19

Jeremy doesn’t consider himself religious anymore, if he ever really was. Sunday school was something he did because Mom said he had to. When he was fifteen, she gave him the choice of opting out, and out he opted.

Still, he grew up in St. Phil’s, with its stained glass and organ and rich wooden pews. As Episcopal churches go, it’s not a very fancy one, but he doesn’t realize until he walks into the Unitarian church in Seattle how much it shaped his idea of what churches should look like. This place doesn’t look or feel or smell like a church. It’s too colorless, too sterile, all clean lines and clear glass. Danish modern. It feels like a fancy hotel conference center.

The Reno contingent—all except VB, who opted out—enters in a tight clump. Greg’s already arrived; he and Hen hug as if they didn’t have breakfast together two hours ago, and chat in subdued voices. There are a few other people here: a group of dark-clad folks in the front few rows who must be family, a few kids Jeremy’s age who must have been Percy’s friends, scattered adults. Not many. It’s nothing like Mom’s funeral. Jeremy knows it’s mean for him to be happy about that. He doesn’t care.

In the front of the church, on a pedestal surrounded by flowers, sits a simple wooden box, smooth and polished. Behind it, on easels, are three photographs of Percy. One is the one they’ve all already seen: Percy blond and grinning in a Stanford lacrosse uniform, stick swung casually over his shoulder as he lopes across a sunny field. In the second, he’s helping some older woman—his mother?—along a wooded path. In the third he’s younger, hugging a very large puppy. “Oh, great,” Jeremy hears himself saying, as if from a distance. “He loved dogs.”

The minute he says it, he wants to clap his hand over his mouth. He didn’t come here to be snarky: not out loud, anyway. He can be snarky later. But Amy squeezes his hand, and Aunt Rosie touches his shoulder. “If this is too much, you can leave,” she whispers. “Don’t worry about us, Jeremy, and don’t worry about Percy’s family. Take care of yourself.”

“Thank you so much for coming,” someone says, and they all turn to face the voice. It belongs to a haggard woman—blond hair trimmed in a perfect chin-length bob, elegant black suit, tasteful gold jewelry—who has appeared in front of them. Behind her stands a tall man, gray-haired, handsome once, you can tell, but eyes sunken and face lined now. “You must be—Melinda’s friends. I’m Anna Clark.” She holds out her hand. “Thank you so much for coming,” she says again, more forcefully, and Jeremy flashes back again to Mom’s funeral, to the misery of the receiving line at the end. Thank you for coming thank you for coming thank you for coming. He repeated the syllables so often they became nonsense, meaningless noise. But Anna Clark sounds like she means them.

Amy squeezes his hand again. Jeremy wonders if she’ll ever hold his hand when they aren’t at a funeral. “You’re welcome,” Hen says.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Anna’s a broken record; her husband’s a mute mannequin who stares past them, his eyes somewhere else. “I invited everyone I could, but so few people—because—I just wanted to share good memories. There were. Good memories.”

“Oh,” says Rosemary, and moves in a rush to hug the woman. “I’m so sorry. We’re so sorry.”

Anna lets herself be hugged, but her face over Aunt Rosie’s shoulder stays tense, distracted, the eyes roaming until they fix on Jeremy. “You’re Melinda’s son, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Suddenly his good suit feels like a straitjacket.

“I—I can’t imagine. I—” Rosie finishes hugging her and steps backward, murmuring. Anna takes a visible breath and forces out clearer sentences. “I meant to try to meet you before. I meant to invite all of you to dinner last night. Things have been getting away from me.”

“It’s okay,” Jeremy says. He’s afraid the woman will shatter in front of him. Her husband still hasn’t made a sound. Amy’s grip on his hand is cutting off his circulation. “I mean, that would have been nice, it was nice of you even to think of it, but—”

“We’re all doing the best we can,” Aunt Rosie says, “and it’s extraordinarily generous of you to allow us to be here.”

Anna blinks, makes a groping motion in the air in front of her. “Allow? I’m honored. I—you’re the ones who are generous, and I should—”

“No shoulds,” Rosemary says gently. “There are no rule books for this. Anna, we’re very sorry for your loss.”

