"Where's your dad?"

"He left," says Sophie.

"Oh," says Beth, strangely disappointed that he didn't come in. Must be the vodka talking.

"How was camp today?"

"Lame," says Sophie.

"Can you please change your att.i.tude and not wreck it for your sisters? You loved it when you were their age."

"Fine. It was delightful!" says Sophie, delivering the word delightful in a high-pitched squeal, her face stretched and dimpled in a too-sugary-to-be-real, Shirley Temple smile.

"Okay, okay. How was dinner?"

Sophie says nothing and looks to Jessica.

"It was delightful!" says Jessica in the same tone and manner as her older sister.

"It totally sucked," says Sophie.

"Hey! Language," says Beth.

"She was there," says Sophie.

"Oh," says Beth.

"I don't like her," says Sophie.

"Me either," says Jessica.

Beth tries to summon some kind of maternal wisdom or politically correct advice or at least something positive for her girls, but the Pa.s.sion a la Beths are working against her, and so she goes with something honest. "I don't like her either."

"Yeah, but you don't have to spend time with her like we do. I wish we didn't have to see her," says Sophie.

"I wish Dad would come home," says Jessica.

Beth's heart breaks.

"He's not going to, is he?" asks Sophie.

"No, I don't think so," says Beth.

Tears pool in Jessica's eyes, fury in Sophie's.

"I'm sorry, sweeties. I'm so sorry. This does totally suck."

"I miss him, Mom," says Jessica.

"I miss him, too," says Beth.

"I thought you hated him," says Sophie. "I thought that's why you ripped up the pictures."

"That wasn't why, and sometimes I do hate him. I miss and hate him at the same time. It's complicated."

"Do you hate him more or miss him more?" asks Jessica with big, wet, hopeful eyes. Beth wipes Jessica's face with her hand and kisses her cheek.

"Miss," says Beth, having compa.s.sion for her sensitive middle child.

"Well, I hate him," says Sophie.

"Soph," says Beth in the tone that typically begins one of her lectures.

"Why do you get to hate him and I don't?"

It's a good question, but Beth doesn't say anything. She doesn't say because even if he's no longer her husband, he'll always be Sophie's father. She doesn't say because it's not good to hate anyone. But is it okay for Sophie to hate her father if that's how she feels? It can't be healthy to stuff those honest feelings down. Beth should probably make appointments with the school's guidance counselor for all three girls to talk about all this stuff.

"Because I'm the mother," she says finally, waving that irritatingly vague, all-powerful parental wand over the whole discussion, ending it. "It's getting late. Go get ready for bed."

Sophie rolls her eyes and walks back into the house. Her younger sister follows. Before Beth goes into the house to see how Gracie's doing and to direct the process of going to bed, she reads just a few more pages.

SHORTLY AFTER THE girls go to sleep, Beth brings her book with her to bed, more tired than she has any reason to be after such a luxuriously free day. She hopes to finish the next chapter, maybe even the whole book, but her eyes close before she turns a single page.

As she falls into a deep sleep, unprocessed thoughts about the autistic girl in the book she's reading search out similar elements learned some months ago about the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Detached from people. Bewildered by emotions. Enthralled by repet.i.tion. An uncelebrated intelligence. A primal need for order. A row of blocks. A series of numbers. A sensitivity to sound and touch. Persistent. Silent. Honest. Brave. Misunderstood.

These elements combine while she sleeps, blending into something new, something that can no longer be distinguished as belonging to either the girl in The Siege or the boy in The Curious Incident. It is a prethought, a shadow of an idea forming.

The shadow travels through her mind, gathering energy, weaving through the short story she once wrote about a peculiar boy's imaginary world, merging with the image of a spinning pinwheel and the sound of a scream, absorbing the memory of a small boy and the joy in his eyes as he lined up rocks on the beach. And now, having collected the elements and the power they needed, through a neurological alchemy not yet described in any book, these many images and sounds within the shadow in her mind a.s.semble, first into a chorus, and then, finally, into a single voice. The shadow is no longer a shadow. It has become inspiration.

That night, a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy inhabits her dreams, a boy who sees and hears and feels the world in a unique and almost unimaginable way. She doesn't know him, yet her mind does. She sees him clearly. He is vivid and real. She understands him. She's still dreaming about this boy when she is awakened in the morning by her alarm clock.

At nine, she drops the girls off at the community center and tells them to have a great day, and Sophie slams the car door. Beth then drives directly to the library.

She goes upstairs and looks up at the clock. It's nine fifteen. Sitting in the same seat she sat in yesterday, she opens her notebook, uncaps her pen, takes a deep breath, and begins to write in the voice of the boy in her dream.

CHAPTER 12.

I am lying on the deck in the backyard, looking up at the sky. Looking up at the sky is one of my favorite things to do, especially on a no-cloud day. On a no-cloud day, I stare at the blue sky, and I love it. I stare at the blue sky for so long, and I love it so much, that I leave my skin and scatter out into it, the way rain puddles return to the sky on a hot day.

I leave the boy lying on the deck, and I become the blue sky. I am blue sky, and I am high above the earth and the boy lying on the deck, and I am floating and free. I am blue sky, and I am air, gliding on waves of wind, swirling and blowing, weightless and warm under the sun, above the earth and the boy on the deck.

