Two

September 3, 2010
4:16 A.M.

Where am I?

What happened?

I take shallow breaths and try to move, but I can’t make my body work, not my fingers or my hands.

I open my eyes at last. They feel gritty. My throat is so dry I can’t swallow.

It is dark.

There is someone in here with me. Or something. It makes a banging sound, hammers falling on steel. The vibrations rattle up my spine, lodge in my teeth, give me a headache.

The sound—crunching, grinding metal—is everywhere; outside of me, in the air, beside me, inside of me.

Bang-scrape, bang-scrape.

Pain.

I feel it all at once.

Excruciating, exquisite. Once I am aware of it, of feeling it, there’s nothing else.

Pain wakens me: a searing, gnawing agony in my head, a throbbing in my arm. Something inside me is definitely broken. I try to move, but it hurts so much I pass out. When I wake up, I try again, breathing hard, air rattling in my lungs. I can smell my own blood, feel it running down my neck.

Help me, I try to say, but the darkness swallows my feeble intent.

OPENYOUREYES.

I hear the command, a voice, and relief overwhelms me. I am not alone.

OPENYOUREYES.

I can’t. Nothing works.

SHESALIVE.

More words, yelled this time.

LIESTILL.

The darkness shifts around me, changes, and pain explodes again. A noise—part buzz saw on cedar, part child screaming—is all around me. In my darkness, light sparks like fireflies and something about that image makes me sad. And tired.

ONETWOTHREELIFT.

I feel myself being pulled, lifted by cold hands I can’t see. I scream in pain, but the sound is swallowed instantly, or maybe it’s only in my head.

Where am I?

I hit something hard and cry out.

ITSOKAY.

I am dying.

It comes to me suddenly, grabs the breath from my lungs.

I am dying.

September 3, 2010
4:39 A.M.

Johnny Ryan woke, thinking, Something’s wrong. He sat upright and looked around.

There was nothing to see, nothing out of place.

He was in his home office, on Bainbridge Island. Once again, he’d fallen asleep working. The curse of the working-from-home single parent. There weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, so he stole hours from the night.

He rubbed his tired eyes. Beside him, a computer monitor revealed a frozen image, pixilated, of a ratty-looking street kid sitting beneath a crackling, on-and-off neon sign, smoking a cigarette down to the filter. Johnny hit the play key.

On-screen, Kevin—street name Frizz—started talking about his parents.

They don’t care, the kid said with a shrug.

What makes you so sure? Johnny asked in the voice-over.

The camera caught Frizz’s gaze—the raw pain and angry defiance in his eyes as he looked up. I’m here, aren’t I?

Johnny had watched this footage at least one hundred times. He’d talked to Frizz on several occasions and still didn’t know where the kid had grown up, where he belonged, or who was waiting up at night for him, peering into the darkness, worrying.

Johnny knew about a parent’s worry, about how a child could slip into the shadows and disappear. It was why he was here, working day and night on a documentary about street kids. Maybe if he looked hard enough, asked enough questions, he’d find her.

He stared at the image on-screen. Because of the rain, there hadn’t been many kids out on the street on the night he’d shot this footage. Still, whenever he saw a shape in the background, a silhouette that could be a young woman, he squinted and put on his glasses, peering harder at the picture, thinking: Marah?

But none of the girls he’d seen while making this documentary was his daughter. Marah had run away from home and disappeared. He didn’t even know if she was still in Seattle.

He turned off the lights in his upstairs office and walked down the dark, quiet hallway. To his left, dozens of family photographs, framed in black and matted in white, hung along the wall. Sometimes he stopped and followed the trail of these pictures—his family—and let them pull him back to a happier time. Sometimes he let himself stand in front of his wife’s picture and lose himself in the smile that had once illuminated his world.

Tonight, he kept moving.

He paused at his sons’ room and eased the door open. It was something he did now: check obsessively on his eleven-year-old twins. Once you’d learned how bad life could go, and how quickly, you tried to protect those who remained. They were there, asleep.