Anna breaks, then, and turns to muffle her sobs against her husband’s chest. Eyes distant and unseeing, he clumsily pats her shoulder. Rosemary whispers to Jeremy, “Let’s step away for a moment, shall we?”

“Yeah. I need a drink of water, anyway.” Sandwiched between Aunt Rosie and Amy, he makes his way to the water fountain in the foyer.

“We don’t have to stay,” Rosemary tells him when he’s finished slurping. “If it’s too much—”

“I wish people would stop saying that. I’m staying.” He turns, shaking off the two women, and returns to the sanctuary.

He sees the table now, along the right-hand wall, the display of more photos, trophies and awards, memorabilia. He remembers the table at Mom’s funeral, the snapshots and favorite books and favorite rocks. Jeremy wills himself to walk over to this one, to look at the pictures. Percy as a chubby baby in his mother’s arms; toddler Percy riding a tricycle; tan and buff Percy, laughing, in a Stanford sweatshirt. Here’s an album with more: birthday parties, Christmas, family vacations. Percy grinning, arm-in-arm with his father, Mount Rushmore in the background. Percy on a beach somewhere. Mexico? Jeremy’s stomach spasms, and he swallows bile. It can’t be Mexico. They wouldn’t have put that out here, would they?

Don’t look at that picture. Look at the other things on the table. A lacrosse stick. A yearbook. A pair of bronzed baby shoes. And—Jeremy sees now, and how did he miss it before?—a stack of slipcased print issues of CC.

Just met guy your age, Percy, who likes CC too. The postcard’s still at home. He thought about bringing it, but it’s stuck in his mirror frame and doesn’t want to budge. He was afraid he’d tear it if he tugged. He feels his fists clenching. If he walked up to Anna Clark and said, “One of my mother’s last conversations was with your son, about Comrade Cosmos,” would she remove the issues, out of common decency?

He watches a hand reach to touch the plastic covers. “Oh, man,” Amy says, her voice thick, her fingers resting lightly on the plastic. “He was really a collector, wasn’t he? Mint condition. These must be worth money.”

Jeremy’s chest tightens. It hurts to breathe. “I’m going to look at the urn now,” he says. “Don’t follow me, please.” Amy turns to him with a frown, but he moves away from the table, up the side aisle, around the first pews—people there watching him, but he can’t read their expressions—toward the pedestal. Golden wood, with the golden boy inside.

Jeremy expected to feel rage, thought he’d have to fight the urge to knock the urn to the floor, to scatter the sick fuck’s ashes through the sanctuary. But he feels nothing. The fury he felt even a moment ago, looking at the CC issues, has evaporated. This isn’t Percy, any more than Mom’s ashes are Mom.

He feels something on the back of his thigh. A sharp voice says, “Bart!” and Jeremy turns to find an improbably huge dog gazing at him with somber, sorrowful eyes, while Mr. Clark frowns and tugs at the leash. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. Anna insisted that he be here. He usually behaves around strangers.”

So you can talk, Jeremy thinks, and then, I’m not exactly a stranger. He holds out a hand, tentatively. The great beast nuzzles it. The tail beats, once. Then the dog returns to Mr. Clark and sits obediently on command.

“He’s the puppy in the photo,” Anna says, and Jeremy turns to find her standing next to the urn. She gives a wan smile. “Older now, of course. He—well, he was the last of us to see Percy alive. I thought he deserved to be here. I guess that sounds crazy, but Percy really loved this animal. He—I keep thinking he must still be alive somewhere. My Percy. The person who died wasn’t my Percy. The person who did that to. To your mother. Wasn’t my Percy.”

“The woman who died,” Jeremy hears himself saying, “was my mother.”

Anna Clark sags, lets out a breath, reaches out to lean on the pedestal for support. “Thank you, Jeremy. That’s the first honest thing anyone’s said to me.”

*   *   *

It’s inexpressibly horrible, a charade. Anna sits in her pew, William an unbending poker next to her, Marjorie and David letting out sighs and sniffles on her other side. Several times, Marjorie reaches for her hand. Anna shakes it away. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have done this. What was she thinking?