I am blue sky, and I am air. I am everywhere.

I am blue sky and air blowing into lungs. I am breath. I am air moving in and out of squirrels and birds and my mother and father and the green leaves on the trees. I am air turning into energy inside bodies, becoming pieces of what is living inside. I am hearts and bones and thoughts, unspoken words inside the head of the boy lying on the deck, my father's muscles, my mother's sorrow. I am blue sky and air and breath and energy, a part of every living thing around me.

I look up into the no-cloud sky, and I am everywhere, connected to all living things. I look down at the boy lying on the deck. He is happy.

CHAPTER 13.

David follows Olivia into the kitchen, hanging back and looking around as he walks, probably inspecting the condition of the floors and the window casings, a.s.sessing the current value of the place. He can't help it. She pours him a gla.s.s of wine and hands it to him.

"The cottage looks good."

"Thanks. You hungry? I made a salad," she says.

"No, I had a lobster roll on the way over. Wine is good. Here, I brought you this." He hands her a small, white paper bag.

"Aunt Leah's," she says, smiling, shaking the bag, knowing even before she opens it and sees the hunk of chocolate fudge.

"You look good," he says.

"You, too."

He does. He's wearing a plaid, cotton, b.u.t.ton-down shirt, unb.u.t.toned and untucked over a gray T-shirt, jeans, and black, Italian leather shoes. His hair, black but graying at his temples and in his sideburns, is much longer than he used to wear it. Thick and straight when it's short, this new length, uncombed and tousled, reveals its natural waves and cowlicks. She likes it.

Everything else is the same David. His olive skin, his dark-rimmed gla.s.ses, his p.r.o.nounced Adam's apple, his brown eyes, like hers but blacker. Like Anthony's. Then she notices his hands, his bare hands. No ring.

"I'm sorry I didn't call first, but I felt like I really needed to see you, and I thought you might tell me not to come."

"Let's go sit in the living room."

He follows her, and they sit down next to each other on the couch, a polite distance apart. David looks up at the wall above the fireplace, at the photograph of Anthony. Love and joy and grief wash over David's face, all at once and in equal parts, as if each emotion is fighting to possess him. He blows out a long, audible breath, trying to shake it off. He drinks some of his wine.

"I'm moving."

"Where?" asks Olivia, immediately fearing that he's going to say here.

"Chicago."

She's still catching up to the surprise of this unannounced visit, to David's being here, sitting with her on the couch in the living room. And now this. Born and raised on Boston's South Sh.o.r.e, educated at Boston College, and running a real estate business with his parents and brother ever since, David has ties to the Boston area that are knotted good and tight. If she was surprised at the front door, she's shocked now.

"Why Chicago?"

"Not sure. Sully's there, and he's always saying I could come work for him. Mostly because it's not Hingham. I need to get out of there. Everything reminds me of losing Anthony."

He looks up at the picture over the fireplace, as if he's including Anthony in the conversation, and then back to Olivia.

"And you, Liv. Everything reminds me of losing Anthony and you."

The room becomes still. Olivia doesn't drink her wine or eat her fudge. She stares into David's eyes and waits, remaining still, hoping not to scare away what he's finally ready to say.

"I gotta go somewhere new, where I don't see you and Anthony in every room. If I even walk by his bedroom, I'm done for the day. It's awful. And it's not just the house, it's everyone. My parents and Doug, they all talk to me in that sad, careful voice and look at me with worried eyes, and it's what I would probably do if I were them, but I can't take it anymore. I can't be that sad guy all the time, you know?"

She nods. She knows.

"I can't be that guy every single day. I want to be David Donatelli." His voice evaporates when he says his own name. He wipes his eyes. "I can barely remember who I used to be. I thought it would get easier, but it's not. It's not even close to getting easier."

"I know, David. I know."

"I even had to change laundry detergent because I smelled like you guys. Isn't that crazy?"

She shakes her head. It's not crazy at all. She did the same thing.

"So, Chicago," he says, as if it were the obvious answer, four in solution to two plus two.

"Moving helped me. It'll help you."

Nantucket has saved her from seeing anyone she used to know, from b.u.mping up against everyone's good-intentioned but devastating well wishes and pitying stares, from smelling Anthony's pillow and holding his shoes in her hands, from living inside the pretty-colored walls of what was supposed to be their happy home. She's amazed that she and David have experienced so many of the same feelings. She's even more amazed that he's sitting here now, able to articulate these feelings so well, communicating.

If only.

"Plus, I'm a single guy in a four-bedroom house in the suburbs. It's time to move on to something that makes more sense, right?"

"Are you selling the house?"

It's a bad market to sell right now, and she's guessing that David will hold on to it, rent it, and wait for the market to improve.

"I already listed it with Doug. I can leave your things with him for now if you want."

"Yeah, okay."

"What about you? Do you think you'll move?"

"Where would I go?"

"I thought maybe back to Georgia, near your mom and sister."

She used to think that she'd eventually return home, back into her mother's arms and her childhood bedroom, especially during those first cold weeks in March. But now, she knows she won't. She'll return to Georgia to visit, but she'll never move back there. She'd end up running into the same thing David is now running from-the well-intentioned pity, the relentless reminders of grief and loss.

"No, I like it here," she says.

"How are you doing? Moneywise. I know we said six months, but if you need more-"