Right, Vicki said weakly.

That afternoon, when Josh dropped off the boys, Ted thumped him on the back and said, “We’re going back out to Smith’s Point tomorrow night for dinner and some more fishing. Wil you join us?”

“I can’t,” Josh said. “I’m busy.”

“Busy?” Ted said.

Vicki looked at Josh’s face. She was in the kitchen with her sunglasses on and everyone looked shadowy and dim, like actors in an old black-and-white movie.

“Real y?” she said. “We’d love to have you. It’s the last . . .”

“Real y,” he said. “I’m busy.”

Later, after Josh left, Ted said, “We could invite Dr. Alcott to the picnic. He likes to fish.”

“No,” Vicki said. “No way.”

Numbed by Darvocet and Motrin (ramped up with the addition of three Advil and two Tylenol), Vicki pul ed the picnic together in a near-exact replica of the previous picnic. Except, no Josh.

“Who’s coming?” Melanie asked.

Vicki said, “Just us.”

As Ted drove west toward Madaket and Smith’s Point, Vicki felt the summer ending. It was closing, like a door. The sun hung low in the sky, barely hovering over the tops of the scrub pines of Ram Pasture; its last rays dripped onto the rooftops of the huge summer homes in Dionis. Or so it seemed to Vicki, through her sunglasses. The world was slowing down, the light was syrupy. Melanie sat up front next to Ted, and Brenda and Vicki sat in the Yukon’s middle section, where they could tend to the kids in the way-back. Blaine had his hand arched over his head because Ted had asked him to take care of those rods and Blaine thought that meant he had to hold them for the entire ride. Porter babbled, alternately sucking on his pacifier and popping it out, which made a hol ow noise he liked. Babble, suck, pop. The car smel ed like lobster. Vicki had accidental y ordered an extra dinner—for Josh, she realized, who wasn’t coming. The car felt empty without him. Was she the only person who felt this way? The kids missed him. Melanie, probably, too, though Vicki hadn’t felt wel or brave enough to talk to Melanie about Josh. Maybe later, down the road, after surgery and the baby, maybe when they more closely resembled the people they’d been before this summer. (A memory came to Vicki out of the blue: a dinner party at Melanie and Peter’s house, a catered party that featured black truffle in every course. Peter had bought the truffle from a

“truffle broker” in Paris after another failed round of in vitro; it was his idea to hire the caterer and throw the party. Vicki had appeared at the party with an ounce of outrageously expensive perfume from Henri Bendel as a gift for Melanie. Melanie had seemed delighted by the perfume. Vicki guarded the conversation at that dinner party like the gestapo; every time one of the other guests mentioned anything having to do with children, Vicki changed the subject.)

They would never go back to those former selves. They had changed; they would change again. As if reading Vicki’s thoughts, Brenda let out a big sigh. Vicki looked her way.

“What?”

“I have to talk to you,” Brenda said. She slid down in her seat, and Vicki, instinctively, did the same. They were like kids again, talking below their parents’ radar, where they wouldn’t be heard.

“About what?” Vicki said.

“About money,” Brenda said.

The car’s radio was on. Journey, singing “Wheels in the Sky.” Vicki thought, Wheels in the sky? What did that mean, exactly? Did that mean the plan that God was endlessly spinning for us? In the front seat, Ted was blathering on to Melanie about the fishing trip he and Blaine were going to take on Tuesday. Apparently, Harrison Ford would be on the boat, too, with his nephew. Did wheels in the sky refer to the wheels turning in Vicki’s mind, the gears that were supposed to move at lightning speed, shuttling thoughts in and out, but that now kept getting stuck and going in reverse, as though they needed oil? About money? Why would anyone want to talk about money? Did wheels in the sky mean the actual sky? Outside, the sky was dark already. How was that possible, when just moments before, the sun . . . babble, suck, pop. Ted said, They can pretty much guarantee you’ll catch a bluefish, but everyone wants stripers. The car smel ed like lobsters. Seven mothers died when a bus on a Los Angeles freeway flipped and caught fire. Only seven? Josh was busy. Really, he said. I’m busy. Greta Jenkins had started tel ing a story about her daughter, Avery, four years old, taking dance lessons and what a hassle it had been to find the right kind of tights. Tights without feet, Greta said. A look of loss and despair had flickered across Melanie’s face (but just for a second because she was, after al , the hostess of this dinner party, with its shavings of truffle over everything—like shavings from a lead pencil, Vicki thought). Vicki had changed the subject, saying, Did anyone read the Susan Orlean article in The New Yorker about pigeon fanciers? Babble, suck, pop. About money? Vicki missed Josh. He was busy. It was dark everywhere now.

“Ted!” The voice was Brenda’s serious voice, even more serious than when she said, I have to talk to you. It was her urgent voice. Signaling: Emergency! “Ted, pul over right now. She passed out or fainted or something. I’m cal ing nine-one-one.”

“Who?” Ted said, turning down the radio. “What?”

“Vicki,” Brenda said. “Vicki!”

It wasn’t the sirens that woke her or the incredible rush of pavement beneath the ambulance’s tires, though Vicki could feel the speed, and the sirens were as upsetting as the screams of one of her children, hurt or terrified. What woke her was the smel . Something sharp, antiseptic.

Something right under her nose. Smel ing salts? Like she had fainted in a Victorian parlor? An unfamiliar young man, Josh’s age but with hair pul ed back in a ponytail (why such long hair on a guy? Vicki should have asked Castor, from the poker game, back when she had a chance), was gazing down at her, though he was blurry. Again, Vicki could only get one eye open.