He released a breath, unaware that he’d drawn it in, and moved on to Marah’s closed door. There, he didn’t slow down. It hurt too much to look in her room, to see the place frozen in time—a little girl’s room—uninhabited, everything just as she’d left it.

He went into his own room and closed the door behind him. It was cluttered with clothes and papers and whatever books he’d started and stopped reading and intended to pick up again, when life slowed down.

Heading into the bathroom, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it into the hamper. In the bathroom mirror, he caught sight of himself. Some days when he saw himself, he thought, Not bad for fifty-five, and sometimes—like now—he thought, Really?

He looked . . . sad. It was in the eyes, mostly. His hair was longer than it should be, with fine strands of gray weaving through the black. He always forgot to get it cut. With a sigh, he turned on the shower and stepped in, letting the scalding-hot water pour over him, wash his thoughts away. When he got out, he felt better again, ready to take on the day. There was no point in trying to sleep. Not now. He towel-dried his hair and dressed in an old Nirvana T-shirt that he found on the floor of his closet and a pair of worn jeans. As he headed back into the hallway, the phone rang.

It was the landline.

He frowned. It was 2010. In this new age, only the rarest of calls came in on the old number.

Certainly people didn’t call at 5:03 in the morning. Only bad news came at this hour.

Marah.

He lunged for the phone and answered. “Hello?”

“Is Kathleen Ryan there?”

Damned telemarketers. Didn’t they ever update their records?

“Kathleen Ryan passed away almost four years ago. You need to take her off your call list,” he said tightly, waiting for: Are you a decision maker in your household? In the silence that followed his question, he grew impatient. “Who is this?” he demanded.

“Officer Jerry Malone, Seattle police.”

Johnny frowned. “And you’re calling Kate?”

“There’s been an accident. The victim has Kathleen Ryan’s name in her wallet as an emergency contact.”

Johnny sat down on the edge of the bed. There was only one person in the world who would still have Katie’s name as an emergency contact. What in the hell had she done now? And who still had emergency contact numbers in their wallet? “It’s Tully Hart, right? Is it a DUI? Because if she’s—”

“I don’t have that information, sir. Ms. Hart is being taken to Sacred Heart right now.”

“How bad is it?”

“I can’t answer that, sir. You’ll need to speak to someone at Sacred Heart.”

Johnny hung up on the officer, got the hospital’s number from Google, and called. It took at least ten minutes of being transferred around before he found someone who could answer his questions.

“Mr. Ryan?” the woman said. “I understand you are Ms. Hart’s family?”

He flinched at the question. How long had it been since he’d even spoken to Tully?

A lie. He knew exactly how long it had been.

“Yes,” he answered. “What happened?”

“I don’t have all the details, sir. I just know she’s en route to us now.”

He looked at his watch. If he moved quickly, he could make the 5:20 ferry and be at the hospital in a little more than an hour. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

He didn’t realize that he hadn’t said goodbye until the phone buzzed in his ear. He hung up and tossed the handset on the bed.

He grabbed his wallet and picked up the phone again. As he reached for a sweater, he dialed a number. It rang enough times to remind him that it was early in the morning.

“H-hello?”

“Corrin. I’m sorry to call you so early, but it’s an emergency. Can you pick up the boys and take them to school?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to go to Sacred Heart. There’s been an accident. I don’t want to leave the boys alone, but I don’t have time to bring them to you.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I owe you one.” Then he hurried down the hallway and pushed open the boys’ bedroom door. “Get dressed, boys. Now.”

They sat up slowly. “Huh?” Wills said.

“I’m leaving. Corrin is going to pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You’re going to Tommy’s house. Corrin might need to pick you up from soccer practice, too. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

“What’s wrong?” Lucas asked, his sleep-lined face drawing into a worried frown. They knew about emergencies, these boys, and routine comforted them. Lucas most of all. He was like his mother, a nurturer, a worrier.

“Nothing,” Johnny said tightly. “I need to get into the city.”

“He thinks we’re babies,” Wills said, pushing the covers back. “Let’s go, Skywalker.”

Johnny looked impatiently at his watch. It was 5:08. He needed to leave now to make the 5:20 boat.

