave regularly with text photos showing what his funding has provided—street signs in LA, the view from my room at the boarding house, my plate before and after a sushi meal. He loves it, says I'm the best bargain in the world."

"Does Brooke know?"

"I assume, but he doesn't say."

"And you won't tell."

"That's between him and Mom."

Several hours later, they arrived at the coastal ferry station. Leah remembered it as a two-room modular house; but it had grown to a large clapboard-sided Visitor's Center complete with a gift shop (selling what?), vending machines, a sizable display of maps and tourist info, and bathrooms that were spacious and sort of clean. Outside were rockers lined up on a veranda overlooking the dunes leading to the beach and several picnic tables, all empty this day as the rain that had held off for most of their trip now fell in slow but steady determination.

Leah stood at the Center's windows looking out on the empty ferry dock. Despite the expansion of facilities, for some reason the station looked smaller and much grayer than on her last visit, a round-trip pass in the spring—about this time of year—to spend a week on the island with Brooke and Onion and their new-born baby Jodie Michelle. She remembered that trip as being a jumble of unprecedented experiences—the beach in the spring (cold and blustery for most of that visit), her sister as a housewife, her sister as a mother, learning how to change a diaper. But mainly she remembered her sister's nascent discontent, already pushing back against the walls closing around her—her moody husband, her nosy in-laws, her unchanging routines. The long gray island winter only briefly lightened by the springtime birth of her daughter (at a mainland hospital) now threatened to become a gray island summer—at a beach no less!—and how could she bear that? She had endlessly questioned Leah about her semester just ended and her upcoming trip to Europe as part of her college's summer program abroad. Leah never forgot the image of Brooke standing on the ferry dock as she departed for the mainland, her newborn budding from her hip, waving in forlorn misery, as if sentenced to a lifetime in exile. That day had been sunny and warmer but did little to lift Brooke's spirits or Leah's concern.

Jodie came up from behind, her pedestrian's ticket in hand. "Looks like it'll be a choppy crossing," she said.

"You want to wait for calmer weather? Tomorrow is supposed to be clear."

Jodie laughed. "Oh, this is nothing. On at least three occasions I was on the last passage before they suspended service. Once a car shifted off its blocks and slammed into the pickup in front of it. The crew got everyone out of their vehicles and in the passenger lounge then handed out life preservers and made sure we all had them properly fastened. Then the lights went out. Passengers, and not just kids, were puking everywhere. The toilet was overflowing. It smelled horrible. One of the crew members was my Uncle Mike and he pulled me aside and said that if we ran aground to stay near him no matter what."

"So what happened?"

"We made it across and docked and I stayed afterwards and helped Uncle Mike and Dad clean up the vomit and the broken taillight from the pickup. They joked about being able to tell what each person had for lunch from their leavings on the floor."

"Gallows humor."

"Island endurance."

"How old were you?"

"About eight."

Leah shook her head—the things she didn't know about her niece.

"So this crossing should be a piece of cake," Jodie said as the rain started to fall harder.

Leah felt a hole in the pit of her stomach. She'd never worried about Jodie before. Why now? "Your father will be waiting on the other side?"

She nodded. "Probably sharing a nip in the harbor master's office."

"How will you get to the airport for your flight to Seattle?"

"I'll catch a ride with someone driving up that way, or maybe even on a plane. I've done that a few times too—skipped the ferry all together and flown directly to the airport." She leaned over and hugged her aunt. "Don't worry. I'll be fine."

Leah peered into the rain. Just then a faint light rose out of the gray haze. Ever so slowly the silhouette of the ferry formed below it, pushing landward through the storm. Two foghorn blasts penetrated the walls of the building.

They watched in silence, as if mesmerized, the bustle of activity beyond the window as tenders in yellow rain gear directed the big boat into its tire-cushioned slip with elaborate gestures and soundless shouts. Then they raised the dock's ramp and unchained the ferry's gate and directed the handful of cars and SUVs off the boat and toward the exit road, onward to their lives inland.

After just a few minutes of straightening up the ferry's deck and checking the lounge, the dock master waved toward the Visitor's Center to begin loading, pedestrians and bikes first.

"That's you," the ticket seller said from her desk to Jodie, the only paying pedestrian on this passage.

"That's me," Jodie said, barely a whisper breaking their long silence. She turned to Leah. "I guess this is good-bye for now."

Leah grinned tight-lipped. "I'll walk out with you."

"It's pouring."

"Got to go out anyway to get to the car."

Jodie shrugged then opened the door and stepped out onto the veranda, followed closely by Leah. The rain and the wind and the sea and the ferry's diesel engines and the engines cranking up and down the line of waiting vehicles all combined to create a near-deafening roar after the stillness of the indoors. Jodie paused at the top of the steps leading to the path to the dock and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head. Leah unfurled her black umbrella. Then together they stepped out into the midst of the storm.

13

Jodie approached her father from behind but decided she'd hold off speaking until she was abreast him and he could see who it was if he failed to recognize the voice. She reached that destination but still held off speaking for several seconds as she stared out at the gray angry ocean in the middle distance, its chaos of flickering white caps like a swirl of fireflies in the deepening dusk. On the walk out, the atmospheric water—falling or suspended at a density somewhere between a heavy mist and a light rain—had soaked through her windbreaker's hood and was now trickling through her hair and down behind her ears. It was cold but somehow comforting to be surrounded by this much moisture, almost like a fish—one with the water.

"Steph told me I'd find you out here," she said finally, without looking down.

Her father was seated on the wet sand, perfectly centered between and hidden by three tall dunes that allowed only one viewing line—that of the unblemished ocean some fifty yards distant beyond a sloping beach that was invisible beyond the bowl of sand that surrounded him. "The Missus doesn't know this place exists," he said, his deep voice in centuries-old Elizabethan accent surprisingly audible above, or below, the wind and the surf and the drizzle.

Jodie couldn't help but grin. She'd never in her whole life been able to sneak a lie past her father. He called her out on every one, from the most harmless fib—"Aunty June said I could pick one daisy for my hair"—to the gravest of deceits—"I heard the tire blow before the Jeep went into the creek." As a child and adolescent, she spent so much time lying on the mainland that it took several days of Dad's lie-busting each summer for her to break the habit. Now she lied a lot less and tended to subconsciously shed the habit soon as she hit the island's ferry dock. But every so often one still slipped out in his presence, particularly when she was anxious or upset.

Her stepmother had met her at the ferry station and driven her back to their house on the sound side. Jodie had not asked about her father at the station or on the ride, hoping without much conviction that Stephanie would volunteer an explanation for Dad's absence—he'd been called in to cover for a sick seaman's mate or was in the middle of tinkering with the old Cadillac he kept under the carport. But when they arrived to an empty house, Jodie had growled with a familiar anger that had been absent the past few days, "Where's Dad?"

Stephanie had shrugged, her body's gesture of resignation tempered by her face's scowl.

"You don't know?" Jodie shouted.

"The only time I know is if he's beside me in bed snoring, and even that's hit or miss these days."

Jodie came close to slapping her stepmother then. They had a history dating to an early morning shouting match at Mick's Tavern following her father's accidental announcement that he and Stephanie had been married for six months. Though they'd been living together for over a year, Jodie had secretly hoped this female interloper would one day disappear as quickly as she'd appeared. That was fifteen years ago.

But Jodie reined in her impulse to violence. "I'll find him," she said with disgust bordering on contempt. She dropped her canvas duffel on the boot bench, grabbed her resident windbreaker off the hook in the entry alcove, and headed out into the dimming afternoon.

Behind her, Stephanie yelled, "Good luck!"

She knew where her father was. She'd discovered his private hiding place the summer she was nine when he was still living alone with a revolving door's assemblage of island tarts (some married, others not) sharing his bed and sometimes his cottage but always banished the day she arrived for her summer visit until the day she left. Over dinner the first night of that summer's visit, she'd told him what Mom had told her on the drive out to the ferry that morning, that she'd soon have a half-sister—Brooke was pregnant (again) and had just heard back on the sex of the baby from a test they'd done. Her father had grown unusually sullen (for then) at this news; and, following dessert of a big bowl of homemade banana pudding (from Miss Lil, her grandmother), he told her to go "say hey" to Maw and Pap (Miss Lil and her husband Stuart, her grandparents living next door) "while I tend to some business." She'd said, "O.K." and headed out the door to her grandparents but veered off the path beyond the twisted live oak and waited till her father emerged from the house and followed him at a discreet distance to his hiding place.

And she'd followed him off and on every year thereafter till his drinking ramped up after she moved to the west coast and she'd stopped—partly out of respect for his privacy and partly because she was afraid what she might see if she followed. She was certain he knew of her discovery, thought she saw him smiling her way a few times in those early years. But he'd never invited her to join him, and she'd never intruded.

Until tonight. She looked down at him from where she stood. He had on worn jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and an open canvas coat. His head was uncovered, his hair wet, making his bald spot on the top more apparent; and his feet were bare and ghostly white where they protruded from the damp denim. At her approach, he'd slid the bottle encased in the sodden paper bag partway beneath his raised knees. She saw the bottle had its open mouth pointed upward, either empty already or some saved for later. She figured it was already empty or he'd have found a way to cap it. The sight produced a spasm of grief within that she'd not have thought possible a month ago. "But I've known," she said, barely a whisper.

He nodded and said "Good" without looking up.

She sat beside him. The sand was shockingly cold. She wanted to lean into him, as much in hopes of warmth as to maybe bring him a little. But something halted her. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them to conserve what little body heat she still had. She lay her chin against her cupped hands and blew lightly into them. She was glad she still had on her hiking boots and couldn't imagine what it would be like to be barefoot. "I missed you at the ferry station."

"Me too," he said.

She laughed. "You missed me or you missed yourself."

"I couldn't do it."

"What?"

"Run to meet the bad news you're bringing."

"What bad news?"

"You tell me."

Jodie sighed. To her ears, the sound exactly matched the wind's. Maybe it was the wind, pushing in. "Mom has pancreatic cancer."

"See!" he said, his voice animated at last—a victory for his foretelling.

"She almost died last week from an experimental treatment but didn't."

"Matter of time."

"For all of us, Dad."

"For some not soon enough."

She understood just then with a clarity as if the clouds had parted and a brand new sun appeared in the east twelve hours early though in fact the grayness held tight and low as before—she understood then the full weight her father had lived under out here on the island since the day Brooke had left. And she also realized that weight had been inevitable, regardless of her mother's, or her, actions.

She reached out blindly to find her father's near hand. It was balled in a tight fist and pushed deep into the damp sand, to the hard-packed gravel layer below. He didn't uncoil it at her touch, so she covered it best she could.

He stood suddenly and turned toward the island. "The Missus will have dinner waitin'," he said as he rose toward the cleft in the dunes.

Jodie took two deep breaths, looked one more time toward the sound of the ocean, now blended into the universal grayness of night (no fireflies this glance), then stood and brushed off her damp jeans. She bent and picked up the bottle—empty, as she'd guessed—before following her father's trail.

14

The rain gradually tapered off as Leah navigated the sedan through the marshes deserted by all except the occasional long-legged white egrets dutifully probing the mud flats, and had stopped entirely by the time she reached civilization in the form of the four-lane highway flanked by the obligatory used-car dealerships, fast-food joints, and pawn shops. Ahead of her on the western horizon, a thin line of blue sky appeared, waiting to be turned golden by the sun still hid by thick clouds. She took that as a promising sign for her journey and her destination. But just as quickly she felt a twinge of anxiety for Jodie, by now midway across the choppy sound on her lurching top-heavy ferry, bound for an even more perilous homecoming of sorts. She missed her niece desperately and instinctively glanced in the rearview mirror, wanting—indeed, willing—Jodie's image to materialize out of the bank of solid rain clouds rising above the trailing cars. Instead, she spotted there a rainbow, brilliant against the slate gray background. She grinned broadly, felt Jodie's presence in the car and in her heart.

But all of that hope and strength had disappeared by the time she pulled into her parents' drive in the tidy subdivision of single-story retirement cottages. The sky had continued to clear from the west, was now one-third blue; and the sun had found its way out from behind the clouds to light the glittering yard and Father's neat rose garden—the perfectly pruned canes putting out the first tentative green shoots—along the drive. She saw Momma standing at the kitchen window washing their dinner dishes—"Why use a dishwasher when God gave me these capable hands?" They each smiled and waved through the two layers of glass and the intervening spring evening.

By the time Leah had reached the carport's side entrance, Momma had finished her dishes and was standing at the open inside door with a dish towel over her shoulder and one hand on the walker she'd set to the side. She was dressed primly (as ever) in pressed black slacks and a floral print blouse. Her hair was still entirely black (with the help of the hairdresser) and neatly permed. She let go of the walker only after Leah had opened the storm door and extended both arms to embrace her. Standing one step below on the concrete, Leah's head was at Momma's height and their arms interlocked naturally—Leah's below around Momma's chest, Momma's above around Leah's neck. Even so, Momma's body felt very slight and frail, seemed little more than brittle bones and shrinking muscle tissue. As they slowly separated after about ten seconds, Momma placed her normal welcome kiss squarely on Leah's forehead. Despite knowing the kiss was coming, the gesture wrenched a spasm of sadness from the pit of Leah's stomach and tears sprung to her eyes such that she looked down and tried to blink the drops away as Momma stood upright and again grabbed the walker.

Leah said, "Let me get my bag from the car" without looking up, and turned away. Though she knew it was rude, the choice was a better option than letting Momma see her face at just that instant.

When she returned to the doorway her eyes were dry and she had a smile willed across her features.

Momma was still standing there, now with the walker in front of her like a defensive shield and both hands gripping its handles. "Drive O.K.?"

Leah nodded.

"Jodie island-bound?"

Leah checked her watch. "Should be there by now," then wondered that she'd not got a text or call confirming the fact.

"I've never quite got used to sending her out there all alone," Momma said, gazing east in the direction of Shawnituck. "I still fear she won't come back."

Leah wasn't quite sure how literally to take her meaning. "She's thirty-five, Momma—can take care of herself."

"She could 'take care of herself' at age two. That's been my fear—that she'd choose to stay out there and there'd be nothing we could do."

"Brooke didn't." Leah meant that Brooke didn't stay on Shawnituck but briefly wondered at a different meaning—did her sister ever fear, as Momma, that her eldest daughter might fight to stay with her biological father?

"No, but Jodie might," Momma said, interrupting Leah's musing.

"Her home's on the west coast now, a lot farther than Shawnituck Island."

"But safer."

Leah wondered if that were indeed true, but understood Momma's fear. She'd never quite recovered from Brooke's non-negotiable announcement that she was pregnant (at age twenty), marrying Onion Howard, and moving (permanently, she'd said) to Shawnituck Island to live in a shack beside her husband's parents' cottage. She might as well have said she was moving to Mars as far as Momma was concerned. "Where's Father?" Leah asked.

"In the den watching the evening news. I yelled to him you'd arrived, but I doubt he heard over the TV."

Leah could hear the drone of television voices in the background. "I'll go say hi."

Momma nodded slowly then whispered, "Don't be alarmed if he seems a little confused. Today's not one of his good days."

Leah registered the wince around her mother's eyes. She suppressed an urge to bolt—turn with her bag and head for one of those sleazy flea-bag motels out on the highway—and said as calmly as she could manage, "Maybe I can cheer him up."

Momma spoke with her eyes _Cheering is not what he needs_ but said with her voice, "I'll have your dinner ready time you get done" and slowly turned with her walker.

Leah slid past soon as the doorway was clear.

After dropping her bag in the guestroom and stopping in the bathroom to pee and compose her face, she paused outside the den's doorway, closed her eyes, and slowly counted backwards from ten in her head, a habit she had from her deaf days to allow her to retreat to an always stable center. In those days, deprived of sound and willing away sight, she had nowhere to go except into herself. But tonight an advertiser's jingle from the blaring TV blocked her exit and unsettled her even more. In frustration she opened her eyes on a framed photo hanging beside the door. It was of her and Brooke, Momma and Father posed on the Bogue Beach pier when she was eight, Brooke ten. It had been taken by her brother Matt in the midst of his junior-high photography craze, just before he descended into the dark turmoil of puberty from which he never fully emerged. She was grinning serenely at the camera, Brooke had the start of a scowl across her face, ever annoyed by having to stand still and look presentable. Above them, Momma leaned naturally into Father who, ramrod straight and a foot taller than anyone else in the photo, seemed the pillar against which they all leaned. Though about as different in personality as four from the same family could be, the photo clearly showed they were also bound together, invisibly but incontrovertibly. But bound by what? Leah wondered. Love surely, as all-encompassing as the hazy sky in the background, as immoveable as the pier's staunch railing. And if so, what of that had changed? Wasn't love still binding them against all threats, the same immutable defense as then? If so, why was she so scared? She told herself she needn't be; and if she needn't be, then she told herself she wasn't. With that, she walked into the den.

She stepped between Father's recliner and the TV.

His first response was a frown of annoyance, perhaps thinking the body Momma's. But once he looked up to her face, he smiled broadly. "Hello, Sprite," he said.

She found the use of his childhood nickname for her simultaneously consoling and unsettling, then realized it was the first time she'd actually _heard_ the name. How different it felt from only seen, registered through the eyes. She recovered enough to say, "Hi, Dad," then waited a fraction of a second to see if he would stand. When he made no move, she leaned over and gave him a hug from above. The gesture was awkward and she briefly lost her balance, leaning heavily on his neck.

"Whoa, Sprite," he said, his voice loud in her left processor. He stood, lifting both of them upright without struggle. From there he pulled her face into the hollow between his neck and shoulder and patted her head softly.

She held for some long seconds on his chest, then lifted her face, kissed him on the cheek, and slowly pulled away. "It's good to see you, Dad," she said when she was again standing on her own. They waded through an uneasy pause, the news anchor's voice filling the silence, until Leah realized that Father, ever the proper gentleman, was waiting for her to sit before returning to his seat. She grinned at this formality and backed up to Momma's Queen Anne's chair at a diagonal to his recliner and sat. This freed him to fall back into his seat. As he did so, she reached out and turned down the old tube TV salvaged and somehow kept operable from their childhood home.

When she turned to face him, he said, "So tell me how school is going," speaking the words slowly and directly to her eyes and annunciating clearly. He also interspersed sign language for some of the key words.

"Dad, you don't have to sign. I can hear now."

His eyes clouded. "You can?"

She tried to laugh but the sound died in her throat. "Nearly fifteen years now."

"That's wonderful," he said, but still signing. "I'll have to tell Peg."

"Momma knows," Leah said, her voice trailing off and her eyes finding first the floor then the muted news anchor's taut but calm face. The world beyond at least was in good hands. She looked again to Father.

"So how's Brooke?" he asked, no longer signing.

Leah's heart lifted. "She's doing real well. She's home now. Dave's taking good care of her. I'm planning to stop and see her tomorrow."

Father's face was momentarily confused, but it quickly regained its long ago patient stability and determination. He stared at her calmly. "You tell your sister that whenever she gets tired of that boy, she and the baby can come stay with us." He nodded to her with paternal munificence. "Make sure she knows that, please."

Leah took a deep breath and released it slowly. Her gaze never faltered from her father's adamant stare as she said, "I'll let her know, Dad. I'm sure she will be grateful for the offer."

He nodded to her, then picked up the remote and turned up the volume on the TV.

15

Dave greeted Leah at the front door with a long hug then took her bag and moved aside for her to step into the foyer. After he'd closed the door she asked in a low voice, "How's she doing?" Before he could answer Brooke's voice emerged from the den at the far end of the house and echoed down the hall. "Whatever she's selling, tell her we don't want any."

Dave smiled and said, "I guess you know the way."

Leah nodded.

"I'll put your bag in the guestroom," he said as he moved toward the stairs.

Leah took a deep breath then headed down the hall toward the den.

She found Brooke dressed in a designer jumpsuit propped against a mountain of pillows on the plush couch. One of Momma's crocheted afghans covered her legs and feet. There was a stack of magazines and newspapers on the floor and a handful of video discs on the coffee table. The flat-screen TV mounted on the wall was on with the sound muted.

