LUANNE RICE
Follow the Stars Home

Dedication

For Andrea Cirillo,

my beloved friend and amazing agent,

with love and gratitude

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

One

Snow was falling in New York. The flakes were fine and steady, obscuring the upper stories of Midtown’s black and silver buildings. Snow covered the avenues faster than city plows could clear it away. It capped stone monuments and the Plaza’s dormant fountain. As night closed in, and lights were turned on in every window, the woman stood with the young girl, breathing in the cold air.

“The snow looks so magical in the city!” Amy, twelve, said in amazement.

“It’s so beautiful,” Dianne agreed.

“But where do the kids go sledding?”

“In Central Park, I think. Right over there,” Dianne said, pointing at the trees coated in white, the yellow lights glowing through the snow.

Amy just stared. Everything about New York was new and wonderful, and Dianne loved seeing the city through her eyes. Fresh from the quiet marshlands of eastern Connecticut, they had checked into the Plaza hotel, visited Santa at Macy’s, and gone ice skating at Rockefeller Center. That night they had tickets to see the New York City Ballet dance The Nutcracker.

Standing under the hotel awning, they took in Christmas lights, livery-clad doormen, and guests dressed for a gala evening. Three cabs stood at the curb, snow thick in their headlights. At least twenty people were lined up, scanning the street for additional cabs. Hesitating for just a moment, Dianne took Amy’s hand and walked down the steps.

Overwhelmed with excitement, her own and for the child, she didn’t want to risk missing the curtain by waiting in a long taxi line. Standing by the curb, she checked the map and weighed the idea of walking to Lincoln Center.

“Dianne, are we going to be late?” Amy asked.

“No, we’re not,” Dianne said, making up her mind. “I’ll get us a cab.”

Amy laughed, thrilled by the sight of her friend standing in the street, arm outstretched like a real New Yorker. Dianne wore a black velvet dress, a black cashmere cape, a string of pearls, and her grandmother-in-law’s diamond and sapphire earrings: things she never wore at home at Gull Point. Her evening bag was ancient. Black satin, stiff with years spent on a closet shelf, it had come from a boutique in Essex, Connecticut.

“Oh, let me hail the cab,” Amy said, dancing with delight, her arm flying up just like Dianne’s. Her movement was sudden, and slipping on the snow, she grasped at Dianne’s bag. The strap was very long; even with Dianne’s arm raised, the bag swung just below her hip. Nearly losing her balance on the icy street, Dianne caught Amy and steadied them both.

They smiled, caught in a momentary embrace. Although Thanksgiving had just passed, Christmas lights glittered everywhere. Beneath its snowy veil, the city was enchanted. A Salvation Army band played “Silent Night.” Bells jingled on passing horse-drawn carriages.

“I’ve never been anywhere like this,” Amy said. Her enormous green eyes gazed into Dianne’s with the rapture of being twelve, on such a wonderful adventure.

“I’m so glad you came with me,” Dianne said.

“I wish Julia were here,” Amy said.

Bowled over with affection for the girl, and missing her own daughter, Dianne didn’t see the cab at first.

Spinning on the ice, the taxi clipped the bumper of a black Mercedes limousine. A snowplow and a sand truck drove by in the opposite direction, and the Yellow Cab caromed off the plow’s blade, crushing its front end, shattering the windshield. Dianne lunged for Amy.

The violent ballet happened in slow motion. Pirouetting once, twice, the cab spun on the icy street. Dianne grabbed the child. Her low black boot fought for traction. Glass tinkled on the pavement. Onlookers screamed. Arms around Amy, Dianne tried to run. In the seconds it took to register what was happening, that she wasn’t going to get out of the way fast enough, she wrapped her body around the child and tried to shield her from the impact.

The taxi struck the crowd. People flew up in the air together, tumbled apart, and landed with separate thuds. Skidding across the pavement, skin scraping and bones breaking, they slumped in shapeless heaps. For one long moment the city was silent. Traffic stopped. No one moved. The snow was bright with red blood. Down the block, horns began to blare. A far-off siren sounded. People closed in to help.

“They’re dead!” someone cried.

“So much blood …”

“Don’t move anyone, you might injure them worse.”

“That little girl, did she move? Is she alive?”

Five people lay crumpled like broken toys, surrounded by people not knowing what to do. Two off-duty New York cops out for the evening with their wives saw the commotion from their car and stopped to help. One of them ran to the wrecked taxi. Leaning through the shattered window, he yanked at the door handle before stopping himself.

