"Well, he left right after she got sick. He couldn't handle Haley's illness." On top of everything else, I thought.

"How long were you married?" Tom asked. I saw the ring on his finger. I couldn't remember if he'd been married the last time or not.

"Six years." In my mind I divided those years into three segments. There'd been two wonderful years when it was just the two of us. We lived on base at Fort Belvoir and I'd loved my job doing pharmacology sales. We'd been young, so much younger than we were now. Our relationship had an energy and a heat I could barely remember.

Then everything went south. Bryan was stationed in Somalia where he'd nearly gotten killed, Lily was born and I had a stroke and nearly died myself. A complete and utter nightmare. Bryan and I settled into a tense, suddenly loveless marriage and he went overseas again, happily I thought. I got pregnant with Haley unintentionally and against doctor's orders on one of Bryan's leaves, proof that birth control pills were not one hundred percent effective. Proof you could still make love when you felt dead inside. My pregnancy had all my health care workers in a tizzy, but my blood pressure behaved itself and I felt good and full of hope. For a year after Haley was born, there was a cautious joy in our house. Bryan left the military and took the job with IBM so he could stay closer to home. I remembered thinking he was guarding us, making up for not protecting us well enough the first time around. Our happiness was fragile and we were only beginning to trust it when Haley's fevers began. Bryan's retreat was so fast I didn't see it coming. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. How he could leave Haley and me, cutting himself off from his child, was as unbelievable to me as it was unforgivable.

"He's back now, though," Tom said, "just when she needs him."

I nodded. "You're right," I said, swallowing my anger. I would have to find a way to put the past aside.

I was back on my laptop twenty minutes later when Bryan walked into the room. He barely looked at me before heading straight to Haley's bed. "How's she doing?" He lightly touched her arm as he peered down at her face.

"She was asking for you when she first woke up," I said.

"Really?" His gla.s.ses caught the sunlight from the big windows near Haley's bed.

I couldn't help it. I was touched by the emotion his voice carried in that one word. "Yeah," I said. "So how did the interview go?"

He shrugged. "All right, I guess. Time will tell."

I remembered the laughter in the background. I didn't know why that bugged me so much. I'd been sitting with our unconscious daughter while he was laughing with some woman. So? I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted from him.

"When will they know her MRD level?" he asked.

"Probably not for a day or so."

"You want to take a break? I can stay with her for a while?"

I looked at my sleeping daughter. If she'd been awake, I might have taken him up on the offer, but I couldn't leave her when she looked so drained and weak. I'd let another defenseless child of mine out of my sight. I would never do it again.

The following evening, Jeff Jackson called with the results from Haley's bone marrow aspiration. "The chemo's not doing the job," he said. "I'm sorry."

"s.h.i.t." I was in the cafeteria at Children's catching up on email while Bryan stayed with Haley in her room. They'd been playing Bananagrams when I left them. I hadn't expected the news so soon, and it was news I didn't want to hear. "So we have to go forward with a transplant now?" I asked.

"We'll start her on a maintenance level of chemo to hold her steady while we look for a donor. Her MRD's higher than I'd like to see and we'll have to move quickly to find a good match. I'll have you meet with Doug Davis tomorrow. He's head of the transplant team. He'll fill you in on what it entails."

"Will he test Bryan and me to see if we're matches?" I asked. "Can we be tested right away?"

"I'll let Doug go over all of that with you."

"So-" I looked at my laptop screen without really seeing it "-is this ultimately good news or bad?"

"Neither," he said. "It just is what it is."

I loathed that expression. Imagine if I said it to the family of a missing child. Well, it just is what it is.

"I want a better answer than that," I said.

He hesitated. "I wish it were more positive news," he said finally. It was the best he could do. The most I could ask of him.

"All right." I let him off the hook. I was alone in this. Then I thought of Bryan in the oncology unit, sitting with Haley. I thought of Haley's new fondness for him. The affection in her voice when she talked about him. How attached she'd become to the very word Dad. I remembered Bryan from the day before when he'd shown up in Haley's room after the surgery, how he walked directly to her bed. Touched her arm. And I thought maybe, just maybe, I wasn't alone, after all.

20.

Tara Wilmington, North Carolina I thought I was screaming. I woke up abruptly and bolted out of bed and only then did I realize it wasn't my voice I was hearing but Grace's. I raced down the hall to her room, imagining someone hurting her. I was ready to tear out the intruder's eyes with my bare hands.

But she was alone. Sitting in her bed in the half-light from the moon, she was doubled over, her hands covering her ears, and by the time I reached her, her voice had grown so tiny and strangled sounding that I could barely hear it.