"Did you know that right here in our lovely city they are fining dogs owners who don't clean up after their pets?" Brooke asked.

"Sounds fair," Leah said.

"But did you know how they're tracking them down?"

Leah shrugged. "Surveillance cameras?"

"No! Through the DNA in the poop!"

Leah laughed.

"There are children starving in Africa and they're taking DNA samples from dog poop!"

"I'll remember if I ever get a dog."

"Ruined a pair of expensive jogging shoes last fall—didn't even try to clean off the mess. I think they're still in the boot bench. You think I can use the DNA to get a new pair of shoes?"

"Worth a try."

"How long does DNA last, anyway?"

"I read about finding dinosaur DNA in mosquitoes preserved in amber."

"Wasn't that in _Jurassic Park_?"

"Based on fact."

"That's a long time."

Leah crossed the room and knelt down next to the couch to give her sister a hug. Maybe it was her peculiar position or the mountain of pillows, but Brooke seemed especially small and slight. But her color was good and her arms and hands felt strong as they wouldn't let Leah go for several seconds before finally releasing her.

Leah rose and backed up a few steps to sit in the couch's matching plush armchair. "You look a lot better than when I last saw you."

"Got to get back on my feet. Have a trip to Tahiti to prepare for."

"What?"

"Didn't Dave tell you? We're going to Tahiti next month—got the plane tickets and our overwater bungalow reserved. All I need to do now is find a pretty bathing suit and some sexy lingerie and my wardrobe will be complete. Come to think of it, that will be my wardrobe, though I guess I need some real clothes to wear on the plane and get to the resort."

"Are you serious?"

"Have I ever lied to you?"

Leah returned a patient stare.

"I mean about my plans."

"Does your doctor know about this?"

"Doc Euphemism? Saw him yesterday. Says my counts are 'improved.' I could have told him that. Says the improvement may be 'a short-term anomaly.' Hell, being alive is a short-term anomaly. The question isn't the condition but what you do with it."

"What about the risks of such a long trip?"

"You sound like Doc Euphemism—did you go to med school? Everything is a risk, Leah! But the biggest risk is sitting around waiting to die. I've always wanted to go to Tahiti and my good husband has agreed to take me and we're going, end of discussion."

Leah nodded, silently amazed by the volcano of energy and will exploding from that mountain of throw pillows.

"I told Dave and now I'm telling you and I won't say it again—if I die out there in the Pacific, he's to bury me next to Fletcher Christian in the shade of one of those muffin-fruit trees."

"Breadfruit," Leah said.

"That's what Dave said. I'm glad you both were listening and will fulfill my wishes in the event of that improbable development. Where's Jodie?"

"And didn't Fletcher Christian flee to some other island?"

"His ghost, then, looking like Marlon Brando in a tight T-shirt. Did you pack Jodie off to the west coast?"

Leah took a deep breath. "The opposite. She's out on Shawnituck."

Brooke frowned but said, "I guess I should be glad. I was trying to figure out how to tell him."

"You hadn't said anything?"

"I haven't spoken to Onion in years. His new wife called last fall asking for Jodie's LA address so she could send a Christmas card. I politely suggested she call Jodie directly. She said 'I don't want to bother her.' I swear to God! So I said 'But it's all right to bother me?' and hung up. Can you believe that?"

"And nothing since?"

"Not even a Christmas card. Maybe Jodie got ours."

"But you aren't glad."

"Of no Christmas card?"

Leah laughed. "Of Jodie being out there."

"He deserves to know, in case something happens. And Jodie is the one to tell him. But I've always been jealous of how much slack she cuts him while resenting me for every little thing and a bunch she makes up just for good measure."

Leah silently weighed whether she wanted to wade into this morass and concluded she had to—for Brooke's sake, for Jodie's sake, and maybe for her sake most of all. "You're her mom. She's supposed to resent you."

"Since when? The other kids don't resent me. Jasper doesn't resent you. We don't resent Momma."

"And she sees her father as the victim."

"Of what?"

"Of you leaving him."

"I did it for her."

Leah stared at her sister.

"Don't give me that look. Everyone thinks I left Onion and Shawnituck for myself, to chase some glamorous life. But that's bullshit. I would've been happy to wait my tables at The Lighthouse and lounge on the beach on my days off and smoke dope every night and fuck Onion's brains out after dark. It was my dream, remember? I was living it!"

"So what happened?"

"I woke up hung over one morning in the dead of winter, one of those cold foggy mornings that seemed all there was that winter, and looked at that bright-eyed little girl standing up in her crib that was so close in that small room I could reach out and touch it from where I lay and thought to myself— _This is no way for a little girl to grow up._ "

"You could've changed the rules and still stayed married."

"No, Leah, I couldn't. That was the revelation—that Shawnituck was making me into its image, not vice versa. And while it's one thing for me to live with that legacy, it's quite another to impose it on your daughter."

"So instead you turned her early childhood into a period of transition and upheaval."

"Better to wait till she's older? Try dragging a kid away then."

"Did you ever tell this to Jodie?"

"Every day back then—'Don't worry, Precious; Momma's going to find us a better life.' And she seemed excited by the change and all the attention she got from you and Momma and Father. It was an adventure for her."

"Till you went back to school and started dating."

"I told you, Leah—I was trying to make a better life for her, one with opportunities. It wasn't going to happen living out of my old room in my parents' house."

"You understand she might not see it exactly that way?"

"I understand that I found the man of my dreams that could give us the life I'd been looking for—one of opportunity and flexibility and freedom." She paused to look around the room and to the house beyond, as if it affirmed her search and her choice made so long ago. "I'd done what I'd set out to do."

"For Jodie?"

"Yes, for Jodie. And for me too, as it turned out. Did Jodie want a mother that was stifled, numbing her frustrations with vodka? What kind of life would that have been?"

"For you or for her?"

"For both of us, Leah! You can't separate the two!"

"But somehow you did." The words just spilled out; but after she'd spoken them, Leah instantly realized it was the harshest thing she'd ever said to her sister.

"No, Leah—somehow she did. She never gave Dave a chance. She never accepted our new life."

"She was five years old when you remarried."

"Old enough to love her new father."

"She could only see your love being transferred to him, then to her new brothers and sister."

"It was for her sake!"

"She was five years old!"

"Not her whole life, Leah!"

"In that way, maybe."

"Then maybe it's time for her to grow up!"

Leah fell silent as Dave rounded the corner and entered the den carrying a silver tray with a bone china teapot and two cups and some crumpets, butter, and jam on a platter.

"Perfect timing, dear," Brooke said. "We were just finishing our girl talk."

"Need some refreshment after your exertions?"

"I do, actually. How about you, Leah?"

Leah nodded. She was wondering how much Dave had heard then realized it didn't matter. He had as much right to know as anyone, whatever it was they'd said or meant.

16

Brooke's health continued to improve over the next several weeks. She put on weight she'd lost months ago, and her color and stamina grew by the day. Her doctors weren't quite sure why she was doing so well. Her ICU team suggested the massive doses of antibiotics may have healed hidden infections that were straining her already strained body. Her oncologist wondered if the early doses of the test drug had stimulated her immune system and prescribed tests and bloodwork to document his theory. Brooke declined all additional testing till her return from their trip, lest those tests cause side effects or provide information that might dissuade her from going. Leah, in her frequent phone check-ins, had her own certain if unprovable explanation for Brooke's amazing reversal—she'd decided to do it, and set the trip as a near-term goal to justify all the effort.

Whatever the reasons, an apparently healthy and beaming Brooke dressed in a canary sundress and wearing the sun bonnet Jodie had sent her from the trip to Richmond as a talisman of bon voyage, and accompanied by the dutiful Dave weighed down with carryon shoulder bags, waved excitedly as the two of them paused before entering the jet way for their flight to San Francisco connecting to Bora Bora on the video taken by Davey and sent as an e-mail attachment to all the family. That video marked the end to direct contact with Brooke for the duration of their twenty-day trip, as she forbade cellphone communication—"Do you know what they want to charge per minute?"—and refused to take a laptop or buy computer minutes—"When I'm at the world's most beautiful beach, I'm _only_ at the beach!" When one of the boys asked, "How will we know you arrived safely?" Brooke replied, "We'll send you a postcard."

So the family in general, and Leah, Jodie, and Penni in particular, were excused from active worry over Brooke's health and prognosis. With her out of contact half a world away, they returned their attention to lives they'd suspended, or more or less so, since their Easter weekend gathering on Bogue Beach at the cottage at the end of the strand with its widow's walk view over land and sea.

Normal Lives

Penni lay on her back on the plush grass-green (and all natural fiber) carpet of the nursery staring up at the walls she'd painted herself with the help of stencil kits bought over the Internet. The walls were a unified panorama of an evergreen forest merging into deciduous woods thinning to a broad open meadow rolling down to a pond in the middle distance on the wall where the crib would be. She'd add the animals later. The ceiling above had been pure azure blue with a few fluffy white clouds floating harmlessly past. But on finishing the sky two weeks ago, she'd realized it wasn't broad enough in scope for her child to come. So she'd searched high and low for a kit that would make it something more, make it a bigger but not threatening sky. She'd not found any such pre-packaged kit. But in her searching she'd discovered a captivating painting of a sky just before sunrise with the morning star glowing bright above a band of gold that merged into the remains of night, stars sprayed across a black background, a crescent moon setting in the west. She'd had the picture electronically enlarged to the size of the ceiling and laid out on a grid of two-foot square tracings. Throughout the process she frequently found herself thinking of Jodie and wishing she had her sister's artistic talent. There were a few times when she wished Jodie was there to help in the painting and share in the excitement. But in those moments she would end up frowning, remembering how cruelly Jodie had greeted the news of her pregnancy. Though she appreciated Jodie's numerous attempts to undo that initial reaction, it was still what she first recalled and felt in the pit of her stomach when thinking of Jodie and the niece (or nephew) she would soon have.

But thoughts of Jodie were far from her mind as she lay on her back staring up at the artificial morning sky with the real late afternoon sun sneaking around the building across the alley and pouring through the room's lone window surrounded by the trees in full leaf of her painted woods. Growing up in an upscale development with its large houses wedged onto tiny lots, she'd had little exposure to anything that hadn't been shaped many times over by human hand and machine. Even the park where Mom sometimes drove them for "free" play had sculpted walks, manicured lawns, and leaves blown into piles and sucked up by maintenance crews almost as soon as they fell. She'd never questioned this sterilized concrete and asphalt world while growing up, nor throughout college and grad school. She'd always lived in or near cities and took for granted human dominance in and over the world. Her degree in urban planning acknowledged and affirmed that ordering. Though intellectually she knew of broader visions of order—hadn't they been required to take a full year of Natural Ecology?—she'd never felt the need to engage them.

Until she became pregnant. Now the old urban-suburban order felt artificial and restrictive. She dreaded the idea of bringing her child into an urban environment to be raised by parents locked into that tradition and constraint. She saw examples of this syndrome every day at Morningcare as mothers dressed for their narrow slots in the urban order hurriedly dropped off their similarly prepped pre-schoolers, usually rushing off without a good-bye hug or kiss. And those children would almost surely grow up like her, knowing little else, imagining nothing better.

But not her daughter, not into a life without trees grown from a seed that fell at random, without hedgerows of thorny vines and woodchuck hummocks, without creeks meandering to the will of something other than a site plan and a bulldozer's blade. Her vision of such a world currently came from books and the Internet (it was amazing the live feeds that were out there) and the occasional field trips or vacation destinations (themselves sculpted and ordered in their own way—by the price and the trip's planner), and as such was nowhere near instinctive. And perhaps for her it would never be anything more than viewed from outside, separate. But not so for her child. She would find a way to give her a bigger world and a questing heart. It would have to start in the city; Randall's residency mandated that. But it would not end there. In the meantime, she would find ways to expose her child to the expanse of the world she'd be born into, the vastness of life.

She looked from the painted sky to the gentle rise of her stomach beneath the peasant smock and the yoga pants' elastic waist. She'd convinced herself about a week ago that the heartbeat she saw on the ultrasound's monitor and heard with Randall's stethoscope she could feel if she got quiet enough and blocked out her own heart's adamant pulse. It was still strange to think of another creature with a heartbeat living inside of her. She saw the condition as both an honor and a fright. What if she were to fail in her life sustenance of this creature? Or what if it was to consume her? She tamped down these irrationalities with thoughts of the little girl to come—forth from God but not yet forth from her body (that really was _scary_ to contemplate). The child in her dreaming didn't look like anyone she knew—fair skin, blond curls, an infectious giggle. She was happy for the vision to be generic. If she looked like someone she knew, then she would be real; and if she were real, then she would carry needs Penni wasn't yet prepared to meet. It was fine to deal in abstractions—painted skies and two-dimensional forests. It would be quite another thing to embrace the reality of a dependent with a hungering life.

By then the real day around her had turned to dusk. The nursery was suffused in a fading amber glow. Her hands slid down along her flanks and up under the scalloped edges of the smock. Her fingers met atop the swelling of her uterus that seemed to have grown even since this morning when she'd checked her profile in the mirror. What did that life see? She knew the eyes had not yet formed. What did it perceive in the darkness and the quiet? Could it feel the pulse of her heart, the coursing of blood through her veins? Did it sense the transfer of nutrients, of life itself, through the developing cord? Or was it alone in its oblivion?

She gently massaged her abdomen as they'd told her to do to stretch her skin and ease her cramps. She wondered if the fetus could feel that—the rhythmic strokes of her fingers just millimeters from its beating heart. Would it make that heart beat faster or slower, excite or ease it? The opportunity and the responsibility were boundless.

To lift that burden, her fingers found their way under her pants' waist and downward to where the new rise over her uterus leveled off to her former body's flattened plain. Her fingers eased under the band of her panties to the hardened mound and its thatch of soft thin hair then slid to either side of that mound to the valleys leading to her fork, to the start and the end of that which was growing inside her.

"I figured you'd be in here," Randall said from above.

"Mmmm," she cooed, her eyes closed.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Unh-unh."

And her body was suddenly awash with his touch—the trailing of fingertips, the brush of lips, the coursing of tongue, the gentle nuzzling of smooth cheek across the rise of her uterus, the taut skin of her stomach, her sensitive breasts, her panting mouth. He greeted her moans with cooing assurances of his own as he enveloped her body, took her unto himself.

2

Jodie woke crying. She remembered the dream vividly. It was night time and she was on the seashore. The beach was dark up and down and behind. The ocean was dark also except for the white crests of the waves and the sound they made, like a vast creature breathing, sighing in the night. It was cold she knew, winter or early spring, a frigid wind blowing bits of sand and seaweed and foam. But she wasn't cold, didn't feel anything at all—not the wind or the spray. Where was her body? What had become of its writhings and rare pleasures?

Contemplating those pleasures, many associated with the sea but not this harsh one, the sea of warm sun and gulls gliding and a light breeze lifting a kite into the blue-white sky—remember Dad's box kite designed and assembled from scratch that actually flew, too well as it turned out as the kite thrilled by ascendency jerked the coil of string from her young hands and danced wildly in the air for a few impassioned moments before rolling over and plummeting earthward like a colorful meteor's streak in the daylight, crashing into the sea a hundred yards from land and promptly sinking, swallowed whole in its moment of ecstasy? Dad caught up to the fleeing spool of string and reeled in the sodden jumble like a prize fish and not his shattered days of labor, laughing the whole time and saying "Danced like a diamond, didn't it, Sweetie?" in such a way that she didn't question if a diamond could dance and forgot her shock and sadness at having let go the string—she eased herself back toward the blank sleep from which she'd arisen.

When the voice rose out of the dark, from that empty ocean of the night. At first the voice seemed little different from the sighing of the waves, maybe was the sighing of the waves. She tried to push the sound aside, out of her dream of pleasure. But steadily it called, rising in volume, separating from the waves' rhythm, replacing it. The sound became a cry, of sadness or plea she couldn't say. There were no words in this place, this dream become nightmare, not out of the sea, not in her head or in her mouth, only cries, forlorn, lost—of her mother, of her own.

Andrea reached around from behind her and whispered out of the dark, "What is it?"

At first Jodie shrank from those real sounds, words more frightening than those shapeless cries of her dreaming. She pulled into herself, clutching her knees to her chest, burying her face in that cave. _Leave me alone!_

But Andrea rose above her gently, searched then found the single patch of bare skin uncovered and vulnerable, a square of flesh the size of a postage stamp beside her right closed eye, between her hair and her knees and shielding crook of her pajama-clad elbow. She found this skin with her lips, and deposited there a dry kiss followed by the words spoken on the skin, puffs of breath more than vibrations of sound— _I love you._

And as a key to a door and a door to a chamber and a chamber to heart long locked away, those vibrations freed the fetal ball to unfurl into arms and legs, hands and feet, and a full face, pale flesh somehow glowing now in the night briefly before it was buried anew, this time into Andrea's T-shirt clad breast, wetting that cloth and the skin beneath with its tears.

3

Leah sat on the motel bed buttoning her blouse.

It had started innocently enough. Of this she was sure.

Billy had brought the revised site plan straight from the printer to her house late one afternoon. The planning board's monthly meeting was that night; and Green Ways needed to make their proposal, complete with these plans, or delay their park renewal—their signature project for this year—by another month and that much deeper into the scorching summer season, brutal on both the workers and the plants they'd be setting out. The project had been slated to start in the spring, the best time of year to plant in Atlanta. But Leah's unplanned absence combined with the landscape engineer's missed deadlines had pushed the start back into the early summer. Then late last week the plans had arrived with several unacceptable errors. So then back to the drawing board for corrections made over the weekend then e-mailed to the printing service with a rush stipulation (and added cost) for Billy to pick them up at 5 PM just in time to deliver them to the night's 7 PM planning board meeting.

Billy could and would handle it all, including the presentation to the board. But he'd found out just that morning that Leah, as acting president of Green Ways, had to sign the plans for them to be accepted by the board. "But she's signed the proposal," Billy had pleaded to the board's chair but to no avail. Leah had offered to drive into town to meet him at the printer; but he said no, he'd run them by her house on his way home before going to the meeting. It wasn't that far out of his way and would save her a trip in rush-hour traffic.

She'd fretted that his stopping by would disrupt her dinner preparations till she finally solved that concern by running to Whole Foods and buying dinner from their take-out counter. Then she fretted over what if anything to offer Billy when he came. It would be too late for tea but too early for dinner; and in any case they'd have to wait for Whitfield, and he wouldn't be home till later. But when would Billy get dinner, with the meeting at seven? Knowing him, he'd probably microwave a frozen burrito and eat it running out the door and what kind of meal was that? The hour would be right for drinks and some heavy appetizers that could double as dinner—she had tried and true recipes for a tasty olive and herb focaccia or an easy spanakopita. But what about the drinks part? She couldn't send him off to the meeting half-drunk now, could she? And besides they'd barely have time enough to unroll the plans and sign them let alone linger over drinks and appetizers.

So she settled on making him a bag lunch that he could eat in the car on the way or at his house if he had five minutes to spare. She mixed up a chicken salad from last night's leftover baked chicken—adding her signature chopped pecans and dried cranberries to the diced chicken, celery and mayo—and put the mixture between two slices of seven-grain bread. She baked a batch of white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies (she was planning to make a batch for Whitfield anyway), put some kettle-cooked chips in a zipper bag, and washed some seedless grapes then wrapped them in a paper towel. She added a bottle of imported water and fit everything into a colorful small bag with handles she'd saved from a Golf Club picnic lunch earlier that spring. She set the bottle of water to one side then carefully added grapes, sandwich, cookies and chips in that order and hoped the grapes didn't get squished. She placed the bag in the refrigerator to keep the chicken salad properly chilled. The cookies would be better warm but you couldn't have everything perfect in a bag lunch.

She showered quickly and changed into a bright summer sundress that was not too low cut. She added a light sweater to cover her bare shoulders and slipped on some navy-colored canvas flats. She didn't like the pale color of her legs but hose were out of the question. She reminded herself to start using tan-in-a-bottle, but not today. The attire was a little nicer than she'd typically wear for dinner but not that much so. Whitfield probably wouldn't even notice; and if he did she'd say it was compensation for the take-out dinner necessitated by Green Ways business. He'd supported Green Ways when Jasper was involved, but lately had begun to grumble that it was demanding too much of her time and his money (she used charitable donations from their household account to shore up the organization's finances).