Lucas got out of bed and approached him, looking up at Johnny through a mop of brown hair. “Is it Marah?”

Of course that would be their worry. How many times had they rushed to see their mom in the hospital? And God knew what trouble Marah was in these days. They all worried about her.

He forgot how wary they could sometimes be even now, almost four years later. Tragedy had marked them all. He was doing his best with the boys, but his best wasn’t really enough to compensate for their mother’s loss. “Marah’s fine. It’s Tully.”

“What’s wrong with Tully?” Lucas asked, looking scared.

They loved Tully so much. How many times in the last year had they begged to see her? How many times had Johnny made some excuse? Guilt flared at that.

“I don’t have all the details yet, but I’ll let you know what’s up as soon as I can,” Johnny promised. “Be ready for school when Corrin gets here, okay?”

“We’re not babies, Dad,” Wills said.

“You’ll call us after soccer?” Lucas asked.

“I will.”

He kissed them goodbye and grabbed his car keys off the entry table. He looked back at them one last time—two identical boys who needed haircuts, standing there in their boxer shorts and oversized T-shirts, frowning with worry. And then he went out to his car. They were eleven years old; they could be alone for ten minutes.

He got into his car, started the engine, and drove down to the ferry. On board, he stayed in his car, tapping his finger impatiently on the leather-covered steering wheel for the thirty-five-minute crossing.

At precisely 6:10, he pulled up into the hospital’s parking lot and parked in the artificial brightness thrown down by a streetlamp. Sunrise was still a half hour away, so the city was dark.

He entered the familiar hospital and strode up to the information desk.

“Tallulah Hart,” he said grimly. “I’m family.”

“Sir, I—”

“I want an update on Tully’s condition, and I want it now.” He said it so harshly the woman bounced in her seat as if a slight current had charged through her body.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

He walked away from the reception desk and began pacing. God, he hated this place, with its all-too-familiar smells.

He sank into an uncomfortable plastic chair, tapping his foot nervously on the linoleum floor. Minutes ticked by; each one unraveled his control just a little.

In the past four years, he’d learned how to go on without his wife, the love of his life, but it had not been easy. He’d had to stop looking back. The memories simply hurt too much.

But how could he not look back here, of all places? They’d come to this hospital for surgery and chemotherapy and radiation; they’d spent hours together here, he and Kate, promising each other that cancer was no match for their love.

Lying.

When they’d finally faced the truth, they’d been in a room, here. In 2006. He’d been lying with her, holding her, trying not to notice how thin she’d become in the year of her life’s fight. Beside the bed, Kate’s iPod had been playing Kelly Clarkson. Some people wait a lifetime . . . for a moment like this.

He remembered the look on Kate’s face. Pain had been a liquid fire in her body; she hurt everywhere. Her bones, her muscles, her skin. She took as much morphine as she’d dared, but she’d wanted to be alert enough so that her kids wouldn’t be afraid. I want to go home, she’d said.

When he’d looked at her, all he’d been able to think was: She’s dying. The truth came at him hard, bringing tears to his eyes.

“My babies,” she’d said quietly and then laughed. “Well, they’re not babies anymore. They’re losing teeth. It’s a dollar, by the way. For the tooth fairy. And always take a picture. And Marah. Tell her I understand. I was mean to my mom at sixteen, too.”

“I am not ready for this conversation,” he’d said, hating his weakness. He’d seen the disappointment in her gaze.

“I need Tully,” she’d said then, surprising him. His wife and Tully Hart had been best friends for most of their lives—until a fight had torn them apart. They hadn’t spoken for the past two years, and in those years, Kate had faced cancer. Johnny couldn’t forgive Tully, not for the fight itself (which had, of course, been Tully’s fault), or for her absence when Kate needed her most.

“No. After what she did to you?” he’d said bitterly.

Kate had rolled slightly toward him; he could see how much it hurt her to do so. “I need Tully,” she’d said again, softer this time. “She’s been my best friend since eighth grade.”

“I know, but—”

“You have to forgive her, Johnny. If I can, you can.”