"Help, help," she whimpered.

"Grace!" I wrapped my arms around her like a coc.o.o.n. "Sweetheart. It's okay." I rocked her and she settled against me. "A bad dream," I said. "Just a bad dream." I remembered this. I remembered her letting me hold her this way when she was little, and while I hated that she was frightened, I loved the feeling of holding her without her pushing me away. "What was it, honey?" I asked. "Do you want to tell me about it?" She always used to tell Sam her dreams. She'd pour them out to him and he'd listen so carefully, as if he'd treasure every detail forever.

I felt her shake her head beneath my chin. She clutched my arm, let go, clutched, let go, reminding me of the way she'd open and close her fist against my breast when she nursed as a baby.

"Was it about Daddy?" I asked, then bit my lip. She hated my probing.

"My fault Noelle died." Her voice was so soft and m.u.f.fled that I thought I'd heard her wrong.

"Your fault?" I asked. "Gracie, no! How could it possibly be your fault?"

She shook her head again.

"Tell me," I said. "Why would you think that?"

She drew away from me, but only a little so that our bodies still touched. When I reached out to stroke her back she didn't withdraw.

"The day she died, she sent me an email," she said. "It was the kind she always sent, trying to guilt me into volunteering."

"Uh-huh," I said.

"And Cleve sent an email, too. I was writing back to him, telling him how annoying Noelle could be...saying all kinds of negative things about her. About her being a whack job and everything. And right after I hit send, I realized I'd sent it to her, not Cleve."

"Oh, no." I was glad it was dark enough that she couldn't see my smile. I'd done that myself more than once. Who hadn't? But I felt for Grace and I felt for Noelle being on the receiving end of an email like that from a girl she adored. "We all make that mistake at least-"

"Then she killed herself." Grace cut me off. "Like a couple of hours-maybe a couple of minutes-after she got my email. She read these horrible things I said about her and then she killed herself."

"No, Grace," I said. "You can't pin her suicide on yourself. Maybe she never even read your email, but even if she did, that's not enough to send someone over the edge. Whatever was bothering Noelle was deep and had been going on for a long, long time."

I'd had my own problems sleeping in the two days since Emerson showed me the letter she'd found. I could think of little else. I kept picturing a baby slipping out of Noelle's grasp. When? Where? How horrible she must have felt! I kept trying unsuccessfully to wipe the image from my head. I wished I could tell Grace about it to ease her mind, but the secret needed to stay between Emerson and me for now. Maybe forever.

As usual, though, I couldn't bear the silence and distance that began to open up between us again as she recovered from her dream.

"There are some things I know about Noelle," I said, needing to fill the silence and keep her engaged with me. "There were some reasons for her depression that explain her suicide, honey, and trust me, they have nothing at all to do with you. This would have happened whether you'd sent that email or not."

"What kind of things?" She looked at me almost suspiciously, her eyes glistening in the moonlight.

"I can't talk about them yet. Emerson and I are trying to figure out the reasons Noelle was so down. We think something happened to...with Noelle a long time ago that-"

"Like she was molested or something?"

"No. Nothing like that." I shouldn't have said a word. There was a good possibility I would never be able to reveal what I knew about Noelle to Grace. "I don't even know all the details, but I'm just telling you this to put your mind at ease. All you need to know is that you had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to Noelle. Okay?"

She gave a small nod as she lay down.

"You going to be able to go back to sleep?"

"I'm fine." She settled down under the covers and turned on her side, facing the wall. My body felt chilled where she'd been close to me. I didn't want to leave. I touched her shoulder. Rubbed it.

"You don't work this afternoon, do you?" I asked.

"No. Tomorrow."

"I can drive you home today, then."

"Jenny'll give me a ride."

I hesitated. "I can tell you're still upset," I said. "You're so much like your daddy, honey. You ruminate on things and it's not good. Maybe tonight we could-"

"Mom!" She rolled onto her back, and although I couldn't see her face well, I knew she was staring daggers at me. "I want to sleep!"

"Okay." I smiled ruefully to myself. She'd given me an inch and I'd tried for a mile. I leaned over, kissed her cheek. "I love you," I said. "Sleep tight."

I had to fight the urge to check on Grace the next day to be sure she was okay after her rough night. That was both the benefit and the curse of teaching at your child's school: access to her was way too easy. She wouldn't appreciate my interference, though, and I actually went out of my way to avoid seeing her during the day.

When I walked into the house after school that afternoon, the message light was blinking on the kitchen phone. I punched in the pa.s.s code and lifted the receiver to my ear.