There’s some music, a pleasant piano piece, an arrangement of “Here Comes the Sun.” Anna chose it because Percy liked that song and often hummed or whistled it in the house, but now it sounds entirely wrong. Awash in humiliation, she listens to the Unitarian minister’s bland, sincere homily. The minister’s a short-haired, owlish young woman who goes on a few minutes too long about the Tragedy of Suicide and What We Don’t Understand and the Agony of Percy’s Inexplicable Behavior, and then—as Anna instructed her—invites people up to the podium to share good memories of Percy, Because We Are Here to Support the Family in Their Grief, and We Also Wish to Acknowledge and Honor the Family and Friends of Melinda Soto, Who Have Graciously Joined Us Today. Heads throughout the sanctuary whip around. Where, where? Jeremy nods, half raises a hand, gives a small bow in his seat. Anna bites back a laugh, which she knows would sound too shrill and hysterical.

No one else moves. Then Marjorie clears her throat, stands, and marches the short distance to the microphone. “I’m Marjorie Clark, Percy’s grandmother. I couldn’t believe it when I heard what had happened—none of us could—and I suppose I never will”—oh, get on with it, thinks Anna, the minister already said all this—“and I’m sure I’ll never understand it, but I can tell you that the Percy I knew was a sweet boy.” She goes on to tell a story about taking Percy grocery shopping when he was three, how he stopped stock-still in front of a display of lettuce and said, “That’s the biggest salad in the world!” A few people laugh, politely. Anna doesn’t. It’s completely irrelevant.

Marjorie’s saying something about the Reno people now, thanking them. Turning to gesture at the urn, she wishes Percy a sentimental good-bye, and then sits down.

Someone else has gotten up. Toby Tobin. At least his mother isn’t here. Anna would have banned him, too, if she’d been able to, but that’s Poor Form.

Wait, didn’t the bitch say Toby wouldn’t be able to come? Because they’d be away? Something about Europe? Whatever happened to keep Toby home? Maybe he doesn’t like his mother any better than Anna does? No: more likely it’s something else. And he’s talking; Anna should listen.

“Percy and I played lacrosse together,” he says, gripping the sides of the podium so hard Anna can see his pale knuckles. “I’ve known him since kindergarten, because we both went to Blake, and—well, we weren’t always friends. We competed a lot. But I couldn’t have told you anything bad about him, and like everybody else, I’ll never understand this. It would be a lot easier if I could point to something and say, ‘Oh, yeah, he was clearly off,’ but I can’t find anything like that. And I think we’re all going to spend the rest of our own lives looking, and it’s really scary because I’ll never be able to take anyone at face value again, but maybe that’s a gift, too.” He stops, swallows. “I’m talking too long. Anyway, I just—I feel awful for everybody. I wish I could do something to change it, any of it.”

He leaves the podium, giving Anna an abashed half nod as he passes. She nods back. He said the same thing Marjorie said, but he said it much better. His words were honest, heartfelt, and non-cloying, which is worth a lot right now. It’s worth even more that he even came. Anna concedes, only a little grudgingly, that Toby seems to have grown into a fine human being. And Percy didn’t. Of course, if she weren’t terminally irritated with William’s mother, alert for self-congratulation in every syllable of her speech, maybe she’d have liked Marjorie’s comments, too.

Anna glances around the sanctuary. No one else has stood up. The minister clears her throat and moves forward, but Anna stands abruptly, feeling as brittle as a burned-out lightbulb, and makes her way to the mike. The few feet seem like miles, but this fiasco was her idea. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

She looks out over the tiny, scattered audience. “I’ve thanked all of you for coming,” she says, “but I’m thanking you again. The fact that so few people are here shows just how brave and caring all of you had to be to show up. That means the world to me, and to Percy’s father.” She’s pretty sure it means precisely nothing to William, but that part’s formula. She takes a deep breath. “Twenty-three years ago today, my only child was born, and I held him in my arms and I imagined a bright, happy future for him. I never imagined that I’d outlive him, and certainly not under these circumstances. I’m sure many people, and maybe even people here, are happy he’s dead, consider it right and fitting. Other people are probably angry he’s dead, because it means they can’t kill him, or because it means he won’t suffer for decades in prison. I understand both of those positions. I do.”