“It’s not that easy. She hurt you.”

“And I hurt her. Best friends fight. They lose sight of what matters.” She had sighed. “Believe me, I know what matters now, and I need her.”

“What makes you think she’ll come if you call? It’s been a long time.”

Kate had smiled through her pain. “She’ll come.” She’d touched his face, made him look at her. “You need to take care of her . . . after.”

“Don’t say that,” he’d whispered.

“She’s not as strong as she pretends to be. You know that. Promise me.”

Johnny closed his eyes. He’d worked so hard in the past few years to move past grief and fashion a new life for his family. He didn’t want to remember that terrible year; but how could he not—especially now?

TullyandKate. They’d been best friends for almost thirty years, and if not for Tully, Johnny wouldn’t have met the love of his life.

From the moment Tully had walked into his run-down office, Johnny had been mesmerized by her. She’d been twenty years old and full of passion and fire. She’d talked herself into a job at the small TV station he’d run then. He’d thought he’d fallen in love with her, but it wasn’t love; it was something else. He’d fallen under her spell. She had been more alive and brighter than anyone he’d ever met. Standing beside her had been like being in sunlight after months of shadow-dwelling. He’d known instantly that she would be famous.

When she’d introduced him to her best friend, Kate Mularkey, who’d seemed paler and quieter, a bit of flotsam riding the crest of Tully’s wave, he’d barely noticed. It wasn’t until years later, when Katie dared to kiss him, that Johnny saw his future in a woman’s eyes. He remembered the first time they’d made love. They’d been young—him thirty, her twenty-five—but only she had been naïve. Is it always like that? she’d asked him quietly.

Love had come to him like that, long before he’d been ready. No, he’d said, unable even then to lie to her. It’s not.

After he and Kate had married, they’d watched Tully’s meteoric rise in journalism from afar, but no matter how separate Kate’s life became from Tully’s, the two women stayed closer than sisters. They’d talked on the phone almost daily and Tully had come to their home for most holidays. When she’d given up on the networks and New York and returned to Seattle to create her own daytime talk show, Tully had begged Johnny to produce the TV show. Those had been good years. Successful years. Until cancer and Kate’s death had torn everything apart.

He couldn’t help remembering now. He closed his eyes and leaned back. He knew when it had begun to unravel.

At Kate’s funeral, almost four years ago. October of 2006. They’d been in the first row of St. Cecilia’s Church, sitting bunched together . . .

stiff and bleak-eyed, acutely aware of why they were here. They’d been in this church many times over the years, for Midnight Mass at Christmas and for Easter services, but it was different now. Instead of golden, glittery decorations, there were white lilies everywhere. The air in the church was cloyingly sweet.

Johnny sat Marine-straight, his shoulders back. He was supposed to be strong now for his children, their children, her children. It was a promise he’d made to her as she lay dying, but it was already hard to keep. Inside, he was dry as sand. Sixteen-year-old Marah sat equally rigid beside him, her hands folded in her lap. She hadn’t looked at him in hours, maybe in days. He knew he should bridge that divide, force her to connect, but when he looked at her, he lost his nerve. Their combined grief was as deep and dark as the sea. So he sat with his eyes burning, thinking, Don’t cry. Be strong.

He made the mistake of glancing to his left, where a large easel held a poster of Kate. In the picture, she was a young mother, standing on the beach in front of their Bainbridge Island house, her hair windblown, her smile as bright as a beacon in the night, her arms flung wide to welcome the three children running toward her. She had asked him to find that picture for her, one night when they lay in bed together, with their arms around each other. He’d heard the question and knew what it meant. Not yet, he’d murmured into her ear, stroking her bald head.

She hadn’t asked him again.

Of course she hadn’t. Even at the end, she’d been the stronger one, protecting all of them with her optimism.

How many words had she hoarded in her heart so that he wouldn’t be wounded by her fear? How alone had she felt?

God. She had been gone for only two days.

Two days and already he wanted a do-over. He wanted to hold her again, and say, Tell me, baby, what are you afraid of?

Father Michael stepped up to the pulpit, and the congregation—already quiet—grew still.