She expected Billy at five-thirty. At five-forty-five he still wasn't there, and she began to worry that his stop would overlap with Whitfield's arrival home, not that she had anything to hide but the necessary explanations and courteous small talk would be time-consuming and tedious. Then Whitfield called to say he'd be late (again) as he had to finish some paperwork for a big closing scheduled for tomorrow. That freed Leah from her worries about an overlap, but now she started to worry about Billy. Had something gone wrong at the printer's? Had he been in an accident? She considered calling him but decided that would be too presumptuous. She'd learned patience in dealing with Jasper's occasional tardiness, a patience she'd dusted off from dealing with Brooke's constant tardiness when they were growing up. Why had that patience abandoned her now?

A little before six, her phone chirped a text alert and she opened the message— _Traffic nightmare. Finally moving. Five minutes. Sorry._ She weighed different responses (the one she felt most strongly was the one she certainly wouldn't send— _Why didn't you call sooner? I was worried to death!)_ or not responding at all (it was only five minutes, or so he said) and finally settled on _Thanks._ True to his message, Billy swung his blue pickup into their drive five minutes later and strode down the curved walk with a controlled briskness in his khaki shirt, jeans, and work boots. He had this way of moving that managed to be simultaneously resolute and graceful. She waited for him on the covered entry stoop.

"Sorry," he said as he reached out and shook her hand.

His handshake was not new, but the apprising gaze he cast over her body was, at least to her notice. "No apology needed. Thank you for going out of your way." She hoped her words masked not exposed her giddiness.

"You look very nice," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen you in a dress."

"Really," was all she could manage before turning to hide her fluster. "Come on in," she said as she led him through the front door and down the hall to their dining room where he unrolled the plans on the table.

She gazed at the top copy, trying to focus on the details and corrections they'd requested.

Billy leaned over her shoulder from the side. "I haven't had a chance to check them out," he said quietly.

Though he somehow managed not to touch any part of her body, she was acutely aware of his closeness. That proximity made her study the plans even more intently. Then she spotted it—a willow oak designated for the bottom of the hill, not the flame-red maple she'd requested for its early spring leafing and its late fall brilliance. "They didn't fix the oak!" she cried, pointing at the spot near the center of the site plan. Both her finger and her voice were trembling with an unusual emotion.

Billy laughed.

"It's not funny! That's the one tree in the whole park I care about!"

Billy apologized. "I wasn't laughing at you but at the incompetence of the landscaper's draftsman. It's the last time we'll be using him."

"But the plans are wrong, Billy!" Leah said without looking up, her finger still on the mismarked tree. "Now we'll lose another month."

Billy reached his hand out to cover hers in what was surely intended as reassurance, as echoed by his words. "Don't worry, Mrs. Monroe. I'll change that in the field. They'll never notice the difference; and if they do, I'll make up a good explanation—'Maples do so much better in well-drained Triassic soils, don't you know?'" he said in a trial run of his excuse.

His hand remained gently atop hers throughout that short speech, the details of which Leah didn't hear, only the rhythm and cadence of his deep voice that seemed perfectly paired to his callused but somehow soft touch. She wanted to close her eyes and maybe she did for just an instant to inhale his outdoor scent and masculinity. The net effect of her subliminal actions is that she willed his hand to remain atop hers for some seconds longer than was needed for reassurance, some seconds past his employee's indulgence of a boss's small tantrum. Though their eyes never met in that moment, something changed. And the rest became inevitable.

Billy withdrew his hand and took a step back. "I'll fix it," he said again, though with some distraction.

Leah faced him with a newfound clarity of purpose, the schoolgirl giddiness gone. "So what do I need to do?"

Now it was Billy's turn to blush. "About what?"

Leah smiled. "With the plans. Where do I need to sign?"

"Oh. Right here." He pointed to a space beside the words _Approved by_ for the contractor's signature.

"Just the top copy?" she asked as she picked up the pen she'd put out earlier.

"Sign all five, to be safe."

She did so quickly, flipping up the corners rather than moving each copy to the side. When she'd finished, she rolled up the entire batch and slid the rubber band back over the cylinder. "Here you go," she said, handing him the roll. "Better keep moving or you'll be late for the meeting."

"Thanks, Mrs. Monroe," he said, already starting to move toward the door.

"Leah," she corrected, following closely.

He opened the door then turned. "Thanks, Leah. I'll let you know how it turns out."

She nodded. "Good luck," she said.

They were just a few inches apart. A redo of the earlier handshake would've been an appropriate and neutral parting gesture. But both felt such an action inappropriate to their new sharing. Yet anything more, or less, would've been risky in its ramifications.

Leah broke the stalemate. "Oh, I almost forgot. Wait here."

Billy stood in a stunned silence as she disappeared down the hall then reappeared a few seconds later carrying a colorful bag.

"I made you a sandwich for dinner," she said with a growing confidence of purpose.

"That looks like more than a sandwich," he said with a grin, both touched by her gesture and relieved by the change of focus.

"And a few other goodies," she said. "I figured you wouldn't have time to make yourself something, and that was before you got held up in traffic."

"I can eat it on the way."

"So I thought," she said as she handed him the bag. Their fingers brushed in the transfer.

"Thank you," he said with the slightest hesitation at the end.

"Leah."

"Yes," he said. "I know." Then he turned and rushed down the walk, a little faster than when he'd arrived ten minutes before.

Leah watched from the shadowed doorway till he got in the truck and backed out the drive and disappeared down their quiet residential street.

Later that night she was lying in bed reading, or trying to, when her phone signaled an incoming text. It wasn't all that late, just a little past ten; but she and Whitfield retired early these days. Normally she had her processors off by now, but she'd left them in on the possibility that someone might try to contact her. She glanced to the other half of the bed. Whitfield was on his side facing away, his shoulders rising and falling easily, already asleep.

She picked up her phone off the nightstand and opened the "new message from Billy's mobile": _Victory is ours. B._

She quickly tapped out and sent her response: _Never doubted it._

Not even for a minute?

Not with you in charge.

Not even for a second?

Congratulations, Billy. Now get some rest.

Yes, ma'am. You too.

Leah.

Leah.

"Who was that?" Whitfield asked without rolling over.

Leah flushed but held her voice steady. "Billy. We got approval for the Harris Park upgrade."

"Calling kind of late."

"Texting."

Whitfield didn't respond.

So Leah added, "The Planning Board meeting ran late. He just got out."

"Still late."

"I didn't have to take it."

"But you did."

"I wanted to know."

Leah waited through a few seconds of taut silence before shutting off her phone, removing her processors, and turning off the light.

Late the following week Billy called to say he had some bids to go over for various parts of the Harris Park project. She offered to meet him at the Green Ways one-room office in a strip mall south of town. But he suggested they meet for lunch at "the best barbecue joint this side of Memphis" which was just a couple exits down the interstate from Harris Park. "I owe you one," he said.

At the small restaurant that was all booths and floor to ceiling windows looking out on a gravel parking lot toward a two-story chain motel across the road, the barbecue was indeed delicious though with a tomato-based sauce that Leah found inferior to the vinegar-based sauces from her childhood in the Carolinas. Billy was especially animated, as he brought her up to date on progress at the three jobs currently in progress, then shared with her the numbers and the particulars of the subcontractors submitting the bids. She said little during the meal, mostly nodded and smiled and reveled in the almost childlike enthusiasm of her companion across the table.

When they'd finished their lunch, topped off with fresh banana pudding that was as good as that recalled from her childhood, the two sat in a moment of silence as they waited for the beehive-hairdo waitress to return with their check. The silence was not awkward or tense or due to a lack of any words to share. It was quite the opposite—a moment of intimacy and pleasure that didn't require words, was fully complete without them.

Then Leah noted the motel sign over Billy's shoulder and said something utterly unplanned yet bearing the full force of her desire and need. "If I rented a room in that motel, would you join me in about fifteen minutes?"

Billy hesitated a few seconds, but his eyes never left hers. The waitress dropped off their old-style handwritten check then rushed to a booth with some screaming children at the far end of the restaurant. In the breeze of her departure, Billy said quietly but clearly, "I'd be honored."

Leah couldn't help but laugh—at his words and solemn expression. "If you say 'ma'am' I might rescind the invitation."

Billy smiled then. "I'd be honored, Leah."

"Just be on time," she laughed then leaned over and whispered, "And park a few spaces away, just in case." Then she stood and grabbed the check instinctively.

He grabbed it back. "My treat, remember?"

She'd released the check. "Thank you," she'd said before turning and racing out of the restaurant to drive across the road to her appointment with a new future.

And now he'd left her to get dressed alone, at her own pace, heading back to the job having just screwed the boss. Her processors were still laying on the nightstand. After she'd undressed to her underwear and slipped between the sheets, she'd taken them off to avoid an awkward or embarrassing moment once he'd joined her. But that action also had the effect of transporting her into the soundless and slightly fantastic world of her childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, when she felt somewhat separate from reality and its harsher strictures. That escape served her well now.

But it had also prevented her from hearing Billy's light then firmer tapping on the door. She'd finally texted him _Where are you?_ and he'd texted back _Outside #115. Where are you?_ She'd laughed out loud at her oversight (and his politeness—she'd assumed he'd let himself in) and texted _Inside 115! The door is open!_ Once he was inside and his eyes had adjusted to the dim light from the sun pushing through the thick drawn curtains (and spotted her waiting and smiling from the room's big bed), she pointed to her processors on the nightstand then braved a few unheard words, hoping they weren't too loud or clumsy. "Speak to my eyes. I can still read lips." He'd smiled and nodded but said nothing, then began to undress. Their actions inside this room would not require spoken language.

She paused at the memory, paused at the third button down on her blouse and left it undone. Then she put on her processors, returned herself to the real world.

4

Brooke returned from Tahiti (she liked the sound of that word, and its exotic connotations, so much more than Bora Bora) looking better than she had for months. She'd regained most of the weight and muscle mass she'd lost during the run-up to the cancer diagnosis and her stint in the hospital. More importantly, in her own eyes and those of her family, her skin had regained its tone and honey-colored tan that had been her most striking feature since youth, and that in fact made her look many years younger than fifty-seven.

This improvement in her physical condition and appearance in turn led to—or, given Brooke's irrepressible will, may have been caused by—a renewal in her energetic and optimistic outlook. In the weeks following her return, she resumed active involvement in her numerous pet projects, including One Care—her and Dave's planned holistic care center amidst the soybean fields east of town. That project had broken ground earlier in the spring (Brooke had tried, unsuccessfully, to delay her cancer trial so she could be present at the event) and the site work was completed. They'd be pouring the footings for the main medical building—one wing dental and dermatology, one urgent and wellness care with a spacious and airy atrium-waiting room in between—the following week. She told Dave she wanted to ride out there to see what was happening.

"Dumping concrete in a hole," he said.

"Sounds exciting."

"There's nothing to see, Brooke. You won't even be able to get that close, with all the men and equipment running around."

"Will the men have on tight jeans?"

"Coated in mud."

"And sweat-stained T-shirts?"

"So fragrant you'll need a respirator."

"Then lead on, Sugar."

"I'm booked solid all week—still trying to catch up from our two weeks in Heaven." He'd enjoyed the trip as much as Brooke, all the more so because he knew how much it cost.

"Then I'll drive out there myself."

"You know you can't drive on your meds." She was on anti-seizure medication since her stay in ICU and a couple of "small" seizures as she was brought out of her artificial coma.

"Then I'll hire a driver."

"That will cost hundreds."

"Then I'll hire a limo."

"Bro-ooke!" Dave said in a rising two syllables of exasperation.

"Da-ave!" Brooke sang right back.

Dave sighed then checked his calendar and the weather forecast on his phone. "Tuesday at one be O.K.?"

"Let me check my schedule." She held up her hand as an imaginary digital appointment book. "Yep, Tuesday at one would be just fine. And if you can get off an hour earlier, Mrs. Redmon would be pleased to treat you to lunch at the Silo Diner—best lunch buffet on the whole coastal plain."

Dave laughed at his wife. "Mr. Redmon will make room in his schedule."

"Thank you," Brooke said.

So the next Tuesday, a cloudless hot and dry midsummer day, Dave watched in more or less silent wonder—a wonder he'd felt on first meeting his future wife at an off-campus keg party thirty-two years before and never quite managed to shake—as Brooke easily engaged the owner and his wife and all the waitresses and half the customers at the Silo Diner with her patented mixture of insightful observations, forthright opinions, and self-deprecating humor. Not all her insights were praiseful—the chicken and dumplings was a little salty, the tables next to the windows too hot, the iced tea a tad sweet—but they were all offered and received with a smile and this unique sense of shared endeavor, almost a conspiratorial air of intimacy—"It's us against the world, don't you know?" And who could resist that invitation from such a ball of fire?

She managed to work a similar magic at the construction site, as she ended up surrounded by the site super, the project engineer, the grading contractor, and even a concrete truck driver (waiting his turn to dispense his ten yards) while standing atop a cinderblock, hard hat bobbing up and down on her head, as she made dramatic gestures above a set of plans spread out on the hood of a pickup truck. She'd jab a finger at something on the plans then turn to the dusty site with a big wave then address each of her rapt audience in turn, like a conductor cajoling and encouraging her star instrumentalists—or like Brooke working this latest gathering of spellbound men.

So it was with a wrenching and bittersweet mix of admiration and thanks that Dave watched this latest display of classic Brooke while standing beside his big-wheeled pickup and tried without success to understand how some microscopic mutation set loose inside her body would one day end all that vitality and spunk.

Autumn Harvest

In early September Brooke started throwing up. "Just some bad Chinese food," she said gamely to Dave's concerned gaze. But the severe nausea didn't abate, and the food that managed to find its way through her digestive track came out as diarrhea. After three days of this, they scheduled a visit to the oncologist.

Dr. Liau ordered a CT scan of her abdominal cavity and the next day they went back to get the results.

"Your liver is enlarged and there's a swelling on one node," he said as if giving the weather report for tomorrow.

"And that means?" Brooke asked when he abruptly stopped.

"Given your history, it may be cancer."

"May be?"

Dr. Liau took a deep breath. His summary was no longer a weather report. "It probably is. But only a biopsy will determine for sure."

"And if we know 'for sure,' what would my options be?"

"Standard regimen of chemo to attempt to slow the progress of the tumor."

"But?" This leading on of Doctor Euphemism was wearying the already weak Brooke. She wanted to scream, "Just tell me the truth without being begged!" But the last time she was so direct with the good doctor, he'd clammed up and left the room.

"But even under normal circumstances, chemo is only marginally effective with liver cancers."

Brooke wondered when liver cancer ever qualified as a 'normal circumstance'. "And?"

"And yours is not a normal circumstance. This is almost certainly a metastatic spread of your pancreatic cancer." He paused then continued without further prodding from Brooke. "And if it has spread to your liver, it is probably in other organs and tissues as well." He looked exhausted at the end of this, for him, long speech.

"If we do nothing?"

"That's hard to say without more information."

"Your best guess, please."

"Single-digit weeks."

Brooke did the math. Why couldn't he just say two to three months? "And if we did everything?"

"A few months, give or take."

If this went on much longer, Brooke would kill her doctor long before her single-digit weeks were up. "I'm assuming the chemo would make me pretty sick."

Dr. Liau said, "You are already pretty sick."

"Sicker, then."

"While we would do all in our power to mitigate the worst contraindications, the deleterious side effects of the medicinal intervention would likely be profound."

Brooke managed a laugh. "Now that's the oncologist I've grown to love!"

The doctor grinned. "I thought you'd like that."

That brief lifting of the grim tone freed Brooke to a far-reaching release of her own. "No interventions. No hospitalizations. Treat the symptoms best you can, and we'll prepare the house for home care." Through the entire exchange with Doctor Liau she'd not once looked at Dave sitting twelve inches to her right, not because she was ignoring him but because she feared she'd cave in if she met his eyes. But she braved a quick glance at him now with a taut grin locked across her sunken cheeks. "Won't we, Dave?"

Dave stared down at his shoes just touching the front of the doctor's faux mahogany desk, still shocked by this news despite preparing for it for months. He raised his eyes to the doctor. "We'll take care of her at home."

2

Brooke managed to continue ambulatory—that is, getting out of bed and dressing in something other than pajamas for increasingly briefer stints each day—for another sixteen days. In the last of these days she could no longer trust herself to remain upright in the shower and asked Dave to help her in and out of the big soaking tub in its tile surround. "I'll do you one better," he said with an old gleam and proceeded to bath gently with natural sponge and lotion soap brought back from the South Pacific her still lovely and thrilling body. Brooke purred with her head cushioned on a towel and her eyes shut, "If I'd known about this, I wouldn't have waited so late."

Three days after she stopped getting out of bed, Leah arrived. Dave set her bag on the guest suite luggage rack and said, "Yours as long as you want to stay." Leah said, "Long as needed" then followed him back downstairs to the master bedroom.

He pushed open the slightly ajar door and golden sunlight flooded the hallway along with the odor of drying leaves. The many tall south and west-facing windows of the large room were unshaded and open on the warm fall afternoon. Dave said from the threshold, "You have a visitor."

"Whatever she's selling, I'll take one of each," a thin but still recognizable voice said from beyond.

"Sisterly love," Leah said as she walked past Dave.

"I've already got plenty of that."

"Never enough," Leah said as she crossed the room to the bed.

"I suppose you're right," Brooke said. "As usual."

Dave pulled the door shut as he returned to preparing dinner.

Leah was shocked at how wasted Brooke appeared. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken in, and her skin flat. Leah had not fully appreciated till just then that Brooke's skin had always radiated vibrancy in its warm color and tone, even when comatose in the hospital. That color had been for Leah proof of life and future, not only for Brooke but also for her. The two conditions were inseparable. Leah tried to hide her terror as she bent to hug her collapsed sister. "I love you," was all she could think to whisper.

Brooke kissed her sister's cheek with cracked lips. "A home delivery," she said with an attempt at a chuckle that ended as a hoarse croak. "Hard to get these days."

Leah stood back up with a grin taped across her face. "Not for you." She dragged the Queen Anne armchair to within reach of the bed and sat down.

"How bad do I look?"

Leah's grin twitched.

"That bad, huh? I had Dave tape over all the mirrors a week ago, but I still caught a glimpse in the windows when I was still walking. Now it's stuck in my mind. You don't have a memory eraser, do you?"

Leah laughed. "If I did, would you use it?"

"Selectively, yes."

Leah thought about that for a minute. "I'd be afraid of erasing something I'd want back later."

"If it was erased, how would you know?"

"I would."

Brooke nodded from the pillows. "Yes, you would."

Leah gazed at her sister, the default grin back in place, but could think of nothing to say. More accurately, she thought of too many things to say but all of them fraught with risk. So she pulled her eyes off of Brooke's misshapen face and looked toward the bright day beyond the screens and glass. "I never realized how open and airy your bedroom is."

"Always our secret sanctuary."

"Our?"

"Me and Dave, silly—where we did our best work."

Leah blushed despite herself.

"Now he's been banished to the pullout couch in the old nursery, poor baby."

Leah had noted the disarray like a dorm room through the open door just down the hall.

"We stopped sleeping together after I had an accident and he rolled in it—kind of dampens the romance, so to speak."

Leah faced her sister again with a neutral stare.

"So now he sleeps down the hall and I sleep with an absorbent pad and a plastic sheet under my butt. Want to see?"

Leah shook her head. "I'll take your word for it." Then she added quickly, "Unless you want me to change it."

"Dave checked it just before you arrived. Save your nurse's duties for later."

"Whatever you need me to do, Brooke."

"I know. We're counting on it." She now looked unabashedly at Leah.

Leah gazed back, powerless to break the stare.

A smile lit Brooke's eyes. "Who are you fucking?"

"Brooke!" Leah wondered for the briefest of moments if the body's emaciation had gone to her sister's brain.

"Fess up, girl."