She pauses. They wait, watching her. “I don’t have any answers. His father and I knew something was wrong as soon as he came home from Mexico, but he wouldn’t talk to us about it. He didn’t leave a note. I believe he felt so horrible about what he’d done that he couldn’t live with it. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe he didn’t feel horrible about what he did to Melinda. Maybe he was only terrified of the consequences. I don’t know. Whatever answers he might have been able to offer, he carried them into the water. So of the stories that might be true, I tell the one that comforts me the most: that he felt remorse. I’m his mother. Please grant me that.”

Her voice wavers, just a little, and is answered by rustling from the pews. William has looked away, and Marjorie’s frowning. Anna doesn’t care. She takes another breath. “But this I do know. When Percy killed Melinda, he also destroyed himself. He did that the second he began to hurt her.” Her voice breaks on the word “hurt”; she can’t bring herself to say “rape.” “He did that even before he walked into the water. The Percy I knew was a nice kid, a fun and decent kid, not a genius but smart enough. He loved his dog. I believe he loved us, his parents. He was loyal to his friends.” Damn few of whom have shown up today, but she’s already said that. “All of that’s banal, I know, and it makes Percy sound utterly ordinary, and the Percy I knew was, except that he was mine. That Percy died in Mexico. That’s the Percy I’m mourning, the one no one else even seems to want to hear about or to remember, because the other Percy—the one who did such horrible things to Melinda—has taken center stage.”

Everyone’s staring at her now, even Marjorie and William. Well, at least she has their attention. She supposes she’s being unkind—Marjorie and Toby have both remembered that Percy, or tried to—but she doesn’t care. The minister comes up behind her, clears her throat again, says gently, “Anna,” but Anna shoos her away.

She’s not done talking. It’s her party. She paid for the damn salmon canapés. She’ll talk as long as she needs to.

She feels dizzy. Breathe, Anna. “Twenty-three years ago today, my only child surfaced from the waters of my womb.” That sounds pretentious as hell, but so what. This is her only son’s funeral. “Eight months, two weeks and four days ago, he walked into the waters of Lake Washington.” Pause. Breathe. “Many of you know that Percy was a Comrade Cosmos fan. Some of you are, too.” She sees Jeremy Soto wince, watches his shoulders hunch. She keeps going even though he’s glaring at her. She deserves that glare, maybe—Percy deserved it—but she needs to say her piece. “After Percy died, I started reading CC from the first issue. Not because I thought it would give me answers, but because Percy loved it, and I’d never bothered to try and share that with him when he was still alive. I didn’t expect to get pulled into it, but I did.”

Jeremy’s wiping his face now, a series of fierce swipes. The girl sitting next to him grips his shoulder. “If you follow CC, you know that this month’s issue opens with a flood. Cosmos and Archipelago are caught in that flood, and Archipelago’s pet scorpion has been swept away, and she’s grieving terribly, even though most people wouldn’t mourn a scorpion. She’s grieving because Erasmus the scorpion was hers, and she loved him.”

She takes another breath, feeling stronger now. “I don’t want to push this too far. Percy wasn’t a scorpion. Not literally, anyway.” William scowls, but there’s a ripple of laughter from the others. Good. “But when I saw that flood, I thought about my own womb, and I thought about Lake Washington, and I thought, We all come from the water, and we’re all swept away in floods sometimes, and sometimes the people we have to work with to find safety are the last ones we expected. Sometimes the only way to survive is to work with people we thought we hated. Sometimes those are the people who wind up saving us, just like Cosmos, I’m pretty sure, will save Archipelago.”

The minister’s hovering again. Anna turns to her and snaps, “I’m almost done,” and the woman retreats. “I’m not asking any of you to save me. I’m not claiming I can save you. But we’re in a flood, and when the waters recede, everything will look different. Our task now is to save what we can.” She swallows. “I ask that you try to save at least one memory of the Percy who died in Mexico, the one I loved. Thank you.”

She steps away from the podium. Her legs are rubbery. William stands and helps her back to her seat; Marjorie takes her hand—she permits that, now—and David reaches around Marjorie to squeeze her shoulder, hard. For a moment, this moment, they’re almost a family. It won’t last.

The minister’s talking again. Anna doesn’t even try to listen. She closes her eyes and breathes.