“I’m not surprised so many people are here to say goodbye to Kate. She was an important person to so many of us—”

Was.

“You won’t be surprised that she gave me strict orders for this service, and I don’t want to disappoint her. She wanted me to tell you all to hold on to each other. She wanted you to take your sorrow and transform it into the joy that remains with life. She wanted you to remember the sound of her laughter and the love she had for her family. She wanted you to live.” His voice broke. “That was Kathleen Mularkey Ryan. Even at the end, she was thinking of others.”

Marah groaned quietly.

Johnny reached for her hand. She startled at his touch and looked at him, and there it was, that unfathomable grief as she pulled away.

Music started up. It sounded far away at first, or maybe that was the roar of sound in his head. It took him a moment to recognize the song.

“Oh, no,” he said, feeling emotion rise with the music.

The song was “Crazy for You.”

The song they’d danced to at their wedding. He closed his eyes and felt her beside him, slipping into the circle of his arms as the music swept them away. Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true.

Lucas—sweet eight-year-old Lucas, who had begun to have nightmares again and sometimes had a meltdown when he couldn’t find the baby blanket he’d outgrown years ago—tugged on his sleeve. “Mommy said it was okay to cry, Daddy. She made me and Wills promise not to be afraid to cry.”

Johnny hadn’t even realized he was crying. He wiped his eyes and nodded curtly, whispering, “That’s right, little man,” but he couldn’t look at his son. Tears in those eyes would undo him. Instead, he stared straight ahead and zoned out. He turned Father’s words into small brittle things, stones thrown against a brick wall. They clattered and fell, and through it all, he focused on his breathing and tried not to remember his wife. That, he would do in solitude, at night, when there was no one around.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the service ended. He gathered his family close and they went downstairs for the reception. There, as he looked around, feeling both stunned and broken, he saw dozens of unfamiliar or barely familiar faces and it made him understand that Kate had pieces of her life he knew nothing about and it made her feel distant to him. In a way, that hurt even more. At the first possible moment, he herded his children out of the church basement.

The church’s parking lot was full of cars, but that wasn’t what he noticed.

Tully was in the parking lot, with her face tilted up toward the last of the day’s sunlight. She had her arms stretched wide and she was moving, swaying her hips, as if there were music somewhere.

Dancing. She was in the middle of the street, outside the church, dancing.

He said her name so harshly that Marah flinched beside him.

Tully turned, saw them coming toward the car. She tugged the buds out of her ears and moved toward him.

“How was it?” she asked quietly.

He felt a surge of rage and he grabbed hold of it. Anything was better than this bottomless grief. Of course Tully had put herself first. It hurt to go to Kate’s funeral, so Tully didn’t. She stood in the parking lot and danced. Danced.

Some best friend. Kate might be able to forgive Tully her selfishness; it wasn’t so easy for Johnny.

He turned to his family. “Get in the car, everyone.”

“Johnny—” Tully reached for him but he stepped aside. He couldn’t be touched now, not by anyone. “I couldn’t go in,” she said.

“Yeah. Who could?” he said bitterly. He knew instantly that it was a mistake to look at her. Kate’s absence was even more pronounced at Tully’s side. The two women had always been together, laughing, talking, breaking into bad renditions of disco songs.

TullyandKate. For more than thirty years they’d been best friends, and now, when he looked at Tully, it hurt too much to bear. She was the one who should have died. Kate was worth fifteen Tullys.

“People are coming to the house,” he said. “It’s what she wanted. I hope you can make it.”

He heard the sharpness of her indrawn breath and knew he’d hurt her.

“That’s not fair,” she said.

Ignoring that, ignoring her, he herded his family into the SUV and they drove home in an excruciating silence.

Pale late-afternoon sunlight shone down on the caramel-colored Craftsman-style house. The yard was a disaster, forgotten in the year of Katie’s cancer. He parked in the garage and led the way into the house, where the faint scent of illness lingered in the fabric of the drapes and the woolen strands of the carpet.

“What now, Dad?”