"Hi, Tara," Ian said. Then he chuckled. "I have to tell you, I get a jolt every time I hear Sam's outgoing message on your voice mail. It's nice, though. Nice to hear his voice. So I'm just checking on you. Hope you and Grace are doing okay."

I set down the phone.

Well.

I had honestly, completely, forgotten that Sam had recorded our outgoing message. Emerson mentioned it in the first few weeks after he died, but someone could have told me my house was purple back then and it would have sailed clear over my head. I guessed no one had had the nerve to mention it to me since. Except Ian, and he did it in a nice way.

I pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed our home number. The phone on the counter rang four times while I bit my lip, waiting. Then the voice mail picked up.

"Hey, there!" Sam sounded like he was in the next room. "You've reached Sam, Tara and Grace and we hope you'll leave us a message. Bye!"

I stared at the phone in my hand for a moment, then started to cry, hugging the phone to my heart. I sat on the stool next to the kitchen island and sobbed so hard my tears pooled on the granite. I'd thought I was done with this part of the grief-this sucking-down, soul-searing pain-but apparently not.

It took me twenty minutes to pull myself together. Then I looked at the phone again, with determination this time. I needed to change the message. The thing was, I had no idea how to do it.

I wondered, too, what Grace would say. I remembered her reaction when she walked into our bedroom to see that I'd packed all of Sam's clothing in black trash bags marked for Goodwill. He'd been gone two weeks by then, and I'd felt an extraordinary need to get rid of the clothes he would never be able to wear again. I'd heard that some women hung on to their deceased husband's clothing for years, but another piece of my heart chipped off when I saw those suits and shirts and khakis and tracksuits in the closet each morning.

"You're erasing him!" Grace had screamed at me when she saw the bags. I'd tried to hold her-I'd wanted us to cry together-but she'd pushed me away and run to her room. I'd thought, Tomorrow she'll talk to me, but now two hundred tomorrows had pa.s.sed and she was as cut off from me as ever. Why had I gotten rid of Sam's things so quickly? Was it normal? I'd thought it would help, not seeing his clothes in the closet each morning. I hadn't thought about how hard it would be to see the emptiness in their place.

I picked up the phone and pushed a few b.u.t.tons, trying to figure out how to change the message. Grace would probably not even notice, anyway. She never used the house line.

I was listening to the instructions when Grace walked into the kitchen. I jumped. I hadn't realized that she'd beaten me home from school, and I hoped she hadn't heard my breakdown. From the start, I'd felt the need to be strong for her. Now I turned the phone off quickly, not wanting to change the message in front of her.

"What are you doing?" She stood on the other side of the island, eyeing the phone with suspicion.

"I thought it was time I changed the outgoing message," I admitted, "but I can't remember how."

"To take Dad's voice off it, you mean."

I tried to determine if there was an accusation in her words. "Yes," I said. "I thought it was time."

She looked at the phone in my hand instead of at me. "I guess." She reached for the receiver. "I can do it if you want."

"I'd appreciate it."

She deftly hit a few b.u.t.tons, then said, "Hi, this is Grace." She held the phone out to me and I stared at it, not certain what she wanted me to do. She gave me a look that said, You are a dork, and pressed a b.u.t.ton. "I'll say, 'This is Grace,' and you just add, 'And Tara,' and then I'll finish it. All right?"

"Yes. Good." I moved closer to her, our heads touching. I could smell her shampoo. I was so lonely for that scent. It put a lump in my throat.

"Hi, this is Grace."

"And Tara."

"Leave us a message," she said, and then she hung up. "There."

"Thank you." I smiled.

"Anytime." She picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and turned toward the hallway. I wanted to grab her. Keep her in the kitchen with me. Were you able to get back to sleep after your nightmare last night? I wanted to ask her. Tell me about your day! Who's your favorite teacher this quarter? Have you spoken to Cleve lately? But I forced myself to keep my mouth shut, because what just happened between us, insignificant though it seemed, felt like magic to me and I didn't want to ruin it.

21.

Anna Washington, D.C.

Bryan and I sat across the desk from Doug Davis, the transplant specialist at Children's, as he leafed through Haley's thick file. He pulled out one of the sheets of paper, set it on the desk and tapped it with his finger. "I have the report on Haley's bone marrow," he said, "and unfortunately she has a cell type that's a bit more challenging to match but certainly not impossible, so there's no reason to be pessimistic." He was looking directly at me. Did I look pessimistic? I was scared out of my wits. Was that the same thing?