"What?"

"Who's the lucky guy?"

"Only Whitfield," Leah said under her breath.

Brooke laughed, a sound that morphed into a series of shallow hoarse coughs.

Leah handed her the plastic cup of water from the nightstand.

Brooke took a sip then returned the cup to the nightstand. "I like Whitfield. He's been a good husband to you and father to Jasper. But that old man couldn't handle the fire you've got blazing." Brooke had long teased her sister about her husband being ten years her elder. "He'll be in the nursing home and you'll be banging the male nurse in the linen closet" was one of her jokes while they were waiting in the church's parlor before Leah's wedding. At the time it seemed only a Brookism to calm her nerves.

"Whitfield's fine, thank you very much," Leah said with a glint of anger.

"Glad to hear it, sis. Give him my regards. Now who are you fucking?"

Leah saw there was only one way out of this line of questioning—straight ahead. "Billy Erwin."

"Johnny Appleseed?" Brooke had christened Billy, whom she'd never met, with this nickname after Leah had given her an overly enthusiastic description of her project manager in a phone conversation last fall. "Way to go, girl!"

"It's not something I'm proud of, Brooke."

"You should be. It's done you wonders."

"And Whitfield?"

"Leah, dear, whether you want to admit it or not, Whitfield is taking care of himself."

"So what do I do?"

"Keep letting Johnny plant his seeds." Brooke, as usual, enjoyed her crude wit, all the more so because it made her sister squirm.

"Till when?"

"You'll know when and how to stop. You're better at that than anyone."

"Right now I can't."

"You'll know," Brooke nodded with sage confidence.

From beneath Leah's lingering embarrassment and inner turmoil, she couldn't help but notice the color that had returned to her sister's cheeks, running down from inside her dancing eyes.

3

Penni and Jodie arrived the following Saturday morning. Once Jodie got Penni's schedule she booked a flight—a real reservation!—that arrived within fifteen minutes of her sister's. Leah at first thought this an uncommon courtesy on the part of Jodie, saving her an extra trip to the airport; and maybe it was. But further consideration allowed her to understand that Jodie didn't want to arrive before Penni, to bear the full weight of her mother's condition or needs, or after, to feel negligent or superfluous to her big-bellied sister bearing the blessed child.

And Penni was indeed big-bellied, as Leah witnessed with her younger niece, normally in the forefront of any crowd, the last from her flight to emerge from the arrivals corridor, shuffling along stiffly with her swollen belly beneath the cable-knit sweater playing cruel games with her normally thin body's center of gravity. Leah rushed forward and took the small carry-on from her hand and put her arm around her niece's shoulders to steady her.

"Sorry, Aunt Leah. My lower back is acting up today. I just couldn't get comfortable in that cramped seat."

"Why didn't you ask for assistance?"

"A wheelchair?" Penni exclaimed in what may have been genuine horror. "Exercise is the best therapy!" she said, repeating her birthing class instructor's mantra.

Leah recalled her last weeks carrying Jasper's mix of fear and groaning, as every cramp might be the start of labor or one more lash to bear in the nine month masochistic exercise called pregnancy. Then she recalled the product of that trial, her son now back at school after spending most of his summer working on an organic farm with his girlfriend, managing to squeeze in only a couple short weekend visits to the one who had borne him those nine months. And just then she wasn't sure which of the pains was worse. "Can you make it to the coffee shop?" Leah asked, pointing toward a row of retail outlets on the far side of the arrivals lounge.

"Is Jodie here?"

"A half hour late. Can you wait?"

"If you can find me a place to raise my legs."

Leah did, positioning Penni at the end of the shop's cushioned bench running along the back wall and putting a rolled up blanket she borrowed from the waitress under the small of her back as she swung her legs up onto the bench.

Penni winced once during the maneuver then sighed as she flexed her legs to ease the cramping. "Thanks, Aunt Leah. I've needed to stretch since leaving Boston. Not exactly something you can do at an airport gate."

Leah nodded in sympathy. "Six more weeks?"

"If I make it that long."

After the waitress brought Penni herbal tea and Leah coffee, Penni asked how her mother was doing. Leah tried to find the middle ground between honesty and alarm then realized there was no such place in the current circumstances. Brooke had diminished noticeably in the few days since she'd arrived, and the doctor had switched from synthetic opiates to the real thing yesterday, prescribing morphine to help alleviate her pain. Leah had thought that meant the end was fast-approaching, but the hospice nurse who came by each morning had said, "Not necessarily. Could be days. Could be weeks," then had added something that could have been intended as consoling but was deeply unsettling to Leah. "It's up to Mrs. Redmon." Even now they were prisoners to Brooke's will.

"She's looking forward to seeing you and Jodie."

Penni nodded. "Why do we only get together in a crisis?"

"There was your wedding."

Penni smiled. Her first anniversary was in two weeks. How come it seemed so much longer than that? "There was a crisis then too."

"What?"

"You never heard? Two nights before, Jodie was trying on her maid-of-honor dress—which fit, thank God; I was terrified something would go wrong with the long-distance sizing—in my bedroom when Mom burst in without knocking and saw Jodie's tattoo for the first time. Well, she pitched a fit, saying there was no way she was going to have all her time and money and effort remembered only for the maid of honor's tattoo. She said we had to get a matching mantle made to cover Jodie's shoulders and even tried to call a seamstress she used occasionally. And of course Jodie threw off the dress and stormed out of the room in her underwear."

"Did you go after her?"

Penni shook her head. "I long ago learned you don't chase after Jodie at moments like that."

Leah shook her head. "What did you do?"

"For the first and only time in my life, I told Mom to knock it off. This was my wedding, Jodie was my only sister, and she was going to be my maid of honor in the dress I'd chosen for her; and if she didn't like it, that was too bad." Penni took a deep breath, amazed now what she had said then.

"What did Brooke say?"

"She stared hard at me for a long time. I wasn't sure if she were shocked or hurt. But I held my ground. And finally she said, 'Let's hope she's not already back in Seattle.'"

"And the wedding went off without a hitch."

"Well, I don't know about 'without a hitch' but it did happen. And everybody loved Jodie's tattoo."

"Except Brooke."

"She didn't say another word till that dig at the end; and then it was too late to matter."

Leah gazed silently at her niece, longing for those days of idle family drama.

"Don't you two look comfy," Jodie said as she walked up, looking at Penni with her legs up on the bench.

"Comfy is not an adjective you associate with a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy," Penni replied.

Leah turned in surprise. She checked her watch then rose from her chair. "You're early."

"No, late."

"Earlier than the later they posted on the monitor," Leah explained then wrapped her niece in a big hug and planted a long kiss on her forehead.

Penni swung her legs off the bench and slid out from behind the table.

"Don't get up," Jodie said as she dropped her two bags beside the table and sat on the bench next to Penni. She leaned over and kissed her sister on the cheek then turned her face to let Penni return the endearment. Then she leaned back far enough to marvel at her sister's ballooning midsection. "You're huge!"

"Believe me, I know! Today my legs and back _really_ know!"

"I had been jealous. Now, maybe not so much."

"All pain and suffering here on out," Penni said through her proud smile. "Right, Aunt Leah?"

Leah turned from where she had just finished catching the eye of the waitress. "Never ends," she said with a grin to match theirs, a comment that was both sincere and facetious but mainly left Leah wishing the only pain and suffering they'd be facing in the coming days was of the child-bearing, child-rearing sort.

4

That morning Brooke had called in her hairdresser to try to do something with the "limp and dull mop" that was stuck to her skull. She even persuaded Effy—short for Evangeline, the daughter of their accountant—to try her hand at make-up after she finished the hair even though she wasn't licensed in make-up and it was difficult getting the colors right in the shifting light around the bed. Dave corrected that problem by redirecting a couple of the track lights from illuminating paintings on the wall to focus on Brooke's face propped against the headboard. The combined result was quite successful as Brooke's hair had volume and sheen, all the more so when pressed forward by the pillows, and her skin had lost its gray cast and somehow managed to look warm without seeming artificial or layered on. Brooke spent the whole time Effy was packing up her tools and supplies cooing into the hand mirror and calling her hairdresser "a miracle worker." When Dave appeared after she buzzed him on the intercom, he too expressed amazement, as much for Brooke's bright smile and gleaming eyes as for the skin and hair surrounding those features. She called him over and whispered loud enough for Effy to hear, "Make sure and give her a big tip." In the kitchen he gave her a hundred dollar bill plus a check for the home appointment. She tried to refuse the tip but he would have none of it.

But then Jodie's plane was late and Leah got stuck in traffic on their way back from the airport and it was time for her morphine and they'd still not arrived. She wanted to skip or at least delay this dose, but Dave thought that was a bad idea. As if to affirm his warning, her body was wracked by a spasm of pain that started at her core and moved outward in all directions in powerful waves. She looked at Dave with a desperate plea, the look incongruous with her made-up face and prissy hairdo. He got a single morphine tablet from the locked box he kept in the bathroom and placed it on her tongue then helped her wash it down by holding the cup of water to her lips. He sat next to the bed and held her cramped hand atop the covers and watched her face contorted in a grimace, her eyes tight shut. Then he began to count in his head. By the time he reached one hundred, her clenched jaw and the muscles in her neck had begun to loosen. At two hundred her face was totally relaxed, the fingers on her hand loose, and her eyes opened dreamily, smiled or so he thought in his direction. Had he kept on counting, by the time he'd reached three hundred he would have seen her in the now familiar peaceful and unmoving morphine trance, what Davey had impulsively called a "death sleep" when he first saw it earlier in the week, a phrase though accurate they both wished had not been uttered. That condition freed him to return to his other duties—in this case, making dinner for "the girls." But he lingered beside his wife, his blank eyes gazing on her face in a trance of their own, numb and hopeless.

When the girls finally arrived, Dave helped carry his daughters' bags upstairs, depositing them in their respective childhood rooms. The women came up behind. Though Penni told the others to go on, Leah walked beside her and Jodie just behind as she took the steps one at a time, holding the handrail tightly and pulling her imbalanced body up the long flight. In the hall outside her room, Dave gave his pregnant daughter a long if heedful hug, leaning over so as not to press against her jutting belly. He then stepped around her to Jodie. She at first extended her hand in her standard greeting for her stepfather since she'd gone off to college. It was never intended as chilly (from her side anyway) so much as formal and safe, devoid of the fireworks she saved for her biological parents. But instead of taking her hand, Dave held his arms open before him, inviting her, calling her into fuller contact. And Jodie accepted, stepping into his loose embrace and returning it. She suddenly wanted to thank him for all he'd been and done across some thirty years of her life but didn't know how. All she could do was squeeze him around his big waist, his belly not quite as far out as Penni's but headed in that direction.

After the girls had disappeared into their rooms, Dave whispered to Leah, "She's out. She wanted so badly to stay up but couldn't make it."

Leah nodded and said, "I'm sorry we got held up." But secretly she was relieved. The girls would have a chance to meet their mother in her new state outside the scrutiny of Brooke's ever observant and rapacious stare.

And so they did about ten minutes later as Leah led them into the bedroom bathed in bright afternoon light despite the cloudy day.

Leah said in normal volume, "Look who's here!" to try to put the girls at ease—no need for silence or whispers. She'd already explained at the coffee shop and again upstairs that Brooke spent much of her day and all of her nights in a pain-free morphine daze that sometimes manifested itself in open-eyed incoherence or delusions but generally, as now, left her in peaceful unconscious. When she saw Brooke's hair and face, she briefly forgot she wasn't alone and raced forward. "You're beautiful!" She bent over and kissed Brooke's cool slack lips.

By then Jodie and Penni were standing at the foot of the bed, their shoulders touching. Normally Penni was a couple inches taller than her sister; but between their shoes (Penni had on loose canvas flats, Jodie short boots with a modest heel) and Penni's weighed down body, they were exactly the same height at that moment.

Leah turned toward them. "While I was picking you up, she had her hairdresser come out. And she did her face too. Doesn't she look great?"

Neither daughter spoke.

Leah managed a shallow chuckle. "Sorry. You didn't see her before. She looks a lot better than she did."

Penni finally found her voice, about the same time her hand found Jodie's so close at her side. "Her hair and face look fine, Aunt Leah. It's just that she looks so—." She hesitated, searching for the right word—or if not the right one, at least the best for the situation.

"Still," Jodie said in a low voice as if to herself.

Neither daughter could remember seeing their mother still. Even if they caught her napping, which was rare, she seemed to be vibrating with latent energy, ready to pounce on them or the world in an instant.

Leah scolded herself for the oversight, but what more could she have done to prepare them? "I've seen her a lot like this lately—this past week and last spring in Intensive Care. I guess I've gotten used to it."

To the girls looking from the foot of the bed, the head propped on the pillows seemed devoid of a body, with the bedcovers appearing almost flat on the mattress.

"Does she still eat?" Penni asked.

"Sometimes—lactose-free milkshakes, when she can hold them down. The morphine suppresses appetite along with everything else."

Without a word or sound, Jodie turned and left the room.

Leah started to say something but swallowed the sound. She took two steps after her but paused alongside Penni.

Penni said, "Go ahead. I'll be O.K."

"You sure?"

Her niece smiled. "I've got company," she said, glancing down at the fetus hiding beneath her thin cotton smock and a couple layers of organic tissue.

"Lucky you," she said, not sure if she meant the words as a joke or in sincerity.

"Yes."

Leah left the room, hoping Jodie had gone upstairs.

Penni walked around to the side of the bed. She hesitated just a moment as she reached toward her mother's hand on the bedspread. Then she completed the action, picked up the limp hand, raised her smock and laid the cool fingers on her warm skin just above the baby's head and eyes and heart.

5

Jodie was face down on her bed, her shoulders heaving in silence.

Leah sat beside her and lightly brushed her long soft hair.

"I can't stop crying over her, Leah. I just can't stop."

"Me either."

"Your eyes aren't red."

Leah thought about that for a minute. Would it help to just let it out? "My heart's in tatters, Jodie. I can't imagine how I'll survive."

"But you've always loved her, and she knows that. I've just figured out how, and now it's too late."

"It's not too late."

Jodie rolled over and stared up at Leah. "I can't hug a corpse, Leah!"

Despite herself, Leah laughed. "Brooke will never be a corpse." She'd said it impulsively but suddenly realized the truth of her statement. In all of Brooke's recent comatose conditions, she'd never ceased to be. Her spirit was always alive and present regardless of her unresponsive body. And the fact that that would continue to be the case indefinitely into the future was both consoling and frightening.

"I need to see her with her eyes open. I need to have her understand."

"You will," Leah said, hoping it was the truth.

The first part of Jodie's request was granted later that evening. After sharing a quiet meal of Dave's butternut squash soup and home-made bread (he'd taught himself bread-making during his days at home caring for Brooke), Dave went into their bedroom and emerged five minutes later saying with a cautious expression that Brooke was awake but "a little disoriented" by her medication.

"Should we let her rest?" Penni asked.

"Rest is all she's had lately."

"I mean, will we confuse her more?"

"I don't know, Peanut. You came all this way to see her and she wants to see you. So give it a shot." He stepped aside into the kitchen. "I'll call you when the chocolate soufflés are ready."

The women made no response. They were already trudging single file down the hall toward the bedroom, the youngest in the lead.

When Penni stepped through the doorway Brooke looked startled. "Penni!"

"Hi, Mom."

"I didn't know you were here."

"I arrived this afternoon." She went up to the side of the bed and bent over stiffly to give her mother a hug.

"That's good," Brooke said, ignoring the hug. "Now you can help me find Davey."

Penni stood up. "Davey?"

"He's supposed to be practicing for his recital." Davey took piano lessons into high school then stopped.

Penni looked back at the others.

"Jodie!" Brooke exclaimed.

Jodie tried to smile but said nothing. She stood next to her sister, her eyes fixed on her mother's intent stare.

"I thought you were at school."

"I'm not at school, Mom. I'm here with you."

"Well good. You can check the arcade. I think he's off with that girl."

"What girl, Mom?" Jodie asked.

"The blonde floozy. I can't ever remember her name."

Jodie looked at Penni.

Penni said, "Rebecca"—the name of Davey's first serious love.

"That's the one!" Brooke exclaimed. "She'll do him no good."

Jodie tilted her head. She had somehow managed to miss that entire family episode. But she said, "He's just in love, Mom."

"I know!" Brooke said. "That's the problem."

"It'll be O.K." Penni said quietly.

"But he won't be ready for the recital."

Penni was standing beside the chair kept next to the bed. Leah brought another chair for Jodie and urged them both to sit.

"Leah!" Brooke said. "You too?"

"Well, three actually," Leah laughed. She pulled the room's last chair over from beside the dresser to the foot of the bed, in line with the other two and in full sight of the patient on the bed.

"How long?" Brooke asked.

"I've been here all week," Leah said as she sat down.

"Until I die."

Leah gazed steadily at her sister. "I don't know, Brooke."

"If you don't, who does?"

Leah glanced at her nieces and saw something akin to terror in their eyes. She looked back to Brooke. Her face had sunk back into the pillow and she was staring at the ceiling. "Only God," Leah said. "And he'll be there waiting."

"I sure hope so," Brooke said quietly to the ceiling. Her eyes closed.

The three women looked from the face on the pillow to each other. No one dared speak as Brooke's easy sleeping breaths slowly filled the room.

6

Jodie stirred at the sensation of someone else on the bed.

"Something's wrong," Penni whispered.

Jodie's eyes slowly focused on her sister's silhouette seated on the side of the bed, etched against the pale gray wall beyond. Just beyond that silhouette the clock on the nightstand read 5:23 in pale silver-blue numerals. "With Mom?"

"With the baby."

"What is it?"

"I don't know," Penni said, her whispers rising in tone toward fear or panic.

Jodie sat up in the bed. She considered turning on the light but wondered if that might make the situation feel more frightening. Sudden bright light in the middle of the night had always been equated with bad news—someone sick or injured or missing. She could see Penni well enough in the dark, the pale skin of her face seeming almost luminous above the darker shadow of her torso. She left the light off for now and put her arm over her shoulders. "Are you sick?"

"I've had cramps the last three hours, no regular interval but really bad."

"Have you thrown up?"

"I feel sick but I haven't thrown up."

"Any discharge?" Where had she learned this clinical focus?

"Nothing out of the ordinary." Suddenly Penni's whole body tensed in a massive contraction. A stifled moan rose from deep in her chest, pushing its way out through her sealed lips, rattling through her throat and mouth and nose. Her hand thrashed around the bed's covers until it found Jodie's free hand. It seized that warmth and squeezed until it seemed it might break all the bones in both appendages.

Jodie squeezed back, but not so hard as to hurt her sister. She tried to ease Penni's body down onto the mattress, toward the spare pillow at the headboard. It was like moving a frozen statue. But Penni didn't fight her effort, in fact seemed to want to lie down. So Jodie persisted until her sister was lying on her side atop the covers, their hands still locked but now under her body. The low moan gradually subsided.

Penni pushed their joined hands toward the small of her back. "Push there please," she hissed through clenched teeth.

Jodie let go of Penni's hand and pushed with her fingers through the cotton T-shirt Penni was wearing.

"Harder."

Jodie pushed with her knuckles.

"Harder!"

She made a fist and pressed until she felt the place where Penni's ribs joined her spine.

"Ahh," Penni groaned in what seemed release or relief.

Jodie eased off.

"No. Not yet," Penni cried.

Jodie resumed the harsh pressure until her arm and hand began to tire.

Penni finally uttered a long low sigh followed by several panting breaths. As her body began to lose its tension, she said, "Thank you. That's been going on all night. Your pushing helped."

"You think you're going into labor?"

"I don't know. I've had some cramps before and the doctor says that's not unusual. But never this bad."

"Could be the flight or the stress."

"I hope so."

"You need to go to the emergency room?"

Penni shuddered. Garrett had had an asthma attack when they were kids and Penni had insisted on accompanying her brother and father to the emergency room. It had been an eye-opening and traumatic experience. "If I'm not in labor, that sure will trigger it."

"Then what do you want to do?"

"It's almost dawn. Let me see if I can make it till morning then we'll have more options."

"You sure?"