The driver was killed, his neck sliced through by a sheet of door metal. Even in death, the man reeked of whiskey. Shaking his head, the cop went to the injured pedestrians.

“Driver’s dead,” he said, crouching beside his friend, working on the girl.

“What about her?” he asked, pulling open Amy’s coat to check her heartbeat.

With the child their first priority, the two policemen had their backs to Dianne. She lay facedown in the snow. Blood spread from her blond hair, her arm twisted beneath her at an impossible angle. Moving quickly, a stranger bent down beside her. He leaned over her head, touching the side of her neck as if in search of a pulse. No one saw him palm the single diamond earring he could reach, or pull the pearls from her throat.

By the time he grabbed her bag, a woman in the crowd noticed. The thief had the strap in his hand, easing it out from under the fallen woman’s arm.

“Hey,” the observer yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

The thief yanked harder. He held the bag, tearing at the clasp. It opened, contents spilling into the snow. A comb, ballet tickets, a crystal perfume flacon, some papers, and a small green wallet. Snatching the wallet, the man dashed across the street, disappearing into the dark park.

One victim, an old man, was dead. A wife lay motionless while her husband tried to crawl closer to her. Bending over the child, one policeman barely looked up. The other moved to the woman – had to be the girl’s mother – noticing the blood pumping from her head. Taking off his jacket, he pressed it to the open wound. Police cars arrived along with an ambulance, and the technicians turned the blond woman over. She was lovely, her face as pale as ice. The policeman saw a lot of death, and the chill that shivered down his back told him the mother was in bad shape.

The crowd stood back, everyone talking at once. “The taxi … out of control … skidded on the ice … five people hit … mother tried to save the little girl … scumbag stole her wallet.”

“Crackhead got her ID?” the ambulance driver asked. “No. Shit, no. You mean no one knows their names? We got no one to call?”

“That’s right,” one of the cops said. He knew the ambulance driver wasn’t necessarily being altruistic, imagining someone waiting for these two somewhere with no way to get in touch with him. Unidentified victims were a paperwork nightmare.

“Goddamn,” his friend said, watching the EMTs load them into the ambulance. The lady was so pretty, delicate and petite. Bystanders were saying she had curled her body around the child to protect her from the runaway cab. Ten to one she was from out of town, staying at the Plaza for a special holiday treat, nailed by some celebrating cabbie on his way back to the garage with a bellyful of cheer.

Throwing the useless handbag into the ambulance, they watched the vehicle scream down West Fifty-ninth Street, heading for St. Bernadette’s Hospital.

Speeding crosstown, the ambulance driver ran every light carefully, easing through intersections. Storms brought out the worst in New Yorkers. They panicked at the first sign of snow. The driver stayed steady, focused on avoiding the slow traffic and numerous fender benders. Aware of his critical passengers, he called ahead to alert the emergency staff.

Oxygen masks covered the victims’ faces. The attending EMT pulled away the woman’s cape, searching for a heartbeat. Checking her blood pressure, he felt shocked when her eyes opened. She lay still, her lips blue. The intensity in each small movement was frightening to behold as she opened her mouth to speak one word: “Amy,” she said.

“The little girl?” the technician asked.

“Amy …” the woman repeated, panic apparent in her eyes and in the effort it took her to whisper.

“Your daughter?” the EMT asked. “She’s right here beside you, she’s just fine. You’re both going to be just fine. Lie back now, there you go. Just –” he said, watching her unimaginable distress behind the oxygen mask before she slid back into unconsciousness.

The kid’s arm’s a mess, he thought, silently chastising himself for the blatant lie.

The trauma unit was ready. Intercepting the ambulance beneath the wide portico, they slid the woman and girl onto gurneys. IV lines were hooked up. Blood and plasma were ready, just waiting for blood samples to be typed. Nurses and doctors in green surrounded the victims, assessing the worst of their injuries. Woman and child were wheeled into separate cubicles.

While the doctors worked, an EMT brought the black satin handbag to the desk. The head nurse checked it for ID, but the police report was right: The wallet was missing. She found two tickets for the ballet, two Amtrak ticket stubs originating in Old Saybrook, and two business cards, one for a lumberyard in Niantic, the other for a fishing boat called Aphrodite.

“Find anything?” a young nurse asked, coming from the injured woman’s cubicle. “It would be awfully good to call someone.”

“What’s her condition?” the head nurse asked, glancing up.