He knew without turning who would have asked this question. Lucas, the boy who’d cried at every goldfish’s death and drawn a picture for his dying mother every day; the boy who’d started to cry at school again and had sat quietly at his recent birthday party, unable to even smile as he opened his gifts. He felt everything so keenly, this boy. Especially Lucas, Kate had said on her last, terrible night. He won’t know how to miss me so much. Hold him.

Johnny turned.

Wills and Lucas stood there, standing so close their shoulders were touching. The eight-year-olds had on matching black pants and gray V-neck sweaters. Johnny had forgotten this morning to make either boy take a shower and their shaggy haircuts were unruly, smushed in places from sleep.

Lucas’s eyes were wide and bright, his lashes spiked with moisture. He knew his mother was Gone, but he didn’t really understand how that could be.

Marah came up beside her brothers. She looked thin and pale, ghostlike in her black dress.

All of them looked at him.

This was his moment to speak, to offer comforting words, to give them advice they would remember. As their father, it was his job to turn the next few hours into a celebration of his wife’s life. But how?

“Come on, boys,” Marah said with a sigh. “I’ll put Finding Nemo on.”

“No,” Lucas wailed. “Not Finding Nemo.”

Wills looked up. He took hold of his brother’s hand. “The mom dies.”

“Oh.” Marah nodded. “How about The Incredibles?”

Lucas nodded glumly.

Johnny was still trying to figure out what in the hell to say to his wounded children when the doorbell rang for the first time.

He flinched at the sound. Afterward, he was vaguely aware of time passing, of people crowding around him and doors opening and closing. Of the sun setting and night pressing against the windowpanes. He kept thinking, Move, go, say hi, but he couldn’t seem to make himself begin this thing.

Someone touched his arm.

“I’m so sorry, Johnny,” he heard a woman say, and he turned.

She stood beside him, dressed in black, holding a foil-covered casserole dish. He could not for the life of him remember who she was. “When Arthur left me for that barista, I thought my life was over. But you keep getting up, and one day you realize you’re okay. You’ll find love again.”

It took all his self-control not to snap out at this woman that death was different from infidelity, but before he could even think of her name, another woman showed up. She, too, thought hunger was his biggest problem now, judging by the size of the foil-covered tray in her plump hands.

He heard “. . . better place” . . . and walked away.

He pushed through the crowd and went to the bar that was set up in the kitchen. On the way, he passed several people, all of whom murmured some combination of the same useless words—sorry, suffering over, better place. He neither paused nor answered. He kept moving. He didn’t look at the photographs that had been set up around the room, on easels and propped up against windows and lamps. In the kitchen, he found a clot of sad-eyed women working efficiently, taking foil off casserole dishes and burrowing through the utensil drawers. At his entrance, they stilled, quick as birds with a fox in their midst, and looked up. Their pity—and the fear that this could someday happen to them—was a tangible presence in the room.

At the sink, his mother-in-law, Margie, put down the pitcher she’d been filling with water. It hit the counter with a clank. Smoothing the hair away from her worry-lined face, she moved toward him. Women stepped aside to let her through. She paused at the bar, poured him a scotch and water over ice, and handed it to him.

“I couldn’t find a glass,” he said. Stupidly. The glasses were right beside him. “Where’s Bud?”

“Watching TV with Sean and the boys. This isn’t exactly something he can deal with. Sharing his daughter’s death with all these strangers, I mean.”

Johnny nodded. His father-in-law had always been a quiet man, and the death of his only daughter had broken him. Even Margie, who had remained vital and dark-haired and laughing well past her last birthday, had aged immeasurably since the diagnosis. She had rounded forward, as if expecting another blow from God at any second. She’d stopped dyeing her hair and white flowed along her part like a frozen river. Rimless glasses magnified her watery eyes.

“Go to your kids,” Margie said, pressing her pale, blue-veined hand into the crook of his arm.

“I should stay here and help you.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “But I’m worried about Marah. Sixteen is a tough age to lose a mother, and I think she regrets how much she and Kate fought before Kate got sick. Words stay with you sometimes, especially angry ones.”