"Can I stay with you?"

"Of course."

"Will you keep your hand on my back?"

"What if I fall asleep?"

"I'll wake you if I need you."

"Good."

After a few minutes Penni fell asleep and remained so till morning light, Jodie watching the back of her sister's head the whole time.

At seven Penni called Randall who in turn called some contacts in their area and found an obstetrics practice that agreed to examine Penni before normal hours. They borrowed Leah's car and Jodie drove them to the clinic across town. By then Penni's cramps had subsided though there were still some waves of contraction through her lower abdomen and back. She laid Leah's bucket seat all the way down and rolled onto her side to make herself somewhat more comfortable.

Inside the clinic a gentle and solicitous female obstetrician named Donna Tillman did a full examination including an ultrasound. Jodie offered to wait outside but Penni insisted she stay with her throughout the exam. Doctor Tillman found no signs of labor initiating or fetal distress. Still, she was concerned about the frequency and severity of the cramps. "If you were my patient," she said, "I'd put you on bed rest as a precaution."

"But my husband, doctor, and support network are all in Boston," Penni said.

Doctor Tillman nodded. "I know how important that is."

They set up a conference call in Doctor Tillman's office with the three of them conversing with Randall and Penni's Boston obstetrician, Frank Ayers. After a full exchange of information and opinions, Penni asked, "Is it safe for the baby for me to fly home?"

Doctor Tillman said, "The baby is safe in your womb. The question is can _you_ manage the flight?"

"I did O.K. yesterday."

"You'd not been up all night."

"I'll go with her," Jodie said suddenly.

Penni looked at her with surprise. "What about Mom?"

Jodie paused for a second, as if startled, then said as much to herself as all the other ears listening, "She's the one telling me to go."

7

The night before, they'd all taken turns sitting with Brooke. She was resting peacefully and didn't need constant company. She could use the intercom if she waked and needed assistance; and Dave turned on the monitor any time she was alone, to alert him if there was a disturbance. But the women agreed it might be valuable to spend time with her even if she were unconscious. They had, after all, travelled great distances to be with her and, as Jodie put it bluntly, "There's nothing else to do around here."

So Penni went in first. She was still bewildered by what to make of her non-moving, non-speaking mother. She searched all the memories of her twenty-six years and could not find a single instance when her mother was _still_. Even the few times she'd caught her dozing, her hands were moving and her lips twitching, as if directing someone or some legions in her dreams or another world. But tonight Brooke's face was blank and the other world she occupied at the moment, if there was one, buried beyond any possibility of her inclusion or understanding.

So after maybe ten minutes of a futile blank stare trying to will some kind, any kind of response or movement, Penni sighed a surrender and opened the paperback she'd bought in the airport bookshop in Boston, the second part of the "Twilight" series, _New Moon_ , and resumed where she'd stopped on the plane, marking the page with the corner torn from the trail mix packet. After reading silently for a while, she sensed a presence in the room with her. She looked up quickly. Brooke was as she had been, flat on her back, her face framed by the pillow and the neatly ironed (by Betsy, their long-time and now aging black housekeeper) pillowcase, her closed eyes directed at the dim ceiling. The door to the hall was most of the way closed, no change there. And the three doors along the far wall—the ones on either end to walk-in closets, the one in the middle to their large master bath—were all shut. The blinds were lowered and the drapes drawn across the wall of windows facing out on the cool autumn night. There was no one else here. But for whatever reason, when Penni continued reading she did so aloud, in a firm yet quiet voice, as if Brooke could hear and would enjoy the sounds at least. And who knows—maybe she would like the story, hang around long enough to hear the end.

After her designated hour Penni emerged and stopped by Leah's room before heading off to her room to ready for bed.

"Brooke O.K.?" Leah asked.

"Sleeping peacefully," Penni said from the doorway with a wan smile.

"You O.K.?"

Penni considered telling her aunt about the intangible presence but decided not to. Either Leah already knew—probably Leah already knew—or else she wouldn't understand. "Tired from the trip."

"Get some rest."

"I'll try," she said then added with a laugh, "Maybe the familiar mattress will bring me sweet dreams."

"I'll hope so." Leah stood and headed downstairs as Penni departed for her room down the hall.

Having the benefit of several days with her sister conscious and a lot of time sitting with her sister unconscious, both this trip and last spring, Leah thought she had nothing left to say to the unconscious Brooke. So she reached under Brooke's bed and pulled out the knitting bag she'd left there and resumed work on the afghan she planned to send to Jasper at school. Against her wishes, her mind couldn't help its grudging acknowledgement that her son had other options for keeping him warm at night, the latest (that she knew of) being Stephanie whose family in Vermont he'd be visiting over next month's fall break. But maybe this afghan, in the school's colors, would remind him of the warmth he'd once received and still had at the ready from his mother.

Despite herself, and amidst the soft clicking of the knitting needles, Leah said aloud, "You've done a good job with the girls." She wasn't sure where that came from. Her unspoken judgment over the many years of Brooke's largely one-sided laments over the challenges of raising five children was that Brooke had skillfully managed the raising of the boys ("But of course" she'd say, almost always over the phone, "I love men!") while never quite finding the proper balance with the rebellious elder child or the timid and too perfect baby ("I used all my girl skills up on you" she'd say, somehow diverting blame to Leah). But with the two daughters upstairs now and whatever missteps or resentments either resolved or buried deeply, it was time to acknowledge what had never been said in her presence. "They are two exceptional women and completely devoted to you."

"Come on, Leah! Penni maybe—maybe too much so. But Jodie? No way!"

Leah shook her head but didn't look up from her knitting. "All Jodie ever wanted was your love, Brooke. And now I think she finally realizes she had it all along—even in the shouting and the fights, all the more so because of them."

"Don't you know I told her that every chance I had?"

"Not in words she could hear. She had to find it on her own."

"By pushing me away?"

"Part of the process, yes. And by losing herself."

"Do you know how much that hurt?"

Leah nodded. "But more importantly, Jodie knows how much that hurt you—now."

"How do you know?"

"She's here, Brooke. She wants your forgiveness."

There was a long silence that Leah equated with tears, of joy and sorrow. "She doesn't need my forgiveness. I need hers."

"For what?"

"All the times I tried to stamp out her fire."

Leah laughed. "You were scared because she was so much like you."

"And felt guilty."

"Why?"

"Because she didn't have you."

Leah weighed that. "She always had me."

"An aunt is not a sister."

"And now she has Penni."

"Too late."

Leah smiled broadly as she looked up to her sister's sleeping face. "Just in time."

"For what?" Jodie said from the doorway.

Leah flinched and looked around. Then she looked at her watch—10:00, their designated hour to switch. She smiled to cover her surprise. "To relieve my watch."

"But you didn't know I was here." She walked up to the second chair beside the bed and sat.

"Eyes in the back of my head, from when I was deaf."

"Then I'm glad I didn't have you as a mother."

Leah took a chance. "Are you?"

Jodie stared at her aunt for a few seconds then looked to her sleeping mother's face floating almost like an apparition above the multiple layers of bedspread, blankets, and sheets, pale in the nightstand lamp's dim light. "Growing up I always wanted you to be my mother. I wished it so much it became part of my identity, my middle name— _Jodie Wants-Leah Howard Redmon_." She laughed. "And I carried that identity with me for years after I left home, after it didn't matter anymore."

"Punishing Brooke."

"Yeah, you're right. I guess I figured she'd punished me for eighteen years, I'd give her eighteen back—insofar as I thought about it at all, which wasn't much."

"Unconsciously."

"Like Mom over there."

"Sleepwalking through your life dragging all your resentments behind."

"Whoa, Leah! You channeling Mom or something?"

Leah laughed. "Sorry. Spending so much time with Brooke has made me maybe a little too forthright in my assessments." She extended a hand to brush Jodie's cheek. "You forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive. You're exactly right. Blaming Mom was an excuse for not holding myself accountable."

"For what?"

"For starting my life."

"And now you see that."

"With your help, and hers. I don't know if it's her illness or just growing up, but I suddenly see her life in all its challenges. I couldn't see that before."

"Children aren't supposed to see the challenges of parenthood."

"Why not?"

"It'd scare them to death!" Leah laughed but didn't retract the claim.

"And they'd never want to grow up."

"Maybe not."

Jodie raised her hand. "Prosecution Exhibit A."

"All things in due time."

"Too late?"

"Never too late, Jodie. You've got a lifetime in front of you."

"For her?" She looked to her mother.

"No."

"How will she know?"

"Just tell her Jodie. She'll know." Leah gathered up her afghan and needles and yarn and stood. "Take care of my sister, dear one," she said then left, pulling the door shut behind her.

Jodie stared at the shut door. She wanted to run after Leah, pull her back into the room, and ask her to sit with her through this watch. Every instinct and intuition was telling her to run—out of this room, out of this house, out of this town, this state, this side of the continent. Run. Run. _Run!_

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath then turned toward the bed. She opened her eyes. Her mother looked so peaceful. She could see the bedcovers rising and falling ever so slightly, so she knew the subject was alive. But where was her mother? Where was that dynamo of activity and energy and will that had propelled and motivated every minute of her life for better and for so much worse since the day she'd emerged from her womb (she figured she'd blame her for those first few years too even though she couldn't remember them)? Where was she? Goddammit, where is she?

Jodie had not breathed since turning. Her body threatened collapse and forced her mouth open to seize a long draught of air, the inhalation's gasp merging into a deep moan of visceral pain. Her body fell forward onto the side of the bed, her face buried in the soft covers next to her mother's waist. She remained there for the longest time, in the gray cushioned world of her grief.

Then she started to speak into the covers, her words echoed back into her ears but maybe also echoed forward into the layers of fabric and through the pajamas buried and into the warm flesh just inches from her lips. "Why didn't you let me love you, Mom? That's all I ever wanted. That's all I ever was—love for you! But you put so much between us—your move back home, school, Dave, the boys. One after the other—I thought they'd never stop popping out of your belly, encroaching on my turf! Then worst of all Penni. She was such a beautiful baby and so sweet. She never once cried or made a fuss—not in twenty-five years! How could I ever compete with that? All I ever did was cause trouble when all I ever wanted to do was love you. How did it get turned upside-down? Why did we let it?"

She may have lost consciousness then. It was hard to say. It was a strange and different world down here in the covers, the fabric puffing in and out, pushing her breaths back into her face. Eventually, a rhythm seemed to take hold, a rhythm of sound and motion outside herself, like a breathing in and out but of someone or something outside of herself, taking her over, enfolding her into itself.

"I've always loved you, Mom. Even when I hated you, most of all when I hated you, I loved you. I bottled it up inside, wouldn't tell you or even myself; but it was always there. Why do you think I got so upset? Why do you think I did all that crazy stuff and said all those mean things? What could have caused such passion except a hidden and thwarted reservoir of love? But it's not hidden anymore, Mom. It's not buried under all those layers of resentment and self-loathing. It's right here—in my mouth, in my head, and in my heart. I want you to take it. I want you to use it in whatever journey you're facing. I want you to take it off my hands thirty-six years too late. I don't want it locked inside me anymore."

She took a long breath and fell silent. She'd said all she had to say, a lifetime's worth. She let her head roll to one side so that half her face was exposed to the room around her. She opened one eye, saw the wall of bedcovers nearby, the nightstand light, the gray walls and ceiling. Then she felt it, the other half of her face still in the covers pressed now against something more than just sheets and blankets, pressed against a firm wall, rising and falling ever so slightly—her mother's side.

And then a word or what she thought was a word, from beyond her— _Penni_. She accepted that weight, no longer with resentment.

8

So they ended the conference call by agreeing that Penni would return to Boston and her familiar support system (not to mention her husband) in place there; and that Jodie would accompany her on the flight and as long as needed thereafter. Outside in the waiting room Penni sat down and began checking possible flights on her phone.

Jodie laughed and said, "Haven't you learned anything? You've got to let the man of the house do his thing!" She called Dave, summarized the results of their doctor's visit, then said, "So we need two one-way tickets to Boston for this afternoon. Could you help with that?"

Dave said, "I'll check into it" and hung up.

Jodie turned to her sister. "Done."

"When did you learn that trick?"

"Dad-Dave has been helping me on the Q-T since I was a junior in high school and he bailed me out of jail and got the charges dropped without Mom ever knowing. Ever since I've turned to him whenever I have a problem he can help fix."

"I never knew."

"You weren't supposed to."

They were halfway home when Jodie's phone buzzed.

"You're set," Dave said. "Two business class seats leaving at 1:35 and arriving at 3:12. I've got you on the window, but you and Penni can switch if you want."

Jodie smiled and gave a thumbs up to Penni with her hand still on the wheel.

Penni rubbed her fingers together in the sign of cash.

Jodie shook her head but asked for her sister's sake. "What do we owe you?"

Dave laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

"Penni wants to know."

"Tell Penni I paid with credit-card miles."

"Will do, Boss," she said, then added, "Thanks, Dave."

He responded with his standard line in such situations, "What are stepdads for?"

Back at the house they repacked and made up their respective rooms. It didn't take long. They ate an early lunch. Leah would take them to the airport. They checked their flight's schedule and everything was showing on-time. The weather was clear up and down the east coast. Hopefully there would be no delays and the flight would be smooth. Penni's cramps had steadily subsided since Jodie's massage in the wee hours before dawn followed by all the walking and activity. She theorized that her lower back had been strained by the sitting in the cramped seat the day before and that the cramps had been muscle spasms unrelated to her pregnancy—or so they all hoped.

After lunch the three women went in to see Brooke. Dave had got her up and filled her in on the day's developments as he gave her the daily sponge bath, changed her into a fresh powder-blue sweatsuit, sat her up on several pillows, and gave her the standard high-protein milkshake. Her hair still looked good from the day before but the make-up had all been washed away. Her skin was clean with a light sheen from the moisturizing lotion, but it was a dull gray color, its flatness accentuated by the contrast with her bright and active eyes.

Penni led the way followed by Jodie then Leah. She crossed quickly to the bed and bent best she could and hugged her mom and kissed her forehead. The action caused a sharp pain in her back and she winced as she stood back upright.

"Do I look that bad?" Brooke asked.

Penni shook her head vehemently. "It's my back, Mom. I don't know if it's the baby coming or just sore muscles." She slumped into the near chair.

Brooke smiled. "It's both, dear. Take it from one with a little experience in the baby-toting department—you'll survive even though sometimes you may doubt it."

Penni nodded thanks. Sitting there staring at her conscious mother she confronted for the first time the implications of her decision to return to Boston—this likely would be the last time she would see her mother alive. That understanding caused her face to blanch and tears to rise in her eyes. Maybe she should reverse her decision and take her chances with staying here.

Jodie slid between her sister and the bed and bent to kiss her mother. As she rose tears were in her eyes also. Leah pushed the other chair up close and urged Jodie to sit beside her sister. Once seated Jodie's hand found Penni's and squeezed it tightly.

Leah found Brooke's right foot beneath the covers and pressed it, signed _I love you_ in their schoolgirls' long-ago symbol—the shape of a heart quickly pierced by the shaft of a finger's arrow—then pulled up the third chair and sat near the end of the bed.

"Well isn't this a fine 'how do you do?' Get myself all gussied up and all I see are tears!"

Jodie wiped away hers with the back of her hand. "Sorry, Mom. You look great. It's nice to see you awake."

"Was I napping yesterday?"

Penni nodded.

"A girl has to get her beauty sleep, though I guess it didn't work."

"You look beautiful, Mom," Penni said. "Do you feel O.K.?"

"With all of you here, I feel wonderful! But enough about me. How do you feel?" she asked Penni.

"Pregnant."

"It's a bitch, isn't it? But it'll be over soon enough, then the real fun begins!"

"Hopefully, not too soon."

"You're a martyr for saying so."

"A few more weeks in there at least."

"You're made for motherhood, dear."

"I'll hope you're right."

"Have I ever been wrong?"

Jodie laughed then covered her mouth. "Sorry."

Brooke fixed her eldest child in a steady gaze. "Are you ever going to settle down?"

"I'm back in Seattle, Mom. It's my home."

"I mean with someone."

Jodie returned her mother's frank stare. "I'm working on it."

"Don't wait till it's too late."

"I won't," Jodie said simply.

Brooke turned her attention to Leah and smiled.

"What?" Leah asked.

"If you ever get in trouble, call your aunt," she said to her daughters. "She has all the answers."

"I wouldn't claim that."

Brooke looked back to her. "All my life."

Leah tried to skirt the deep chasm that suddenly opened before her. "That's a lot of answers," she said with a shallow chuckle.

Brooke smiled. "Just one, and it's transferrable."

All the air went out of the room and they were suddenly five people floating through eternity, linked forever.

Then they were back.

Penni bent and kissed her mom.

Brooke pressed her lips to her daughter's ear. "Take care of my granddaughter."

Penni nodded.

Jodie bent and kissed her mom.

"And you take care of my baby," she whispered.

From the foot of the bed, Leah, able to read Brooke's lips even if she couldn't hear the words, signed in their adolescent miming— _Whom do I take care of?_ She ended the signing as if cradling a baby in her arms.

Brooke signed back— _All of us_ —letting her eyes circle the room and all therein.

Restart

They arrived in Boston safely and on time and with no major discomfort for Penni, who took the window seat in the spacious first-class cabin and spent much of the flight staring at the ocean merging to sky passing by to their right. Jodie eased back the seat and closed her eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep as the emotional and physical turmoil of the last few days finally caught up with her, here at twenty-three thousand feet. Her hand never left Penni's, seemed now melded to that appendage after all these years, taking consolation as much as giving it.

When Penni squeezed Jodie's hand to wake her as the other passengers began to stand and pull their carry-ons down from the luggage bin above, Jodie grinned sheepishly. "I never sleep on planes."

"You'd earned the rest."

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine! So much better than yesterday. Guess it's the company."

"Therapeutic for us both."

Randall was waiting for them in the car at the _Arrivals_ curb. After greeting his wife he gave Jodie a long hug. "Thank you so much for staying with her."

"Making up for lost time."

He drove them to their condo where Penni proudly showed off the four rooms to her sister, ending the tour at the elaborately decorated nursery. She'd recently added painted, hanging, and stuffed animals to her painted and stenciled walls of vegetation and painted ceiling of pre-dawn sky.

Jodie stood in the doorway with her mouth agape, utterly dazzled by the sight. "It's a whole world in here!" she said finally, with a quiet voice as if it were a secret—their secret world.

"That's the hope."

"I had no idea you had such creativity."

"I didn't—until I was pregnant. Then I realized how narrow my world had been."

"But not your daughter's."

"Not if I can help it."

Randall ordered Chinese take-out and they had an early dinner. He'd swapped shifts with another resident so he'd be available to pick them up at the airport and would have to leave shortly to cover the overnight shift.

"Good," Penni said. "That way Jodie doesn't have to sleep on the couch. She can sleep with me."

"You sure?" Jodie asked.

"Unless you're afraid I'll keep you awake. If so, you can have the bed and I'll sleep on the couch."

Jodie rolled her eyes. "You won't keep me awake."

"And tomorrow we can look into flights to get you back to Mom."

"I'll turn Dave loose on it," Jodie said with a smile.

"He'll get it done in style."

"You're sure you don't need me to stay?"

"I'm fine now that I'm home."

2

Jodie was shocked awake by a scream that merged into a long low moan. She had no idea where she was. She slowly extended her hand in the direction of the moan and encountered first a puddle of warm liquid then a hand balled into a tight fist strangling the sheet and blanket. She followed that arm upwards to a shoulder and neck also in violent contraction and finally an open mouth—the source of that moan—and a cheek streaked with tears.

"It hurts!" that mouth shrieked around her hand.

Jodie leapt into action. She sat up in bed, found the bedside lamp and switched it on. Penni was on her back gripping the bedcovers with two balled fists, her mouth twisted in pain, her eyes terrified.

"What's the matter?" Jodie asked in a voice that tried to find the middle ground between urgency and calm.

"I've lost it!" Penni screamed.

"Lost what?"

"The baby!"