*   *   *

The day before Melinda leaves for Mexico, she listens to Science Friday on NPR. They’re talking about the moon. There’s water on the moon, it turns out, quite a bit of water. Several dozen buckets of water, trapped in the moon’s icy poles.

She reads more about the story when she gets home. Scientists are excited: this could open the door for a lunar space station, since there’s now a water source, although it doesn’t seem to Melinda that several dozen bucketfuls would go very far. Other commenters are more interested in how the water got there. One of the leading theories is that it was carried on asteroids that smashed into the moon. Some people believe that studying the moon’s ice will provide invaluable information about the history of the entire solar system.

As she packs her suitcase—the aqua swimsuit, or the red one that’s less slimming but more comfortable? okay, both—Melinda muses over the story. She thinks the moon is a little like Nevada: even a trickle of water transforms a wasteland into a potential windfall that sets speculators panting. She likes the asteroid theory, though. The moon is still scarred, but the objects that wounded it also brought potential life. What hurt the moon also has the capacity to mend it.

She laughs to herself. The church reading group just finished Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer, and this would fit right in. She’ll have to tell her own Hen about it when she gets home.

*   *   *

The rain’s started again. Yes, of course it has: this is Seattle, after all, even if they’re here in July, during the dry season. Standing at a window in the church fellowship hall, clutching a glass of punch and a plate dotted with salmon canapés, Rosemary stares out at the falling water and wonders what Walter’s doing.

Everything aches. She’s stiff from the long car ride, from the strange bed, from the tension of sitting through this dreadful funeral. Yesterday she went to Pike Place Market and did a little shopping, but that seems like a century ago.

The funeral was hideous: soothing platitudes from the minister—who clearly hadn’t known Percy—the tone-deaf offering from the grandmother, that jagged and heartbreaking speech from Anna Clark. Percy’s school friend was the most credible speaker, and certainly the briefest.

As awful as Melinda’s funeral was, it was better than this.

Under these circumstances, what would a good funeral look like? Rosemary has no idea. But once again, she’s grateful to be Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church gives good funeral. There’s a well-defined liturgy. There’s a shape to the thing, a shape created both to express and to contain grief, a shape that points to hope.

The Unitarians have no Eucharist. She expected that, but there wasn’t even any Scripture. The minister quoted Plato’s maxim about always being kind, because everyone you see is fighting a terrible battle. True enough, but completely inadequate.

And what would have been adequate?

How would Hen have handled this service? Rosemary will have to ask her, later.

In the meantime, she aches for Anna Clark. The Reno contingent was at least a quarter of the audience. Don’t the Clarks have friends? But it would be too easy to blame social isolation for what Percy turned into, and clearly he hadn’t always been socially isolated. Clearly the Clarks are upper crust.

“Excuse me,” says a voice behind her, and she turns to find Anna standing there, twisting a napkin into shreds. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything. You look lonely over here.”

Rosemary blinks. She’s not the person who’s lonely. Or rather, she supposes that she is lonely, but her loneliness is nothing compared to Anna’s.

And suffering isn’t a competition. How often has she said that to hospital patients who insist that they’re “fine,” because the person in the next bed is so much worse off?

“Just processing,” Rosemary says. She’s a chaplain. She ought to be able to talk to this woman.

“It was nice of you to hug me before,” Anna says, her voice fraying, and Rosemary finds her bearings. Anna’s being a hostess, doing what she knows. It’s not a bad strategy.

“You’re exhausted,” she says, taking Anna’s elbow and guiding her to a table. “Please, sit down. Let me get you something. Some punch? Some cake? Have you been able to eat?”

“Eat?” Anna makes a face.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

Anna laughs, incongruously. “I had breakfast. Cereal. But that was hours ago, wasn’t it? Would you mind bringing me some cheese? And crackers? Maybe some of the canapés? That would be very kind of you.”

“Yes, of course.” Rosemary hurries to fix the plate, hoping Anna won’t have wandered away when she gets back. Primary mourners at a funeral are usually as difficult to speak to alone as the bride or groom at a wedding. But when she returns to the table, Anna’s still there, frowning down at her hands clasped on the table in front of her.