“Critical,” the younger woman said, discarding her gloves. She was thirty-eight, about the same age as the woman she’d just been working on. She had children herself, including a ten-year-old daughter, just a little younger than the girl, and nothing made her count her blessings and fear the universe like a badly injured woman and child. “Both of them. Extensive blood loss, bruising, concussion and contusions for the woman, fractured humerus and severed artery for the girl. They’re prepping her for surgery.”

“There’s nothing much here,” the head nurse replied. “Cards for a lumberyard and a fishing boat …”

The head nurse squinted, taking a closer look. She saw a fine zipper she had missed the first time, along the seam of the bag’s lining. Tugging it open, she reached inside and fished out a small card filled out in elegant handwriting:

In case of emergency, please call Timothy McIntosh (203) 555–8941.

“Connecticut number,” the young nurse said, reading the card. “Think it’s her husband?”

Dialing the number, the head nurse didn’t reply. She got a recording: The area code had been changed. Using the new numbers, she learned that the phone was out of service. She tried the lumberyard: no answer at this hour. Frustrated, she looked at the last card and wondered what good could come from calling a fishing boat at the end of November. Since she had no options, she called the marine operator and requested to be put through to the Aphrodite.

Waves pounded the hull and light snow sifted from the dark night sky. Tim McIntosh gripped the wheel, steering a long course due south. He had been lobstering in Maine, saving enough money to last the winter in Florida. He wore thick gloves, but even so his hands were chapped and rough. His leather boots were soaked through, his feet blocks of ice.

He glanced at the chart, illuminated by light from the binnacle. Point Pleasant, New Jersey, was his destination. He’d put in at Red’s Lobster Dock for one night, then leave on the dawn tide for his trip south. Tim had had enough winter to last him for the rest of his life. Malachy Condon had once tried to talk him out of leaving for good, but that was before their final breach. Tim was heading for Miami.

A foghorn moaned over the sound of waves crashing against the steel hull. Checking his loran, Tim swung right into the Manasquan Inlet. The water grew calmer, but he could still feel the Atlantic waves pounding in his joints. He had traveled a long way. Great rock and concrete breakwaters flanked either side of the channel. Houses looked warmly lit; Christmas trees twinkled in picture windows, and Tim imagined other sailors’ homecomings.

The radio crackled. Tim’s ears were ringing from the constant roaring of the wind and throbbing of the Detroit diesel, but nevertheless he heard the high seas operator calling him.

“Aphrodite,” the voice said. “Calling vessel Aphrodite …”

Tim stared at the set. His first thought was that Malachy had relented. Tim felt a quick spread of relief; he had known Malachy couldn’t stay mad forever, that he wasn’t cold enough to just banish Tim from his life. Malachy Condon was an old oceanographer, scientific as they came, but he had a family man’s romantic vision of the holidays. Malachy believed in setting things right. He would want to fix things between them, press Tim to change his ways toward his daughter, her mother, Tim’s brother.

“McIntosh, aboard the Aphrodite,” Tim said, grabbing the mike, ready to greet the old meddler with “Happy Thanksgiving, what took you so long?” A click sounded, the operator connecting him to the caller.

“This is Jennifer Hanson from the emergency room at St. Bernadette’s Hospital in New York City. I’m afraid I have some bad news.…”

Tim straightened up, the human response to hearing “bad news” and “emergency room” in the same sentence. He hated New York, and so did every other fisherman he knew. Even worse, he despised hospitals and sickness with every bone in his body.

“A woman and child were brought in several hours ago. They have no ID save a card with your boat’s name on it.”

“The Aphrodite?” he asked, bewildered.

“The woman is slender, with blond hair and fair skin.”

He held on, saying nothing.

“Blue eyes …” the nurse said.

Tim bowed his head, his pulse accelerating. His mind conjured up a pair of familiar periwinkle eyes, searching and ready to laugh. Marsh-gold hair falling to her shoulders, freckles on pale skin. But with a child in New York? It wasn’t possible.

“Thirty-four or thirty-five,” the nurse continued. “Type O blood. The child is about twelve, has type AB.”

“I don’t know them,” Tim said, his mouth dry. Didn’t his daughter have type A? His head felt strange, as if he had the flu. The rough seas getting to him. Payback time for running out on his daughter time and again. He felt guilty enough already, obsessed with the way he lived his life. Malachy had never written him off before, and the old man’s final rage had shaken Tim to the core.

Throttling back, Tim turned toward Red’s. The docks and pilings were white with snow. Ice clung to the rigging of the big draggers. Woman with a twelve-year-old kid. In New York City? He had thought she was too sick to travel, but she had been on Nova Scotia last summer.