Jodie remembered the wetness she'd felt on waking. She looked toward Penni's torso. Her knees were raised under the sheets and her legs spread apart. Jodie did not want to look under the covers, but she knew she had to. She pulled the covers back to expose Penni's humped abdomen peeking out between her pajama top and the stretched elastic of the bottoms. She lifted the bottoms at Penni's waist.

The first thing she saw was that there was no newborn baby there, either gasping for breath or dead. Then she saw a large puddle of clear liquid soaking the sheets around Penni's butt—clear, not red. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then she saw the red liquid soaking its way from Penni's crotch into the pale yellow fabric.

Penni saw the red also. "No!" she screamed, then threw her head back and closed her eyes tight.

Jodie didn't know what to do. She was paralyzed by her own fears and confusion. She had no training for this. Why was she here?

Then some switch was thrown inside her and she moved into action. She leaned over Penni and put her hands on either side of her face. "Penni, look at me."

Penni opened her eyes.

Those eyes were so terrified Jodie was briefly frozen again—but this time in shock and concern for her sister. But those same eyes called her to continue, to do what she had to do. "I've got to pull down your pajama bottoms. Can you help me do that?"

Penni cringed and shook her head.

"Penni," Jodie said firmly. "I need to check you out. You need to help me."

Penni's eyes began to steady. She nodded slowly then winced in pain as another spasm moved outward from her abdomen.

Jodie released her sister's cheeks then swung her feet to the floor and stood. She went around to the foot of the bed and peeled back all the covers and threw them to one side. She was relieved to see that there wasn't any more blood beyond that soaking through the crotch of the pajamas. She reached up to pull off the pajama bottoms. She took a chance and lifted her eyes to look at her sister's. Those eyes were still frightened but they'd at least found a place of attachment—Jodie's face.

Jodie offered a nod of assurance then said, "Can you lift your butt?"

Penni did so.

Jodie slid off the pajama bottoms and her sister's panties. They were both soaked in blood but it wasn't dripping from the cloth. That was a good sign. And Penni's genitals and groin were surprisingly clean. A narrow line of blood was leaking from her vagina, but that looked like it had begun to coagulate. She looked up at Penni with a relief that was both genuine and purposeful. "The baby is still safely inside you. Your water broke. There is some blood but it has stopped."

Penni nodded slowly, her eyes starting to lose their fear.

Jodie continued. "We need to get you to a hospital."

Penni nodded and reached for the phone on the nightstand. She punched Randall's name from the pop-up directory then handed the phone to Jodie as a new contraction claimed her body and her concentration.

Jodie listened to the ringing on the line as she watched her sister's exposed and bulging abdomen convulse in a spasm that moved upward and downward simultaneously. So violent was the convulsion that she feared blood would again start pouring from Penni, the hemorrhage reopened. She reached up with her free hand and clutched Penni's fist closed around the bottom sheet. She held her breath as Randall's recorded voice came on the phone, requesting that she leave a message and promising a prompt response. Just as she started to leave her message, Penni's animal scream echoed off the bedroom's walls. She figured that would get Randall's attention better than any words from her. After Penni's scream faded to a series of groaning pants, she added her cellphone number to the message and closed with, "I'm calling an ambulance."

She continued to hold Penni's hand as she punched 9-1-1 into the phone. "Premature labor and internal bleeding," she told the male dispatcher. "Thirty-four weeks, I think."

Penni, whose face had slowly relaxed toward exhaustion, nodded.

"Yes, thirty-four weeks." Then she said to his next question, "No other known complications."

Penni nodded affirmation.

Jodie offered her the phone.

She shook her head vehemently.

Jodie repeated the address the dispatcher had on file with the cellphone's number.

Penni nodded then began to weep silent tears.

That was more than Jodie could stand. The dispatcher wanted her to stay on the line, but Jodie said no. "I need to tend to my sister. Send help." She hung up, set the phone on the nightstand, then sat on the edge of the bed.

Penni rolled her head into her sister's lap and hid her face in Jodie's pajamas. "I'm so scared. It hurts so bad," she said into Jodie's thigh.

Jodie almost broke down then. She was glad Penni couldn't see her face. She took several deep breaths as she patted her sister's head and brushed her hair with her fingers. Then she took a deep breath and eased Penni back so she could see her eyes. "You are going to be O.K. Your baby is going to be O.K. We'll do this together."

Penni nodded slowly, her chin lightly bumping Jodie's leg.

"The ambulance will be here shortly. Let's get you ready."

Penni made a move as if to stand but fell backward in the effort.

"No, Penni! Stay where you are. And let's raise your butt to keep it above your heart." She took her pillow and slid it under Penni's backside as she lifted Penni's legs with her free hand. The pillow would get all wet now, but what did that matter? She reconsidered then went into the bathroom and came back with two towels and folded them together and slid them under Penni's butt on top of the pillow to catch any additional leakage.

Penni watched her sister's every move and responded to every gesture obediently.

Jodie looked up from setting the towels. Her sister's rapt gaze made her laugh. "I'm just Jodie, Penni—not some sort of angel!"

That brought a grin to Penni's eyes but she said nothing.

"We need to get you dressed. What do you want to wear?"

Penni said, "In the closet, top shelf on the left."

Jodie looked in their small walk-in. There was a soft-sided overnight bag already filled with birthing supplies. On top of it was a new sweat suit in—thank God—burgundy. Jodie pulled down the bag and clothes, set the bag beside the bed, and helped her sister pull off the pajama tops and slip on the sweat suit top. She had no bra but what did that matter under the circumstances? Jodie looked at Penni's naked legs and abdomen and knew the first thing the paramedics would want to do is check that area. Nonetheless, she slid the sweatpants onto her legs and pulled the elastic waist all the way to Penni's ballooning midsection.

With Penni once again fully clothed, both sisters exhaled sighs of relief—one step completed.

"What about your feet?" Jodie asked.

Penni smiled and pointed toward the bag.

Jodie looked inside. Sitting atop an assortment of supplies (including a paperback birthing manual) was the pair of bunny slippers Jodie had given her sister as a gag (well, maybe not completely) bridal shower gift with a card that read _Don't want you to be_ _barefoot_ _and pregnant!_ and delivered via parcel post (she'd not attended the shower). Jodie pulled them out and slipped them on her sister's pale feet. They fit just fine despite the swelling.

The EMS personnel—a burly middle-aged man and a thin efficient woman no older than Penni—arrived. Jodie let them in while telling Penni to stay in bed. They did an initial assessment and exam with Penni on the bed and able to answer most of the questions until a severe contraction caused her to grit her teeth then release a long moan. They brought up the stretcher and transferred Penni with surprising ease and no apparent discomfort to her.

As Jodie turned out the lights and grabbed Penni's birthing bag and her soft-sided purse, the man said, "Next of kin only."

"I'm her sister."

"Her husband is next of kin."

"He's not here."

"Next of kin only in the ambulance. That's the rule."

"But I don't have a car to follow."

"Get a cab—Boston Medical, Emergency Dock."

Penni raised herself on her elbows. "She goes or I don't."

The man stopped at the condo's front door and started to turn the gurney. "Suit yourself."

The woman pressed the brake on her end of stretcher. "Let her go, Jack. A sister is as good as a husband in my book. Who will know?"

Jack pasted a scowl on his face but chose not to fight. "The demerits go in your file if they do an audit."

"They won't audit a premature labor."

"It's yours if they do, Tammy."

She smiled and touched Penni's hand above the blanket with her hand inside a latex-free sterile glove. "Lie down and concentrate on controlling your contractions. Your sister will stay with you."

But Penni didn't lie down. "We need to go to Mass. General. That's where my obstetrician practices and where my husband is a resident."

This time it was Tammy that frowned. "Sorry, Penni. We're districted to Boston Med, and there's no bending that rule."

Penni began to cry.

Jodie stepped forward and took her hand. "I'll text Randall the change, and I'll call your obstetrician."

Tammy added. "We need to get you to a hospital and get a monitor on the fetus—on your baby."

"My daughter," Penni said firmly though she still didn't know.

"Yes, your daughter," Tammy said. "We need to find out how she's doing in all this excitement."

Penni looked to Jodie. "You won't leave me?"

Jodie said, "Not even to go to the bathroom."

Tammy said, "We've got a urinal in the truck—I use it all the time."

"Empty, I hope," Jodie said.

"And rinsed," Tammy said as she released the gurney's brake.

Jack shook his head and muttered "Women" as he took the lead and headed for the building's stairs.

The ten-minute ride to the hospital was surreal to both sisters. Penni closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing in an effort to reduce the pain of the contractions. Jodie continued to hold her sister's hand from a seat on a side bench but chose not to look at Penni's face once her eyes had closed, a visage that reminded her all too vividly of her mother's unconscious face just two nights ago. Penni looked so much like Mom. How had she not noticed till now? She looked out the ambulance's window slits at the buildings flashing blood red as they raced past, trying her best to let that lurid scene erase the more risky image lodged now in her heart.

3

At the Emergency Dock, Penni was transferred to another gurney and whisked away by an orderly, leaving Jodie to nod thanks to Tammy and offer a short wave before jogging after her sister.

The orderly wheeled Penni through a crowded hall and into a shallow cubicle set off by only a wraparound curtain that ended two feet above the tile floor. After ten minutes and two more huffing contractions (at least the breathing routine helped stifle the awful moans) and Jodie's text to Randall and message to the answering service for Penni's obstetrics practice, a nurse came in and hooked up monitors for both Penni and the fetus. The fetal monitor immediately issued an audible alarm that frightened both sisters until the nurse switched it off. She made light of the incident, saying it was probably a start-up glitch. Penni accepted the explanation as she turned her attention to the start of another contraction; but Jodie knew the nurse was lying, could see from where she sat one of the numbers on the monitor flashing red. The nurse slipped out the end of the curtain after saying the doctor would be with them shortly.

The ER resident, a short man of South Asian ethnicity, took a look at the fetal monitor and Penni's chart called up on his digital tablet and said in a slightly accented, matter-of-fact tone, "We need to get the baby out."

The sisters looked to each other then back to the doctor. They were all within arm's reach of each other in the cubicle.

Jodie said, "The baby is coming out."

"We can't wait. We need to do a C-section as soon as we can clear an O-R."

"What's wrong?" Penni asked, surprisingly calm in a momentary lull in her contractions.

"There's an anomaly in the fetal heartbeat that requires prompt intervention."

Jodie thought of her mother's complaints about medical jargon and euphemistic language. "Why can't she deliver normally?"

"She can, but the stress on the fetus could be terminal. I'll schedule the room; the nurse will be back to prep for surgery." Without another word, the doctor left.

Suddenly in a surreal bubble of isolation—not only in the cubicle but also on the Emergency floor and in the hospital, the city, the whole universe—the two sisters stared at each other in a silence born of shock and helplessness. They felt at the mercy of a vast creature far bigger than the resident or the hospital or pregnancy or labor or childbirth. They felt at the mercy of fate, and a crushing one at that. How were they to survive?

Then Penni's hand slowly tightened its grip around Jodie's fingers, tighter and tighter and tighter. Her breaths came faster and faster, shallower and shallower, until she unleashed a long low moan that was more an animal growl than a human sound, the recalling of some primordial bellow of defiance roared out over a long since erased African savannah. Her whole body clenched into a single spasm surrounded by this groan. She raised her knees and spread her legs. Jodie released her sister's hand, pulled back the sheet covering her lower body, and slid down the sweatpants.

There was fresh blood trickling out of her dilated vagina. And behind that blood, pushing it and mucous and clear liquid out in front, was the crown of a dark-haired head. Jodie had never seen anything so gross or so beautiful in all her life. But all she _felt_ was life or at least a chance at it, wrestled from the jaws of fear and death.

Penni's roar slowly subsided as she took a series of rapid breaths. Jodie took that pause as an opportunity to glance around the end of the curtain in search of the nurse or the doctor—any nurse or doctor. But all she saw were patients and family members lining the walls of the hall on gurneys or sitting in chairs or leaning against the walls. The nearest was a black teenager with a bandaged head sitting either asleep or passed out just to her right with an elderly black woman standing stoically by his side.

Jodie looked at the woman with desperate eyes. "My sister is giving birth. I can't leave her. Will you please find a nurse or doctor to help us?"

The woman stared impassively at Jodie, then slowly, almost imperceptibly nodded.

"Thank you," Jodie said, but didn't have time to watch to be sure the woman understood her request and made good on her nod. Behind her Penni's moan started to ramp up again, only shaped this time into a word, the only word she knew just then—"Jo-die!"

By the time the black woman found a nurse and all but dragged her back to the sisters' cubicle and the nurse slid though the loose end of the curtain, she found Jodie with her hands and wrists and forearms covered in blood and mucous and uterine fluid, Penni panting rapidly with her eyes shut and her face covered in perspiration, and a five pound newborn girl resting atop the burgundy sweatshirt covering the patient's stomach, the umbilical cord still running from the baby's naval into her mother's birth canal.

Jodie looked at the nurse. "I didn't have anything to cut the cord."

The nurse flashed a smile before stepping forward to confirm that the baby was breathing, her eyes open and responding to light, and her heart beating. Then she unlocked a drawer in a nearby rolling supply chest and unsheathed surgical scissors from their sterile wrapper. "Would you like to do the honor?" she asked Jodie.

Jodie shook her head vehemently. "I can't stand the sight of blood," she said with no hint of irony.

The doctor returned just as the nurse had finished cleaning up the baby as best she could with the limited supplies on hand then wrapping her in two clean white towels off the shelf. At first the doctor looked alarmed but then managed a thin smile once he'd confirmed that this newborn hadn't died on his shift. He told the nurse to get Neo-natal down here ASAP with an incubator cradle.

The nurse, who was holding the baby, looked to hand her off to Penni; but Penni's eyes were closed. She then looked to the doctor who was scrolling through his digital clipboard. Finally she looked to Jodie, who had used hand sanitizer to clean her arms and hands and was wiping them with the cloths left over from cleaning the baby. The nurse offered the wrapped bundle to her.

Jodie looked up in surprise. "She's Penni's," she said in protest.

The nurse gestured to Penni dozing or unconscious between them then handed the baby across. "She's yours for now."

Jodie accepted the bundle, startled by how light and fragile she was after all the commotion she'd caused entering into this world. She squatted and cradled the baby on the stretcher next to Penni's head. She nudged her sister with her elbow.

Penni opened her eyelids sleepily.

"Look who decided to join our party," Jodie whispered.

Penni rolled her head and looked at her daughter's creased and flushed face, her eyes shut, from two inches away. "Looks like she's been through a battle," Penni said hoarsely.

"Welcome to life."

"Let's hope it gets better."

The doctor interrupted their private sharing. "Congratulations, Mrs. Redmon. A neo-natal nurse will be here shortly to tag your daughter and take her to the nursery on the third floor. They will check her out there and report the results to you."

Penni nodded.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm tired. I just want to go to sleep."

"Yes. You've been through a lot. You've lost some blood. We'll prep you for a transfusion here but we'll get you checked into maternity before starting it. Other than that, all your numbers are good. You did great, Mrs. Redmon."

"We did," Penni whispered.

"Yes, of course." The doctor slipped around the curtain, almost running into a nurse rolling an incubator cradle up to the cubicle.

4

Jodie sat next to the hospital bed watching the purple plasma slowly drain into her sleeping sister's arm. This experience of watching blood flow into Penni's body was more frightening than that of watching it flow out. Perhaps this was only because now she had the time to reflect on the situation, wasn't immersed in the struggle to save her sister and her niece.

But she guessed there was more to her disquiet than just circumstances. That life-restoring liquid had been drawn from someone's arm maybe nearby or faraway, recently or some time ago, checked and double-checked and barcoded and safely inventoried to be prescribed and drawn from storage and labeled for release and billing and hung on this stainless steel IV tree and connected to the shunt already inserted and taped to Penni's arm to boost her hemoglobin count and thereby her body's ability to transport dissolved oxygen to all the living tissue within her, that was her. The clinical order and structure of the process on this side, the reinsertion of blood, was so radically different from the process on the other side, the loss of that same blood, as to be two separate realities. And while she might one day learn the order and structure of life on this side, the only one she knew and therefore the only one she was comfortable with was the disorder and randomness and sometimes chaos of life on the other side, where life poured out along with blood from her sister's womb, from around her emerging baby's head. She'd learned long ago to be comfortable with chaos. Tidy order and planning would take some training.

Randall had finally got her messages and rushed over shortly after they'd been moved up to Maternity. He'd stopped by the room, kissed his sleeping wife's lips then forehead, and checked her vitals indicated on the monitor. "She's going to be fine," he said, to which Jodie had replied simply, "I know." He thanked his sister-in-law for tending his wife through the crisis, though his eyes narrowed just a bit when he'd said "I'm told you delivered the baby." Jodie nodded and laughed. "But don't ask me to do it again." Randall had replied, "I won't" before rushing off to find his daughter and check on her condition.

As Jodie drifted off into an open-eyed slumber of her own, her phone chirped its signal for an incoming text. Part of her, maybe most of her, wanted to ignore the message. Hadn't she done enough for one day (and it wasn't even nine in the morning)? But some other part of her, newborn as her niece two floors below, accepted the obligation to pick up the text. She pulled the phone out of her bag and saw _New Message from Leah's Cell_ posted on the screen. She suddenly realized she'd not yet shared news of the birth with her mother or aunt. Had Randall thought to call them? She hoped that would be the message— _Congratulations! Well done! Send pics!—_ but somehow knew it wasn't. She opened the text.

Brooke worse. Don't alarm Penni. Call when you can. Love Leah.

5

Leah woke in the early hours of that morning. The room was dark and unfamiliar. But she'd left a nightlight on in the bathroom and left that door open a crack, allowing just enough light into the bedroom for her to identify her surroundings and recall where she was and why.

Then the question was what had waked her. She had her processors off, so it wasn't a sound; and the room was apparently empty, so no hand had roused her. (She'd reminded Dave earlier that evening that if he needed her during the night, he'd have to come to the room and shake her or, better yet, turn on the light, which is how Whitfield usually woke her so as not to frighten her.)

She lay in the dim imposed stillness of her congenital condition and slowly worked her way backward through the seconds leading up to her waking. She somehow knew she'd not been waked by a dream or other internal alarm. Her mind was clear from the residue of a dream and her heartbeat calm and steady, no inner fright or shock. Had there been a peel of thunder or other vibration of the bed sufficient to wake her? But the weather outside was clear and cold, chance of a first frost by morning; and if something had rattled the house, it was gone now. All was completely calm.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and slid her feet into her satin slippers then pulled on her paisley print long satin robe. By then her eyes had fully adjusted to the nightlight's dim glow; so when she stood and headed for the door to the hall, she didn't need to turn on a light. The hall and the stairs and the landing at the bottom all had darkness-activated safety lights that Dave had installed years ago when the kids were still living at home and had switched back on when Brooke got sick and the kids and Leah started visiting regularly. So Leah had no trouble navigating the long upstairs hall or making her way down to the main floor and across the foyer to the master bedroom wing. In that hall she passed the study's open door and glanced in there to see Dave asleep on the pullout sofa-bed, curled into a fetal ball with his arm wrapped around his face as to fend off an assault out of the night.

She continued down the hall to the open door to the master bedroom. She glanced around the doorframe and saw Brooke sitting against the headboard in her wide marriage bed smiling directly at Leah. "I've been waiting for you all night," she said.

Leah stepped into the room. "I didn't know you were expecting me."

"I always expect you, Leah. You know that."

Leah walked up to the foot of the bed. "I'm not sure I do. We've been apart a long time."

"What's separation to us, Leah? What's time? You remember when I went off to college?"

Leah nodded. "I thought it was the end of the world."

"And what happened?"

"We grew closer."

"What's separation between us? What's time?"

"Not much, I guess."

"Nothing compared with love."

"No."

"But there's something I have to tell you."

Leah laughed. Whenever Brooke led off with that line, you knew it was going to be good. "What?"

"It's about your affair with Johnny Appleseed."

Leah frowned. She didn't like the word "affair." It made her feel cheap. But don't even try to get Brooke to mince her words. "What about it?"

"Have fun long as you need to, but end it before it's too late."