Rosemary stays still a minute to make sure she isn’t interrupting a prayer, but Anna looks up at her. “Are you—will you sit down? Will you sit with me?”

“Of course.” Rosemary sits. “I thought maybe you were praying. I didn’t want to disturb you if you were.”

“No.” Anna looks down at her hands again, and then unfolds them and reaches out for the plate Rosemary’s put in front of her. “I don’t—I’m not religious. We just had the funeral here because, well. Funerals. Churches. You know?”

Rosemary nods, and feels herself softening toward the Unitarians. The poor minister. What a service to get stuck with.

“I don’t know how to pray,” Anna says. “Maybe if we were religious—”

“No,” Rosemary says. It would be much, much too easy—and false—to blame Percy’s pathology on godlessness. People who do believe in God are perfectly capable of committing horrors, anyway. “Anna, this isn’t your fault. Not yours, not your husband’s.”

Anna gives her a long, level look now, and says very gently, “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Oh.” Rosemary feels herself reddening.

“I was going to say—” Anna offers a small, crooked smile. “—that if we were religious, maybe I’d have answers.”

“No.” Rosemary shakes her head. “It’s not that easy, believe me. I’m religious, and I don’t have answers. Only questions.”

“Do you believe there are answers?”

“Well sure, of course, I mean there have to be, but I don’t know if I’ll ever learn them, or if they’ll make sense if I do.” She shakes her head again; this is too abstract. Chaplain mode, Rosie. “When you spoke, you talked about wanting to hang on to your good memories of Percy. Tell me your best memory. Tell me what you loved most about him.”

Anna Clark smiles, a fleeting expression that vanishes almost as soon as it appears. “Well, there was that day in the woods. When we were hiking, and he helped me. That’s one of the photographs in the chapel. It’s a very precious memory. But this morning, I remembered—I don’t know why it came to me now.” She frowns and pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “No, I do know, because we’ve gotten all these flowers. I invited a lot of people and they didn’t come, but some of them sent flowers. Anyway, when Percy was a little boy, he used to pick dandelions for me. We had a garden, you know, lots of flowers, and I worked hard to keep dandelions off our property”—she laughs now—“but he liked dandelions. They were soft and furry, he said. Even when they were still yellow, even before they went to seed. Anyway, so he’d go off to school, and he’d come home with mashed dandelions in his pockets. It was so sweet. I couldn’t bear to tell him they were weeds. He asked me if we could have some in our yard, and I told him that dandelions were happier living in wild places.” She looks down; her hands are clasped again. “He was seven or eight then. He only brought them to me for a little while, but he was so proud of himself. Pockets full of mashed dandelions.”

“Extra detergent in the laundry,” Rosemary says, and Anna grimaces.

“Yes. Did you—did you know Melinda?”

“Very well.” Rosemary speaks as gently as she can. “She was one of my best friends. My husband helped her bring Jeremy back from Guatemala.”

“Oh!” Anna’s eyes overflow. She looks away—Rosemary can tell from watching the side of her face that she’s working to compose herself—and then says, “Is your husband here, too? I don’t remember seeing him.”

“No, he’s not here. He has Alzheimer’s. He’s in a nursing home.”

Anna looks back at her now, face blanched. “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible. Watching someone disappear like that—”

“Yes.” Because she wants to be generous, because Anna’s been so open with her and was so brave during the service, Rosemary goes on. “All those shared memories you count on with a spouse, being able to say, ‘Remember when we went on that trip’ or ‘Remember when we got our first house,’ that stuff. That’s no longer there, even though the person’s body is.”

“My husband and I—” Anna breaks off, bringing her hand to her mouth. “We don’t. We don’t share memories. He’s not sick, but it seems we remember everything differently. Sometimes I wonder if we lived the same lives.”

Rosemary tries not to wince. The situation’s completely predictable—any death of a child, let alone this one, is hell on a marriage—but that doesn’t make it any less hideous. “That’s hard.”

“Yes.”

“It must be even harder now.”

“Well, I only noticed it—after Percy. I suppose it must have been true before that, but there hadn’t been anything important to handle. We just lived in our routines.” She shoves away the stray strand again. “And I suggested couples counseling, but he—won’t.” She draws in a deep, ragged breath. “I don’t think we’ll still be married this time next year.”