He took a long sip of his drink, watched the ice rattle in his glass when he was done. “I don’t know what to say to them.”

“Words aren’t what matter.” Margie tightened her hold on his arm and led him out of the kitchen.

The house was full of people, but even in a crowd of mourners, Tully Hart was noticeable. The center of attention. In a black sheath dress that probably cost as much as some of the cars parked in the driveway, she managed to look beautiful in grief. Her shoulder-length hair was auburn these days, and she must have redone her makeup since the funeral. In the living room, surrounded by people, she gestured dramatically, obviously telling a story, and when she finished, everyone around her laughed.

“How can she smile?”

“Tully knows a thing or two about heartbreak, don’t forget. She’s spent a lifetime hiding her pain. I remember the first time I ever saw her. I walked across Firefly Lane to her house because she’d befriended Kate and I wanted to check her out. Inside that run-down old house across the street, I met her mom, Cloud. Well, I didn’t meet her. Cloud was lying on the sofa spread-eagled, with a mound of marijuana on her stomach. She tried to sit up, and when she couldn’t, she said, F–– me, I’m stoned, and flopped back down. When I looked at Tully, who was maybe fourteen, I saw the kind of shame that marks you forever.”

“You had an alcoholic dad and you overcame it.”

“I fell in love and had babies. A family. Tully thinks no one can love her except Kate. I don’t think the loss has really hit her yet, but when it does, it’s going to be ugly.”

Tully put a CD into the stereo and cranked the music. Born to be w-iiii-ld blared through the speakers.

The people in the living room backed away from her, looking offended.

“Come on,” Tully said, “who wants a straight shot?”

Johnny knew he should stop her, but he couldn’t get that close. Not now, not yet. Every time he looked at Tully, he thought, Kate’s gone, and the wound cracked open again. Turning away, he went up to comfort his children instead.

It took everything he had to climb the stairs.

Outside the twins’ bedroom, he paused, trying to gather strength.

You can do this.

He could do it. He had to. The children beyond this door had just learned that life was unfair and that death ripped hearts and families apart. It was his job to make them understand, to hold them together and heal them.

He drew in a sharp breath and opened the door.

The first thing he saw were the beds—unmade, rumpled, the Star Wars bedding in a tangled heap. The navy-blue walls—hand-painted by Kate to show clouds and stars and moons—had been covered over the years with the boys’ artwork and some of their favorite movie posters. Golden T-ball and soccer trophies stood proudly on the dresser top.

His father-in-law, Bud, sat in the big papasan chair that easily held both boys when they played video games, and Sean, Kate’s younger brother, lay asleep on Wills’s bed.

Marah sat on the rug in front of the TV, with Lucas beside her. Wills was in the corner, watching the movie with his arms crossed, looking angry and isolated.

“Hey,” Johnny said quietly, closing the door behind him.

“Dad!” Lucas lurched to his feet. Johnny scooped his son into his arms and held him tightly.

Bud climbed awkwardly out of the cushy papasan chair and got to his feet. He looked rumpled in his out-of-date black suit with a white shirt and wide polyester tie. His pale face, marked by age spots, seemed to have added creases and folds in the past weeks. Beneath bushy gray eyebrows, his eyes looked sad. “I’ll give you some time.” He went to the bed, thumped Sean on the shoulder, and said, “Wake up.”

Sean came awake with a start and sat up sharply. He looked confused until he saw Johnny. “Oh, right.” He followed his dad out of the room.

Johnny heard the door click shut behind him. On-screen, brightly colored superheroes ran through the jungle. Lucas slid out of Johnny’s arms and stood beside him.

Johnny looked at his grieving children, and they looked at him. Their reactions to their mother’s death were as different as they were, as unique. Lucas, the tenderhearted, was undone by missing his mom and confused about where exactly she’d gone. His twin, Wills, was a kid who relied on athleticism and popularity. Already he was a jock and well liked. This loss had offended and scared him. He didn’t like being afraid, so he got angry instead.