“Vicki!” There, moving in to her limited field of vision, was her sister, and Vicki was relieved. Brenda. There was something important Vicki had wanted to ask Brenda al summer long, but she had been waiting for the right moment and, too, she had been afraid to ask, but she would ask now.

Before it was too late.

Vicki opened her mouth to speak, and Brenda said, “I’m sorry I brought up money. God, I am so sorry. Like what you need is more upset. And . . .

don’t kil me, but I cal ed Mom and Dad. They’re on their way up. Right now, tonight.”

Before it’s too late! Vicki thought. But her eyelids were being pul ed down like the shades on the windows of her bedroom at Number Eleven Shel Street. She was tired, she realized. Tired of fighting, tired of denying it: She was very sick. She was going to die. It had been mentioned in Vicki’s cancer support group that when you got close, fear vanished and peace settled in. Vicki was tired, she wanted to go back to where she’d been before she woke up, to the lost place and time, the nothingness. But resist! Stay with us a little longer! She had to ask Brenda something very important, the most important thing, but Vicki could not find her voice, her voice eluded her, it was gone, it had been stolen—and so Vicki just squeezed Brenda’s hand and thought the words and hoped that Brenda, as bril iant as she was, could intuit them.

I want you to take care of Blaine and Porter. I want you to take my little boys and raise them into men. Ted will be there, too, of course. He will do the ball games and the skiing and the fishing, he will talk to them about girls and drugs and alcohol, he will handle the guy stuff. But boys need a mother, a mommy, and I want that person to be you. You know me, I’m a list person, I always have been, even when I was pretending not to be. So here is the list. Remember everything, forget nothing: Kiss the kids when they fall down, read them stories, praise them when they share, teach them to be kind, to knock on a door before they enter a room, to put their toys away, to put the toilet seat down when they finish.

Play Chutes and Ladders, take them to museums and zoos and funny movies. Listen when they tell you something. Encourage them to sing, to build, to paint, to glue and tape, to call their grandmother. Teach them to cook one thing, make them eat grapes and carrots, and broccoli if you can, get them into swimming lessons, let them have sleepovers with friends where they watch Scooby-Doo and eat pizza and popcorn. Give them one gold dollar from the tooth fairy for each lost tooth. Make certain they don’t choke, drown, or ride their bike without a helmet. Volunteer in the classroom, always be on time picking them up and dropping them off, go to extra lengths with the Halloween costumes, the Christmas stockings, the valentines. Take them sledding and then make hot chocolate with marshmallows. Let them have an extra turn on the slide, notice when their pants get too short or their shoes too tight, hang up their artwork, let them have ice cream with jimmies when they’re good. Magic words, always, for everything. Do not buy a PlayStation. Spend your money, instead, on a trip to Egypt. They should see the Pyramids, the Sphinx. But most important, Brenda, tell them every single day how much I love them, even though I’m not there. I will be watching them, every soccer goal, every sand castle they build, every time they raise their hand in class with an answer right or wrong, I will be watching them. I will put my arms around them when they are sick, hurt, or sad. Make sure they can feel my arms around them! Someone once told me that having a child was like having your heart walk around outside of your body. They are my heart, Brenda, the heart I am leaving behind. Take care of my heart, Bren.

It’s a lot to ask, I know. It is the biggest, most important thing, and I am asking you because you are my sister. We are different, you and me, but if I can say one thing about you it’s that you know me, inside and out, better than Mom and Dad, better, even, than Ted. You are my sister, and I know you love my children and will take care of them like they’re your own. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this. To do this, there is only you.

Brenda was gazing down at her. Had she heard? Vicki released Brenda’s hand.

“Okay?” Vicki whispered.

“Okay,” Brenda said.

Brenda prayed, fast and furiously. Please, please, please, please, please. Ted was pacing the waiting room like a raving lunatic; they took Vicki upstairs for tests, but neither Ted nor Brenda had been al owed to accompany her. Melanie, in a moment of clarity that was previously unthinkable, volunteered to drive the kids back to ’Sconset, get them an ice cream at the market, pop in a Scooby-Doo video, and let them fal asleep in Ted and Vicki’s bed.

“Thank you,” Brenda said.

Brenda had cal ed her parents in the frantic moments before the ambulance arrived, with Vicki unconscious in Ted’s arms. What Brenda said to her mother was, “Vicki’s unconscious.”

El en Lyndon said, “We’re on our way.”

And Brenda, realizing that (a) it would be fruitless to dissuade her mother and (b) her mother and father were exactly what she needed right now, some backup, some help, some support, said, “Yes, okay.”

They wouldn’t be able to get to the island until the morning, though, and Brenda needed comfort now. There was a worm of guilt chewing a tunnel through Brenda’s brain. Brenda had brought up money; she had meant to initiate a conversation about the hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars, and it was at that moment that Vicki lost consciousness. And it was now, ironical y, that Brenda realized money didn’t matter. Money was the last thing that mattered. (Why did human beings believe otherwise?) What mattered was family. What mattered was love.

Love.

Brenda pul ed out her cel phone and walked to the end of the hospital corridor. She dialed the number from memory. Al summer she had tried to forget that number, and yet, it came automatical y.

One ring, two rings.

And then, Walsh. “Hel o?”

His voice. It threw Brenda off balance. She took a stutter step backward. Rumor has it you committed the only sin that can’t be forgiven other than out-and-out plagiarism.