Rosemary’s chest tightens. “That’s very, very hard.” She remembers how Anna kept repeating herself, before the service. Now Rosemary’s the one doing it.

“Oh, God.” Anna gives a strangled half laugh. “You’re not a reporter, are you? You promise you won’t tell anyone that? I shouldn’t even have said it. I didn’t mean to say it.”

“I’m a chaplain,” Rosemary says. “A lay chaplain, in a hospital. So I’m used to hearing stories. No, I won’t tell anyone. When you said it, did you believe it?”

“Yes.” Anna looks up. From across the room, the tall husband moves toward them. He sees his wife and nods, gesturing. “He needs me. I have to go. Thank you. For the cheese, too.”

She stands up and moves away, leaving Rosemary breathing through a new pain she doesn’t understand, a jagged tearing in the throat. So much loss: of course she feels for this woman. But there’s something else, something more. What?

Walter: yes, of course, something about Walter. But what?

That he isn’t here.

That he no longer remembers Melinda, will probably never remember Melinda.

Yes. But all of that’s old. What’s the new pain?

And then she realizes. Talking to Anna felt at least a little like talking to Melinda: frank conversation with another woman, with someone she likes and whose company she enjoys. Rosemary always loved how honest Melinda was, how free of bullshit. Maybe Anna isn’t always like that, but Rosemary thinks she’d like Anna, if they met in a book group. They could be friends. Rosemary can’t talk like that to Vera—not yet, anyway, although they may be inching toward it—or even Hen.

Suddenly Rosemary feels terribly alone. She wants to be back in the van, even though the drive up here was interminable. She wants to go home, to be in places she knows, even if too many of the other people who used to be there too are gone.

*   *   *

Almost dozing on the rocking ferry, Veronique sips her licorice tea and stares out the rain-streaked window. She can’t see much, of course: grayness receding into mist, the blurry reflections of the other passengers, most of them in shorts and sports sandals, who read or doze or listen, feet tapping, to their headphones. No two seem to be sitting together. Everyone’s scattered, isolated. Veronique guesses that most of them are residents of Bainbridge Island, heading back home after errands in the city. She’s surprised not to see more tourists like her, but maybe the rain’s driven them inside.

This morning, she was proud of herself for not going to the funeral. She was proud of herself for figuring out bus schedules and planning a fun day, the kind of day Melinda would have loved. The Art Museum, Pike Place Market—Veronique didn’t find another pot she liked, but she did buy some delicious chocolate, and even virtuously saved some for the others—a boat ride.

She enjoyed herself, in a rather forced and determined way. She thinks even Brandy would have approved. But now she’s tired, and the rain’s reminding her of the rain the day Melinda died, not to mention making her knee throb, and she’s teetering on the verge of tears. She tells herself that her blood sugar’s wonky. She ate too much chocolate. The snack bar’s just over there, and even if it’s as overpriced as these things always are, she should go buy some protein. A hot dog. A hot dog with mustard. That would taste good right now.

She doesn’t move, though. She feels glued to the seat. As desperate as she was to be alone when she was surrounded by the others and their chatter, now she’d give anything to have someone with her. Even annoying Amy. Even nagging Rosemary.

She wants to take a nap. But she knows that if she went back to Greg’s house and no one else was home yet, she’d just feel more bereft.

What happened? Today started out being fun, just like the trip to Planet X did. That stayed fun. This one’s gone downhill. So what’s the difference? Veronique, you analyze narrative for a living. This is narrative. Analyze it.

She stares out at the rain. Bad weather, but it wasn’t great on the trip to Gerlach, either.

She misses Melinda now, but she missed Melinda then, too.

This trip is new. She’s never been here before. She’s been to Gerlach a lot.

Is that it? It sounds like it could be, but it doesn’t feel like it is. She definitely needs protein to work this out. She hauls herself out of her seat and buys an overpriced, alarmingly gray hot dog from the snack bar. She eyes the thing—if she dies of botulism on the ferry, it will take a long time for the others to find out about it, since no one knows where she is—and considers calling Rosemary. “I’m about to eat a hot dog on the Bainbridge Ferry. I just wanted to let you know, so if I keel over from food poisoning, you’ll know where to look for me.”