And then there was Marah; beautiful sixteen-year-old Marah, for whom everything had always come easily. In the cancer year, she had closed up, become contained and quiet, as if she thought that if she made no noise at all, caused no disruption, the inevitability of this day could be avoided. He knew how deeply she regretted the way she’d treated Kate before she got sick.

The need in all of their eyes was the same, though. They looked to him to put their destroyed world back together, to ease this unimaginable pain.

But Kate was the heart and soul of this family, the glue that held them all together. Hers was the voice that knew what to say. Anything he said would be a lie. How would they heal? How would things get better? How would more time without Kate soothe them?

Marah rose suddenly, unfolding with the kind of grace that most girls would never know. She looked sylphlike in her grief, pale and almost ethereal, with her long black hair, black dress, and nearly translucent skin. He heard the hitch in her breathing, the way she seemed hard-pressed to inhale this new air.

“I’ll put the boys to bed,” she said, reaching out for Lucas. “Come on, rug rat. I’ll read you a story.”

“Way to make us feel better, Dad,” Wills said, his mouth tightening. It was a dark, sadly adult expression on an eight-year-old face.

“It will get better,” Johnny said, hating his weakness.

“Will it?” Wills said. “How?”

Lucas looked up at him. “Yeah, how, Dad?”

He looked at Marah, who looked so cold and pale she might have been carved of ice.

“Sleep will help,” she said dully, and Johnny was pathetically grateful to her. He knew he was losing it, failing, that he was supposed to provide support, not accept it, but he was empty inside.

Just empty.

Tomorrow he’d be better. Do better.

But when he saw the sad disappointment on his children’s faces, he knew what a lie that was.

I’m sorry, Katie.

“Good night,” he said in a thick voice.

Lucas looked up at him. “I love you, Daddy.”

Johnny dropped slowly to his knees and opened his arms. His sons pushed into his embrace and he held them tightly. “I love you, too.” Over their heads, he stared up at Marah, who appeared unmoved. She stood straight and tall, her shoulders back.

“Marah?”

“Don’t bother,” she said softly.

“Your mom made us promise to be strong. Together.”

“Yeah,” she said, her lower lip trembling just a little. “I know.”

“We can do it,” he said, although he heard the unsteadiness of his voice.

“Yeah. Sure we can,” Marah said with a sigh. Then: “Come on, boys, let’s get ready for bed.”

Johnny knew he should stay, comfort Marah, but he had no words.

Instead, he took the coward’s route and left the room, closing the door behind him.

He went downstairs, and ignoring everyone, pushed through the crowd. He grabbed his coat from the laundry room and went outside.

It was full-on night now, and there wasn’t a star in the sky. A thin layer of clouds obscured them. A cool breeze ruffled through the trees on his property line, made the skirtlike boughs dance.

In the tree limbs overhead, Mason jars hung from strands of ropy twine, their insides full of black stones and votive candles. How many nights had he and Kate sat out here beneath a tiara of candlelight, listening to the waves hitting their beach and talking about their dreams?

He grabbed the porch rail to steady himself.

“Hey.”

Her voice surprised and irritated him. He wanted to be alone.

“You left me dancing all by myself,” Tully said, coming up beside him. She had a blue wool blanket wrapped around her; its end dragged on the ground at her bare feet.

“It must be intermission,” he said, turning to her.

“What do you mean?”

He could smell tequila on her breath and wondered how drunk she was. “The Tully Hart center-of-attention show. It must be intermission.”

“Kate asked me to make tonight fun,” she said, drawing back. She was shaking.

“I can’t believe you didn’t come to her funeral,” he said. “It would have broken her heart.”

“She knew I wouldn’t come. She even—”

“And that makes it okay? Don’t you think Marah would have liked to see you in there? Or don’t you care about your goddaughter?”

Before she could answer—and what could she say?—he pushed away from her and went back inside, tossing his coat on the washing machine as he passed through the laundry room.

He knew he’d lashed out unfairly. In another time, in another world, he’d care enough to apologize. Kate would want him to, but right now he couldn’t manage the effort. It took everything he had inside just to keep standing. His wife had been gone for forty-eight hours and already he was a worse version of himself.