"What if it's already too late?"

"Come on, Leah. Don't lie to yourself. You're always wanting to make normal needs into something noble or pure. You're having an affair! You needed a young attractive stud to adore your body and tell you that you were beautiful in the best way someone can tell you that you are beautiful. And it's great, Leah! I'm so happy for you!"

Leah waited for her blush to die down then said, "But—."

"But don't make it into something it isn't. It's not a lifelong romance. It's not true love. It's you being selfish and normal for once in your life, and that's O.K. But sooner or later the old Leah will wake up and wonder how you came to be so self-serving and superficial."

"I'm not self-serving and superficial."

"I know. Believe me, I know, better than anyone. You're a caregiver. That's why you have to be ready to end your affair quietly and before anyone gets hurt."

"It's too late. I've betrayed Whitfield. I've fallen in love with Billy. I think he loves me."

Brooke laughed. "My dear little sister—always turning simple desires into noble motives. Billy loves what is between your legs offered without obligation or commitment. The same can be said of your feelings toward him—sex, Leah: touch, the thrill of it; and that's O.K.! As for Whitfield, he's devoted to you; he'll never leave you; but he's not faithful. So check your guilt at the door. But don't lose sight of who you are. You—are—a—care—giver!"

"But I won't have you to care for," she said dry-eyed, a simple assertion.

"I know."

"Or Jasper."

"Jasper will always need you."

"He's got a string of girls waiting to care for him. I'm far down on the list."

Brooke laughed. "Welcome to parenthood!"

"So who?"

"Whom, dear. And you're supposed to be the English major."

"Whom?"

"Take care of your husband, Leah. He's trying to deny his aging, but that can only last so long. He'll need you sooner than either of you thinks."

"Jodie?"

Brooke smiled. "I've always considered Jodie half yours, sometimes a lot more than half."

"Why?"

"You gave me permission to start her."

"I did not!"

Brooke smiled. "Yes, you did. You maybe didn't think it; but you knew in your heart it was the best way to let me grow up, and you too. It was either that or the two of us live together the rest of our lives."

"You went to Shawnituck."

"You went to Davidson. We separated. Jodie's birth guaranteed the fact."

Leah stood silent.

"But then we shared the cause of our break, and we still do."

"So care for her once you're gone?"

"I would have thought so, but you've done too good a job. She's ready, finally, to stand on her own."

Leah knew this was true but had denied it to herself, not able to face one more loss amidst so many. "And who cares for me once you're gone?"

"I'll never be gone, Leah. When you see Jodie's eyes, know that I am watching. When you hear Penni's voice, know that I'm speaking. My daughters love their aunt because I love her, and they will take care of her long as she needs them."

"And who takes care of you?"

Brooke released a smile that became a brilliant light. "Already done" were the words or sound or feeling that radiated outward with that light, within it. Leah leaned back from the onslaught, instinctively raised her hand to the side of her head, found no processor there—just her silken blond hair, burning her fingertips.

6

Jodie shivered the length of her body in the uncomfortable hospital chair. Life and her sister's plight had somehow combined to temporarily free her of the burden of her mother's grave condition. Leah's text ended that respite.

She looked up at Penni resting peacefully, seeming again at just that moment the vulnerable child she had always wanted to love but never quite found the generosity and selflessness to do so. Today maybe, perhaps already. But how to protect her from this news about Mom? How to save her from heartbreak? She suddenly understood acutely the travail of caring.

She quietly rose and stepped into the nearby bathroom and closed the door.

"Jodie!" Leah exclaimed with an unprecedented mix of relief and anguish (or maybe that was just in Jodie's mind).

"Leah."

"I'm so glad I caught you!"

"My phone's always on and nearby. What's happened?"

"Brooke was unresponsive when Dave went in this morning. He called Davey then ran up to my room and got me up. Together we tried to get some sign of life but nothing worked. He wanted to call 9-1-1 but they would've taken her to the hospital and Brooke specifically forbade that. So he called the hospice nurse while I tried to find a pulse or see some sign of breathing. She was cool Jodie but not cold and her muscles and joints were still flexible. At one point I lay my head over her heart and I thought I felt a slight movement but couldn't tell if it was a beat or some muscle contraction. At the nurse's suggestion, Dave brought a hand mirror and set it next to her nose and mouth. We both thought we saw a flicker of moisture on the glass. Then Dave went a little crazy, doing his version of CPR with tears running down his cheeks while trying to push air into her lungs and help her heart beat through compressions on her chest.

"It was awful, Jodie! He wasn't helping Brooke and he was working himself into such a state. It seemed like a desecration. I finally grabbed his hands from her chest and pulled him off the bed. Just then the doorbell rang and gave him something to do. He went to let the nurse in while I straightened up the bed. Brooke was still unmoving but her flesh seemed a little brighter for all of Dave's exertions.

"The nurse found a pulse but it took her a while. And we confirmed that she was breathing about once a minute by sticking the mirror in the freezer then holding it in front of her mouth. Her blood pressure is so low it doesn't even register on the nurse's cuff. The nurse said her heart may have stopped and been revived by some combination of our numerous efforts, or it may have been barely beating the whole time. In either case, there was probably brain and organ damage. The hospital could prop her up by artificial means, but Brooke's written and verbal instructions prohibited such an action. 'So what do we do?' Dave asked. The nurse responded, 'Get everyone who needs to see her to come, and fast.'

"Dave's legs gave way then. Fortunately Davey had just arrived and was standing nearby and caught him and helped him over to the chair. 'It's alright, Dad,' he said. 'Mom's at peace.' The nurse left to get a more sensitive heart monitor. Davey called Brent and Garrett. They're coming this afternoon."

"And you're in charge of contacting the girls," Jodie said.

"I told Davey I'd handle it. How's Penni?"

Jodie took a deep breath. "Well, five pounds three ounces lighter as of 5:52 this morning."

"What?"

"Actually, quite a bit more than that if you add in the weight of the placenta and the blood and fluids she lost—probably about ten or twelve pounds lighter."

"Jodie, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying you're a great aunt, Leah; and Mom's a grandmother. Penni gave birth to a baby girl in the Emergency Room earlier this morning."

Leah thought _I should be shocked but am not—how can that be?_ "Is she O.K.?"

"She's fine. She's getting a transfusion for the blood she lost and is sleeping right now. I'm talking to you from the bathroom so not to disturb her."

"And the baby?"

"She seemed fine when they took her off to the neo-natal floor. Randall's down there now checking on her." Just then Jodie recalled the emergency room doctor's earlier concerns, and the flashing red light of the fetal monitor. She'd suppressed those memories till that moment, and chose not to share them with Leah.

"How are you doing?"

"Other than no sleep, riding in an ambulance for the first time, and delivering a baby in a hospital cubicle, I'm doing fine." She could laugh then, at the absurdity of her statement and the experience that underlay it.

"What?"

Jodie summarized the events of the previous six hours, concluding by saying, "At least our drama has a happy ending."

"That's amazing, Jodie. Thank you for being there. Hugs and kisses to you both, and the new one."

"Likewise to you, Leah."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll check into flights after I've talked to Randall."

"And Penni?"

"We'll tell her when she wakes up—somehow."

"Good luck. Let me know your plans once you decide."

"Leah?" Jodie said suddenly.

"I'm still here."

"Do you think Mom knows you're there?"

"I don't know. I'll tell her about the baby in case she does."

"Could you do one other thing?"

"What?"

"Could you hold her right pinkie finger firmly in your hand till it feels like the two skins are one? It's how we would fall asleep together when I was little. Maybe she will feel like I'm there."

Leah feared her voice would falter, but it held. "I'll do it, Jodie; but she already knows you're here."

"I never wanted to let her go."

"You didn't. I love you. Take care of everyone up there."

"And you, down there."

Jodie ended the call and looked up to the reflection staring back at her in the bathroom's mirror. She wondered who that person was, and what kind of world she'd landed in.

As she stepped into the hospital room and quietly shut the door behind her, a voice asked, "How's Brooke?"

Jodie jumped. She turned to see Penni looking at her from the hospital bed, the head raised at a slight angle. "How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"About Mom."

"I was asking about my baby—Brooke Catherine, named after her two grandmothers. What about Mom?"

Jodie returned to the chair next to the bed. She took Penni's hand. She noticed that the plasma bag was empty, lined now with only a transparent residue, more brown than red in the room's fluorescent light. "Mom's unresponsive. Her blood pressure dropped and they can't bring it back up."

"The hospital?"

"Mom left clear instructions—no hospitalization, no resuscitation."

Penni nodded. "You've got to go back."

"I'll check into flights."

"You've got to go! Tell her about her granddaughter. Tell her she needs to hang on to see her namesake."

"I'll try. First we need to find out how the new Brooke is doing."

"Where is she?"

"In the nursery. Randall has gone to check on her."

"He's here?"

Jodie smiled. "I didn't think you were awake. He came by about an hour ago, kissed you then headed off to see his daughter."

Penni managed a smile. "Why's he get to have all the fun without doing any of the work?"

"Guys," Jodie said with a wink.

Just then the door to the room opened. They both looked up expecting a nurse but instead saw Randall. His face was ashen. "Our baby needs surgery." He seemed stunned by each of the words in his sentence.

Penni stared at him, at first unable to grasp the meaning of what he'd said. Then she felt dizzy, as if falling backward into a dark chasm though she was already lying down.

A detached part of Jodie's consciousness glared at Randall and wondered where his med school training in bedside manner had gone, his professional skill in projecting calm into a highly emotional situation. How dare he drop such news on Penni from the doorway and without the slightest attempt to soften the shock? But just as quickly that same side of her saw the man standing in the doorway as, like her sister, little more than a child himself, now being whipsawed by rapid-fire developments he could barely respond to let alone process. Any prior training in objectivity and calm were useless when you were at the center of the storm, the subject of the crisis. She pressed Penni's hand in an attempt at reassurance then jumped up to help steady her brother-in-law, who looked like he was ready to collapse. She put her arm around his waist and guided him to the chair by the bed she'd been sitting in.

Jolted awake by Jodie's touch and called back to reality by her movement, Penni extended her hand—the arm without the transfusion shunt—and slid her fingers between those of Randall's near hand.

Jodie felt she was intruding on a deeply personal and private moment yet knew she couldn't leave. She stood awkwardly beside the foot of the bed and waited for them to find the bottom of their freefall.

Penni found it first. "What kind of surgery?"

"On her heart. She has a malformed valve."

Penni recalled, as from a dream, the ER doctor saying she had to have an immediate C-section. "Is it my fault?" she asked.

Her question jolted Randall out of his despair. "Of course not! How can you say that?"

"Would she have been O.K. if she hadn't come early?"

"No. Coming early might have saved her."

"That's why it happened?"

"I don't know, Penni. What I know is they've identified the problem, the pediatric cardio team says it's fully correctible, and they've got her slotted for surgery this afternoon. I've checked out the surgeon—everyone says he's first-rate."

Penni stared hard at her husband, her eyes fully clear for the first time since telling the EMS team that Jodie had to ride in the ambulance or she wasn't going anywhere. "I can't bear to lose her," she said with steely calm.

"We won't."

"Did you see her?"

He nodded, and a smile slowly spread across his face.

"How's she look?"

There was a knock on the door.

Randall said, "See for yourself." He stood and opened the door.

A neo-natal nurse in a pink sterile smock stood beside a rolling cradle with a Plexiglas cover keeping in the warmth and oxygen-enriched air. Randall helped her roll the cradle into the room, raised the cover, and lifted their daughter dressed in a white cotton shirt, cloth diaper, and white booties. He tucked a small blanket around her then gingerly laid the baby in the natural cradle between Penni's arm and her breast. "Say hi to our daughter."

"Brooke," Penni said, beaming down at her newborn gift.

"Brooke," Randall affirmed.

Jodie calmly observed this touching family scene from the end of the bed. Her eyes eventually focused on Penni's face, turned in profile and looking down at her daughter. And she knew then where she needed to be for the foreseeable future, had known all along.

Restart II

A short woman with a round face, pale skin, intense eyes, and curly black hair cut to her shoulders climbed out of the cab parked at the end of the long drive at the end of the cul-de-sac and told the driver to wait. She walked up the drive, down the long stone walk to the ornate covered entry, and rang the doorbell beside the mahogany door with stained glass upper panels one couldn't see through.

A young man in his late twenties in a wrinkled T-shirt and with uncombed hair and unshaven face opened the door. "Can I help you?"

The woman said, "I need to speak with Leah Monroe."

The young man frowned. "She's busy."

"Ask her please. I'll wait till she's free."

A male voice from inside the house asked, "Who is it?"

The young man turned and said, "Someone wants to see Aunt Leah."

The door opened further and an older man, equally disheveled, stood beside the younger. Even in their disarray, perhaps because of it, it was clear the two were son and father. "Why do you want Leah? Who are you?" the elder asked.

The woman smiled politely and said, "I'll explain to her."

The elder man studied her a moment then said to the younger, "Go ask your aunt to come out here."

The younger man disappeared into the recesses of the grand entry, shaded and dark in contrast to the sunlit front portico.

The father stood in the doorway gazing down on the small woman. Several times he started to say something, but each time his words faded to an unintelligible mumble. But his intense and sad eyes never left her, as if seeking refuge there.

After a few minutes, a tall dignified middle-aged woman came into view beside the man. The woman had blond hair showing a few strands of gray gathered in the back in a loose bun. She was neatly dressed in pressed jeans and floral print blouse and navy canvas flats with no socks. It was clear the man and woman were not related. It was also clear they were quite comfortable with each other despite their divergent degree of refinement in appearance.

"She says she needs to talk to you," the man said. "She won't say who she is or why she's here."

The dignified woman smiled warmly at the visitor, an expression that transformed the sorrow coating her face into something approaching a welcome of lifelong familiarity, though the two had never met.

The visitor said, "Can we speak alone?"

The man said, "What the hell? This is my house."

Leah touched his hand lightly. "It's O.K., Dave. We'll talk on the porch." She stepped out alongside the woman.

Dave glared at the visitor and hesitated for a minute before shaking his head, turning into the foyer, and shutting the door.

The two women stood for a moment in silence. Out in the yard the morning was cool, still retaining some of the previous night's chill that had produced the season's first frost. But in the sun up close to the house, the air was comfortably warm.

The shorter woman with curly black hair asked, "Are you Leah Fulcher Monroe?" though she already knew she was.

Leah managed a chuckle. "Last I checked," she said, then added, "though nothing seems certain lately."

The shorter woman nodded and extended her hand. "I'm—."

"Andrea, Jodie's roommate," Leah said and took the offered hand but to hold it in her upturned palm, not shake it.

The woman nodded. "Andrea Turner. But how did you know?" She left her hand in Leah's gentle grasp.

"Jodie couldn't not be here. After a lifetime of fleeing family responsibility, she's rushing to make amends."

Andrea nodded. "She takes a long time to come around; but when she makes up her mind, watch out!"

Leah laughed. "Amen to that!"

Andrea pressed Leah's palm lightly then withdrew her hand. "But I have two small corrections to make in your summary." She looked at Leah earnestly.

"Yes?"

"I'm here for you, not for your sister or her family. They have each other."

"But I'm not the one in need."

"Jodie thinks you are."

Leah tried to see her way through to the bottom of that but couldn't. The flagstone patio felt like it was shifting beneath her feet. "The other correction?" she whispered in a feeble attempt to right her world.

Andrea took Leah's forearm and gently led her to the teakwood bench to the left of the door. After they'd sat, Andrea waited for Leah's gaze to settle on her then said, "I've graduated from being Jodie's roommate. She wanted to tell you when she was here but never got the chance."

Leah grinned, bringing some of the color back into her face. "I saw the change in Jodie and guessed the reason. I'm so glad for her, and for you. Congratulations."

Andrea actually blushed and looked away. "Thank you."

Leah liked this woman already. "I understand that commitment was a long time in coming."

Andrea shrugged. "I would've waited my whole life for Jodie. And as long as her name was on the lease and her clothes in the laundry, the wait wasn't that difficult."

"LA?"

Andrea looked toward the front yard. "I missed her body desperately." She hesitated, blushed again, looked down. "I mean the sound of her voice, the rattle of her spoon in the cereal bowl, stuff like that."

Leah laughed but compassionately. "It's O.K. Andrea. I know what it is to miss someone's body."

Andrea nodded then continued, looking at Leah for this last. "But the thing is, I think LA was when Jodie began to realize how much she missed me. She needed that break to get perspective on her feelings, on what mattered."

"And Brooke's illness."

Andrea nodded. "Strange how that works."

"Yes."

Out in the road, the cabdriver honked his horn once then got out of the car and waved in their direction.

"Can I stay?" Andrea asked abruptly.

"I'm sure Dave wouldn't mind."

Andrea shook her head once firmly. "No, with you. Can I stay with you, your guest?" she said, then added with a little shrug. "Jodie's orders."

Leah gazed for a long time into the big round eyes of this newcomer angel then nodded slowly, accepted her niece's gift of care.

2

Late that night Andrea was asleep in a sleeping bag laid out on the carpeted floor beside Leah's bed.

Leah had used her ample social grace to smooth Dave's ruffled feathers and her nephews' suspicions, introducing Andrea as Jodie's friend and her acquaintance who had generously offered to help the family "during the girls' required absence." Brent said, "But we don't need any help," to which Leah replied, "In case we do." Dave said, "She can stay in Jodie's room." Andrea answered, "Thank you, but I'll sleep on the floor in Leah's room." When Dave started to protest, she'd said, "I'd be grateful for a sleeping bag if you have one handy." She got two—one to sleep on, one to sleep in.

The women had taken a few turns sitting with the unconscious and ghostly pale and shrunken Brooke—Leah in a chair close to the bed holding her sister's hand, Andrea in a second chair within reach but to the side and slightly behind. Through the afternoon and evening, Leah had let Dave and the boys have their pick of times with Brooke. She didn't want to seem like she was hoarding these last hours with her sister, and truth was she felt in many ways her sister was already gone. The day before, Momma and Father had made their last visit to their eldest daughter, brought up from their coastal cottage by Davey's wife then driven back that evening. Leah had sat with them for an excruciating twenty minutes that seemed like twenty years as Momma laid her head beside Brooke's on the same pillow and whispered unintelligible sounds to her comatose daughter and Father had sat off to one side weeping silent tears that trailed parallel lines across his furrowed cheeks and made two dark circles on either side of the collar of his golf shirt. After they'd left Brooke's room and life, something deep inside Leah had given way; and she felt it was finished. So her several short stints with Andrea as silent companion were respectful but empty of emotion.

Then in the wee hours of the morning, Leah had quietly climbed out of bed without turning on the light, slid on her robe and slippers, and stood silently over her niece's partner stretched out on the floor.

Though she'd not been touched or roused in any overt manner, Andrea sensed a presence and rolled over to see Leah's shaded silhouette backlit by the dim glow of the bathroom's nightlight. The shadow looked very tall and very still, and for a moment Andrea actually wondered if it were an apparition though, as Jodie constantly reminded her, she was the least superstitious person on earth.

But when Leah saw Andrea's full round face and the big dark circles that were her open eyes, she made two deliberate gestures—first pointing toward herself and waving toward the bedroom's door, then pointing toward Andrea and motioning toward the bed's mattress.

Leah had warned Andrea before turning out the light that she'd remove her processors overnight and any communication would have to be by touch and signing. So Andrea, ever a light sleeper and instantly awake, immediately understood Leah's meanings— _I am going down to Brooke; you can sleep on the bed while I am gone._ She nodded understanding of the silent communications from the dark cave of her sleeping bag.

Leah then headed for the bedroom's door, moving so silently and effortlessly that she might have been a ghost floating through the black air. The bedroom door opened then closed with a barely audible click.