She lets out a guffaw, and some other passengers give her strange looks. She’d actually love to interrupt Percy’s funeral by calling Rosemary with that message. It would serve Rosie right. But, Veronique reluctantly concedes, it’s probably not worth the ill will it would create. The drive home will be very long: she doesn’t need to be lectured the whole time. And anyway, from the state of the trash bins, it looks like other people on the ferry have been eating hot dogs, and Veronique hasn’t seen any corpses.

All right. Live dangerously. She wrestles open a tiny plastic squeeze bag of mustard, squirts it onto the hot dog—getting some on her shirt and some on her seat in the process—and eats. The hot dog tastes fine. Actually, it tastes good.

She finishes the hot dog, lets out a small and dignified belch, and returns to staring out the window. They’re nearing Bainbridge Island, a dark dimness in the rain, and the other passengers are stirring, getting ready to disembark. Veronique will just sit here and ride back to Seattle.

All right. Where were you, Veronique?

This trip is new, whereas she’s been to Gerlach a lot. But that still doesn’t feel right. Why not?

She ponders, absently wiping a drop of mustard off her arm as the ferry docks with a small thump. Gerlach was new in a lot of ways: because she was making the trip without Melinda, because she was disobeying expectations. Of course, she’s doing that here, too, by not going to Percy’s funeral, but everyone knew she wouldn’t. She announced it beforehand, instead of just striking out on her own on a daring adventure. It’s not like Rosie’s going to become frantic wondering where she is, not unless she rides the ferry back and forth all night.

Rosie.

Oh, hell. That’s it.

When Veronique took off for Gerlach, she knew Rosie would worry. She wanted Rosie to worry. Half the fun was yanking Rosie’s chain.

She wanted Rosemary to come after her, as much as she protested at the time. She wanted to prove that someone would care if she disappeared.

Veronique makes a face at the backs of the departing passengers. The Gerlach trip wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without that adolescent, I’m-running-away-from-home rebellion. Without that, it might just have felt lonely, the way she feels now.

With a sigh, she gets up and moves to another seat, so that she’ll be facing Seattle as they approach it, and pulls out her bus schedules. She’ll go back to Greg’s house. She’ll take her nap. When the others get home, she’ll be nice to them, and she’ll ask how the funeral was, and she may even care about the answer.

Two hours later, damp but triumphant at having navigated the bus system again, Veronique walks up the hill to Greg’s house and sees cars in his driveway: the rental van, his battered Toyota, another car—a Lexus, of all things—she doesn’t recognize.

The front door’s open. She walks in and calls out, “Hi, everybody. I’m home.” She hears voices from the living room, and follows them, and blinks. Jeremy and Amy and a frail blond woman are poring over a table of comic books while Rosie and Hen chat in the background. They look up when she enters the room; they must not have heard her before.

“Did you have a nice day?” Hen asks. Rosie looks worried, almost panicked.

“I did,” Veronique says, “thank you.”

“This is Anna,” Rosie says. “Percy’s mother.” She gives Veronique a fierce look: don’t make any trouble. “Anna, this is our friend Veronique.”

The blonde looks up from the table, turns to Veronique, extends her hand. She looks very tired. “Hello. I’m glad to meet you.”

“She’s a CC fan,” Amy pipes in. “She has some cool ideas about stories. You should talk to her, Professor Bellamy.”

Shaking Anna Clark’s hand, Veronique feels her eyes filling with tears. For herself, not for Percy: not even for Melinda. I don’t want to be in this story. I don’t want to have to think about this story. But the others expect her to behave. “Hello.” She knows it sounds cold, but it’s the best she can do, because her old rage has come swirling back, a blizzard in July. She shouldn’t even have to meet this woman.

“Professor Bellamy,” Amy says, her voice both gentle and urgent, “today would have been Percy’s birthday.”

Amy’s the only person here who witnessed the March meltdown. Veronique shudders, and to her horror feels herself blushing. Then she takes a deep breath—she’s a grown-up, and she can do this—and holds out the paper bag from Pike Place Market. “Anna, I’m sorry. Would you like some chocolate?”