Andrea squirmed out of the cozy confines of the sleeping bag's felt-lined recesses and stood in her plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a black long-sleeved t-shirt. But she wasn't destined for the mattress's cushioned sleep. She looked at her feet glowing white against the dark carpet. She'd not thought to pack slippers and wondered if she should dig some socks out of her overnight bag and pull them on. The floors downstairs were sure to be frigid. But she couldn't risk taking the time. She headed out into the hall, barefoot and without a robe in her mismatched sleepwear. She vividly pictured the sleep lines on her face and the disarray of her ever-unruly curly hair. This wasn't how she would have pictured herself on her first night in her lover's parents' house. But then maybe at age thirty-eight she'd given up on ever having a lover who would ask her to stay overnight at her parents' house. So life gave you what it gave you and you took it, embraced it, held on—for dear life!—even if you looked a mess and the marble floors in the entry were freezing against your bare feet.

She passed the hospice nurse coming out of Brooke's room as she entered. Earlier that evening she'd silently bonded with this overnight nurse of approximately her age who, despite being tall and homely, had a spiritual presence and softness about her that was perfect for, or perhaps produced by, her vocation. A slight tightening around the eyes in the nurse's silent glance told Andrea all she need to know— _we're close._ She tilted her head toward the Windsor armchair positioned next to the door in another silent assurance— _I'm here when you need me._ Andrea nodded thanks.

As she pushed the door shut behind her, Andrea saw Leah kneeling beside the head of the bed, up near where Brooke's gray face and brown hair was receding into the white pillowcase. The bed was tall, and Leah needed to keep her torso ramrod straight to get her elbows atop the mattress. Her hands were not folded or pressed palm together but were moving in a rapid-fire, animated series of signs that Andrea couldn't begin to decipher. From her position behind and to the side, she could see the muscles of Leah's cheek and around her eye twitching in movements that surely complemented whatever it was her fingers and hands were saying. This exchange went on for some minutes, all without the slightest sound, not even the creak of a mattress spring or a floorboard. Andrea stood unmoving by the door.

Leah stood suddenly in a single smooth motion, no wavering or clumsiness despite the long spell on her knees. She leaned over, pressed her face against the side of Brooke's, kissed her sister's hair, each eye, and tight drawn blue lips, then ran past Andrea, opened the door and fled down the hall, her robe billowing out behind her.

Andrea stepped forward to check the patient. She looked the same as earlier in the evening. But behind her, sitting on the nightstand, the heart monitor was showing a silent flat line, the interval since last compression now ticking past five minutes on the digital readout.

The nurse intercepted Andrea as she crossed the room.

"Wake her husband and watch over him, please," Andrea said in a quiet firm voice that seemed a shout after the prolonged silence. "Let him tell the boys." Brent and Garrett were upstairs; Davey had gone home to sleep with his wife in their bed.

The nurse nodded.

Andrea turned toward the doorway.

The nurse caught her hand and waited for her to look. "She'll take it the hardest."

"I know. That's why I'm here." She hesitated then asked, "Would you pray for her, and for me?" Prayers were not something she'd practiced since childhood, and had never asked for.

The nurse said simply, "Already done."

The room was still and appeared empty. Andrea closed the door and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. One by one all the features she'd subconsciously memorized the evening before returned to view—the bed with nightstands to either side, the dresser and mirror and chair along one wall, an antique desk and chair on the wall opposite, next to the two doors, one leading into the bathroom with its nightlight's silver glow, the other opening onto the darkness of the small walk-in. Leah was nowhere visible.

Then Andrea heard the sobs, great waves of grief rising and falling out of the darkness, all the sadder and more tormented for being muffled in a hopeless attempt at restraint. She circled to the side of the bed opposite where the sleeping bags were spread out. She knelt on the carpet between the bed and the desk, then lay down flat on her stomach. She laid her head atop her right arm folded beneath. She faced the pitch-black cavern of space beneath the bed. She slowly extended her free hand into that cavern but stopped when her fingers felt the edge of Leah's robe. Her hand would wait there, long as necessary, till Leah found it, made her way toward accepting its support.

As she waited, wide awake, Andrea wondered how sobs felt in the absence of sound, how terrifying that void filled now with incomprehensible spasms of loss.

Tidal Zone

The two sisters plus Leah, Andrea, and Brooke Catherine, now seven months old, united at the cottage with the widow's walk at the end of Bogue Beach on Easter weekend the following spring. The main purpose of the gathering was to fulfill Brooke's explicit request that "the girls have fun with me at the beach then leave part of me behind in the water"—that is, part of her ashes scattered in the ocean. She'd left similar instructions for "the boys" to plant the other part of her in the rose garden behind the house.

Because Brooke was cremated two days after she died, there was no urgency to schedule the funeral promptly. Dave, in consultation with his children and Pastor Bob, put the funeral plans on hold until his granddaughter recovered sufficiently from her premature birth and open-heart surgery to be sent home. He then scheduled the funeral for three weeks later, on a Saturday morning in Advent, a time of year Brooke always loved with her myriad Christmas preparations in full swing.

Penni had her doubts about attending the funeral. She wasn't sure Brooke Catherine was ready for such a long trip and refused to leave her, even for a day. But she was swayed by Randall, who suggested they drive rather than fly, so that they could stop as often as needed, and turn around if necessary. And she was convinced by Jodie, who said she'd stay till then and ride down with them, sharing responsibility for care of her niece with Penni.

Jodie had remained in Boston the whole time, sleeping on a temporary bed set up alongside the crib in the colorful nursery. In the first days following the surgery—when Penni was at the hospital almost round the clock, coming home for only a couple hours a day to shower and change while Randall or Jodie kept watch at Brooke Catherine's neo-natal ICU crib-side—Jodie tended to household chores at the condo—cooking simple meals from her mom's online cookbook to serve to Randall and take to Penni (though she rarely had to look at the recipe, recalling most of the ingredients for the familiar casseroles, much to her surprise and mild chagrin), doing the laundry, cleaning the impeccably clean rooms, collecting and sorting the mail. Later, once her niece stabilized and began strengthening and was moved through several stages of stepdown care, Jodie began spending more time at the hospital, allowing Randall to return to his rotations and Penni to sleep at home and catch up on her Morningcare business, which was managing but just barely in her absence. Then when Brooke Catherine came home, Jodie offered to return the rented bed and sleep on the couch; but Penni would not hear of it, insisted that her sister sleep in the room with her daughter as long as she didn't mind twice nightly visits as Penni snuck in to check on her baby and nurse her in the rocker. Jodie had replied, "Can't be any worse than sleeping with Andrea," reminding both of them that she had a different life and its associate sleeping arrangements waiting for her somewhere beyond Boston. The comment, meant as no more than an idle joke, brought tears to Penni's eyes and a long hug of otherwise inexpressible thanks. Jodie accepted the gift as affirmation of her choice and purpose.

Andrea had stayed with Leah throughout the day of Brooke's death and for the four days following as they stayed on at her sister's house and provided quiet support to Dave after his sons returned home—cooking meals, breaking down the sofa-bed in the study, throwing out (at Dave's insistence) the sheets that had held Brooke those last days, doing the many loads of laundry for the small mountain of used towels and linens, attending with Dave and Davey the negotiations with the funeral home and the funeral planning with Pastor Bob. Andrea helped out where she could but mainly focused on sitting quietly with Leah whenever Leah was left alone and idle. Late in the week following a particularly tasty meal and three glasses of wine, Dave joked, "I'm glad Andrea is here as chaperone. Wouldn't want the neighbors to spread any nasty rumors" to which Leah had replied "It's probably time for me to head home to Whitfield" but accompanying the comment with a teasing smile.

Andrea had asked if she could ride with Leah back to her home, using the excuse, "The flights out of Atlanta are hundreds of dollars cheaper." Leah answered "I'd be glad for the company." Andrea stayed with Leah and Whitfield for over a week. "I've always wanted to check out Atlanta!" she claimed, though she rarely strayed far from Leah. They made several daytrips into the city—to restaurants, shopping districts, museums. Eight days into her stay, Andrea asked Leah between bites of her two-fisted "Bubba-bubba Burger" at a locally famous diner, "Will you be O.K.?"

"You mean if you aren't here to watch over me?"

Andrea smiled. She talked to Jodie daily, and Jodie's first question was always, "Is Leah O.K.?" One time she'd asked Jodie, "What about me?" And Jodie had replied, "I know you're O.K. by the sound of your voice!" Andrea looked at Leah across the booth and said, "Yeah."

Leah had said, "It's enough to know that you and Jodie are watching over me whether you're here or not, just like I know Brooke is watching."

That was the best answer Andrea could hope to get. She told Jodie that night she'd be heading back to Seattle.

Jodie had asked, "Is it O.K. if I stay on with Penni a little longer?"

Andrea had answered, "I miss you every day, Sweet; but I'm used to missing you. Stay as long as you have to but not a day longer, please."

Jodie answered, "Deal."

Leah drove Andrea to the airport and at the curb presented her with a first-class ticket on the direct flight she was expecting to fly stand-by.

"This must have cost a fortune," Andrea said.

Leah laughed from her place below the curb, her eyes now at Andrea's level. "I could say the same to you." She gave her niece's partner a long hug. She wasn't sure who it was she was hugging—Andrea, Jodie, or Brooke—and at that moment she could have cared less.

They all reconvened for the funeral a month later. The church was full, and the ushers had to set up chairs in the foyer. Everything passed in a blur of family, friends, community dignitaries, flowers filling the chancel, and finger food at the loud reception in the fellowship hall. Brooke Catherine handled the proceedings like a champ, didn't even cry at her baptism in a private service the next morning, though everyone else in attendance did, including Pastor Bob. Then the girls went home—Penni and Brooke Catherine to Boston, Leah to Atlanta, Jodie and Andrea to Seattle, Brooke to her place in the urn on the mantle—to await the spring.

2

Leah, Jodie, and Andrea stood along the railing of the cottage's widow's walk on Good Friday afternoon. Easter was much later this year, and the weather was far warmer than the year before. The light breeze off the water felt good under the hot spring sun. There were many people walking along the beach and off to the left, toward the pier, there were several clusters of sunbathers and even a brightly colored beach umbrella. No one was in the water, though, as it was still cold from the long winter.

"Brooke will be the first one in this year," Leah said with a mix of wonder and sadness, still trying to convince herself that her sister really was gone.

Penni was downstairs feeding the baby after the drive out from the airport with Leah. Brooke Catherine had healed remarkably fast from her surgery and with no serious setbacks, and was now above normal in weight for her due date age and was fast catching up on those of her birth age. At seven months and five days old, she was animated and alert, taking everything in and selectively trying to express her will with reaches of her small hands and short grunts and coos. But she'd not yet begun to crawl or talk.

"The perfect age," Leah had said on the ride out, "Responsive but stationary!" Then she'd spent the rest of the drive trying to remember Jasper at that age, and failing. She wished she'd kept his baby picture in her wallet, to help jog her memory. Maybe there was one stored with the pics on her phone, she thought; but she knew there wasn't. She'd carefully removed all pictures of him as a baby and child from her daily life in the painful aftermath of his going off to college.

On returning to Atlanta after Brooke's death, she'd not seen or communicated with Billy while Andrea was staying with them. After Andrea returned to Seattle, Leah had waited a few days then asked Billy out to lunch. And there, in that public place, she'd quietly but firmly ended their affair. "I thank you for all you gave me, but that is now past." He'd accepted her decision without protest, thinking it was probably her grief talking. He could wait for her to heal then return to his side.

But she hadn't returned to his side or his bed in the months since. To the contrary, she'd given notice to the Green Ways board that she was leaving as the charity's director, then lobbied to have Billy appointed in her place. And once he accepted that position, she resigned from the board, severing all ties with the charity except for the generous monthly contributions drafted automatically from their family checking account. Throughout this process she'd thought often, sometimes nonstop, of Brooke's last advice—to end the affair before it was too late. Perhaps she'd acted faster than Brooke had intended. Maybe she could have and should have used Billy to ease her suffering. But that would have only cemented her to him, then it would have been too late. No it was better this way. But then why did she feel so empty and lost?

Jodie gazed out on the idyllic scene—lovers prancing with their jeans rolled up and their toes in the water, families with children chasing each other with ribbons of kelp flying out behind them like pennants, an old couple walking quietly hand in hand. She wondered how she'd missed such placid beach scenes till now, and what she'd lost in the omission. For her the beach had always been linked to Shawnituck, and Shawnituck had always been associated with a topsy-turvy mix of excitement and dread—excitement at the freedoms Dad granted her, freedom to explore the island and do more or less whatever she wanted, and dread at the prospect of having to return home, to Mom's version of order and advancement. Seeing this scene now—from Mom's ideal vantage point, through her eyes—gave her a glimpse of what she might've missed in forever battling her mother's will. "Where should we spread her ashes, Leah?" The question was intended to neutralize her sadness but instead opened a trapdoor to a void she wasn't even aware she possessed. Her voice cracked on her aunt's name, an old refuge in a huge new need.

Andrea heard the plea and sidled silently against her lover's hip, put her arm around her waist and pressed her face into the notch between Jodie's shoulder and neck. After eight years of close observation through all manner of situations and trials, she knew Jodie well enough to know that this regret was inevitable, had to come out and be confronted, and knew far better than Jodie that it would come out this weekend. That's why she'd rented the cottage an extra day and persuaded Jodie to come in a day early "To get everything ready for Leah and Penni and the baby." Jodie had laughed and said, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were lobbying to be Mom." She'd replied, "Somebody has to take care of you." And then last night, with the windows open on the murmuring sea and a light and cool salt-laden breeze fluffing the curtains, she'd shown Jodie in every way she knew how that together they were strong enough to endure this, that in the full expression of their love they had resources neither had alone, ample to the need, any need. She could only hope now that Jodie believed in it.

For the moment Leah forgot her sadness in the face of her niece's grief. She turned to console Jodie but saw that someone had beat her to the task. She smiled to herself and thought even Brooke would be happy—shocked maybe at first but in the end happy. In that seemingly simple assumption she acknowledged Brooke's powers of adaptability that had allowed her to thrive despite her willfulness. She turned from her niece and gazed to her right. "I think we should toss them off the end of the island, where the sound meets the ocean."

"Where you threw the ring," Jodie said.

Leah laughed, surprised her niece remembered the story. "She never forgave me for throwing it in the ocean. Maybe she'll go out there and find it."

"The ring?" Andrea asked.

"We'll get Leah to tell the story on our walk out there with the ashes."

Leah laughed. "Don't want to bore her with family legends."

Andrea said. "I love family stories." She'd grown up a virtual orphan, abandoned by her father and left with her grandmother by a mother out to restart her life but instead descending into addiction and mental illness, dying of AIDS when Andrea was sixteen.

"You'll get them this weekend," Leah said.

Jodie said, "We were thinking of moving to Atlanta, getting a fresh start." The idea had come up just last night—well, early this morning—as the women talked about how difficult Brooke's death had been for Leah. Then they'd talked about the possibility some more over breakfast. Andrea liked Leah and had enjoyed her brief stay in Atlanta. More significantly, she understood Jodie's call to return to the east coast, maybe late but hopefully not too late.

Leah turned to her niece, both startled and touched by the suggestion. "Is Andrea ready for our oppressive summers?"

Andrea laughed. "Can't be any worse than Seattle's rainy winters."

"And work?"

"Atlanta has some really good improv theaters," Jodie said, "and they all need set designers. And Andrea is a real estate broker. Maybe Uncle Whit will give her a shot—on a trial basis, of course."

Leah laughed. "I'm sure he'd be glad for an energetic young broker. And he's short a woman since his office manager quit last month."

"There you go," Jodie said—the matter settled—in a tone that was hauntingly familiar but never before out of her mouth.

"There you go," Leah said quietly. She leaned over and gave her niece a sideways hug and brushed Andrea's hand visible at her waist.

"There who goes?" Penni asked as she approached from behind with Brooke Catherine clad in a pink sun hat and yellow terrycloth jumper balanced on her right hip. She came alongside Andrea but stopped a stride short of the railing, either afraid of heights or afraid she might drop her baby.

"Jodie and Andrea are thinking of moving to Atlanta," Leah said. She walked around to get next to Penni and the baby.

"Really? That's great, Jodie! I'm dying to have you on the east coast!"

Jodie laughed. "Boston and Atlanta are still a thousand miles apart. I checked this morning."

"Better than three thousand miles and three time zones—just a couple hours on a plane!"

"I figured after last fall, you'd swear off flying."

"That was with Brooke _inside_ my body. Outside she's a lot easier and more fun."

"Till she starts moving around."

"Maybe by then I can get Randall to take a job in the South. I don't know how many northern winters I have in me."

"How about Atlanta?" Jodie said.

"They've got hospitals there, don't they?" Penni said.

"One or two," Leah said.

"Sold!" Penni said.

Andrea laughed. "That's my line!"

Leah knelt down to Brooke Catherine's level. The baby's eyes were open but squinty, either from sleepiness on a full stomach or the bright light. "She looks like she's ready to conk out."

"I'm sure she is. She's had a long day and a full meal. One thing I seem to be good at is making breast milk!"

"You were born for motherhood," Jodie said.

"I guess I was—just took me awhile to find my calling."

"Your job description for the next eighteen years."

"At least."

"At least."

"Where are we going to scatter Mom's ashes?" Penni asked.

"With the ring," Jodie said.

Penni nodded. "That's good. That's where I would have picked."

The four women all looked to the right, westward across a few hundred yards of dunes to where the sand ended and the ocean merged with the sound. Below their level, her eyes still open on the bright afternoon, Brooke Catherine was also gazing in that direction, had been looking that way all along.

3

Two days later, on a morning that was warmer still though hazy with a high fog that had yet to burn off, the women and baby gathered at that spot. There'd been a few early walkers as indicated by footprints in the low-tide sand, but at that moment no other people were visible at this end of the island. The beaches facing the ocean sloped gradually out to sea, resulting in wide sandbars at low tide. But here at the sound's outlet, the beach ended with a sharp drop angling steeply to water rushing out of the sound with the still outgoing tide.

The four silently arranged themselves in a single line and stared down at the gray water flowing past. Penni and the baby were on the right-hand end, then Leah holding the pottery urn containing exactly half of Brooke's ashes, then Jodie, then Andrea. On the slow walk out here Leah had shared the story of the ring, to the others' amusement and amazement—at the audacity of the sisters eavesdropping on conversations from their hiding place beneath the pier, at the improbability of the ring landing in Leah's lap, at her tossing it into the ocean rather than keeping it or letting Brooke have it.

But now arrived to their solemn task, no one spoke for some minutes. They watched the water from the sound, descended out of the mountains and across the foothills and the piedmont and coastal plain and draining into the wide bay and infused with salts and minerals to mix with all it had accumulated in its long journey, head now out to sea.

Leah finally looked up from the water. "Any words?" she asked quietly. She looked first to Penni, whose tears splotched Brooke Catherine's sun bonnet as she shook her head. She turned to Jodie and Andrea. Andrea squeezed Jodie's hand and shook her head once without looking up.

Jodie, her eyes clear and steady, faced her aunt. "I think the fact that we're here together, as Mom asked, are words enough."

Leah thought back to before she could hear, when actions were her words, when her life was defined by motion rather than sound. Their presence together at this spot on this day was enough, not only for Brooke but for them all. She nodded assent to Jodie's simple declaration.

She loosened the tape holding the makeshift plastic cap on the urn and dropped the cap into the pocket of her coat. She held the urn to Jodie.

Jodie's eyes held on her aunt as she shook her head and said quietly, "You."

Leah turned to Penni and offered her the urn. Penni managed to meet her eyes and likewise shook her head. "You," she whispered.

But Brooke Catherine, who was now propped on Penni's shoulder, reached out toward the slick-glazed urn and brushed it with her fingers.

In that infant's gesture, Leah found the strength to fulfill her duty. She cradled the urn in both hands and extended her arms over the water and inverted the vessel. The ashes and bone chips fell in a steady and resolute stream of gray lasting maybe five seconds.

In the few minutes since they'd arrived, the tide had turned. Now the ocean water rushed inland even as the land's water still pushed out. The sea in front of them churned and chopped with white caps that crested and crashed into each other in random chaos. The ashes were quickly swallowed by the swirling water. A light spray kicked up by the chop and carried by the breeze washed over them.

From Penni's shoulder, Brooke Catherine reached out—whether for the urn or the ashes or the roiling sea, no one, she least of all, could say for sure.

The End