“The woman was wearing one earring. A small diamond and sapphire, kind of dangling …”

That did it. Glancing up, Tim saw himself reflected in the wheelhouse glass. Flooded with shame and regret, he remembered the little house by the Hawthorne docks, and he could see those trees his wife had loved so much, the ones with the white flowers that smelled so sweet. She wouldn’t be calling him though. Not after what had happened last summer.

“The bag is satin,” the nurse continued. “It has a tag inside, with the name of a place –”

“It came from the Schooner Shop,” Tim said, clearing his throat. “I gave it to her one Christmas. The earrings belonged to my grandmother.…”

“Then, you do know her?” the nurse asked tensely.

“Her name is Dianne Robbins,” Tim said. “She was my wife.”

The Briggs taxi was an old blue Impala. Tim sat in back, staring out the window as the driver sped up Route 35. From the bridge, he saw suburban houses under snow, decorated with wreaths and lights. A few had snowmen in the yard. As they approached the Garden State Parkway, kids bombarded the taxi with snowballs.

“Heh,” the driver said. “I should be offended, but in my day I’d’ve been doing the same thing, snow like this.”

“Yeah,” Tim said, thinking of himself and his brothers.

“Heading up to the city for a good time?”

“To the hospital,” Tim said, his throat so dry he could hardly speak.

“Hey, man,” the driver said. “Sorry.” He fell silent, and Tim was glad. He didn’t want to talk. The heater was pumping and the radio was on. Tim didn’t want to tell some stranger his whole life story, how he had been running away for eleven straight years and had been just about to run even farther when he’d gotten this call.

Christmastime. Maybe Malachy had been right about this time of year: Families reunited, women forgave, children got better. Tim had wrecked his chances with everyone. He had stolen Dianne from his brother, married her, then walked away from her and their daughter.

Tim had just barely been able to live with himself all these eleven years, way out at sea. But he had burned his bridges with the old Irishman, the man who had made listening to dolphins off Nova Scotia his lifework, and that had woken him up. Malachy Condon had always urged him to make things right with Dianne. Maybe this was Tim’s last chance.

Amy woke up slowly. Her first thought was Mama! Her second was Dianne. Amy was in a hospital bed. The walls were green and the sheets were white. She had a cast on her arm, which was held up over her head by a metal triangle that looked like a trapeze.

“Is Dianne okay?” she asked the nurse standing by her bed.

“Is that your mother, honey?” the nurse asked.

Amy shook her head. She felt tears hot in her eyes. Her mother was back in Hawthorne. Amy wanted to call her, wanted her to come. “Tell me, please,” she said, choking on a sob. “Is Dianne –” she tried to ask.

The cabdriver took the Holland Tunnel. Tim hadn’t been in a tunnel in more years than he could remember. His life was the sea: crustaceans, the price of lobster at the Portland Fish Exchange, cold feet in wet boots, the smell of diesel fuel, and regret.

Tim’s life could have been different. Passing the nice houses decorated for Christmas, he wondered why he had given it all away. Once he had had it all: beautiful wife, nice house, prosperous lobstering business. Sometimes he felt guilty for taking Dianne from his brother, but the choice had been hers. She could have stayed with Alan – the great doctor – if she had wanted, but she had chosen Tim.

“I’m gonna take Hudson Street uptown,” the driver said. “West Side Highway’s stopped deader’n hell.”

“Just get me there,” Tim said. Dianne was in some New York hospital, just minutes away now. The closer he got to her, the harder his heart pounded. He had made mistakes, no doubt about it. But maybe he could undo some of them: He could go to the hospital now, see if he could help. Tim was a good guy at heart; his intentions had never been bad. He wanted Dianne to know that.

Maybe she understood already. Hadn’t she gotten the nurse to call him?

Tim would like to show Malachy. He hated picturing their last time together: spit flying from Malachy’s angry mouth, shouting at Tim as they stood on the Lunenburg dock. Acting more like Alan than Malachy: sanctimonious, looking down on Tim for his shortcomings. But this might be Tim’s chance to help Dianne, to prove both Alan and Malachy wrong.

Besides, didn’t the stars point to something? Why had Tim been steaming into Point Pleasant instead of somewhere else? He might have bailed into Nantucket, avoided yesterday’s storm. Or he could have veered into the Gulf Stream, headed farther south than New Jersey for his first port, had the radio off, not heard the call.

“Dianne,” he said out loud.

New York was filled with people and cars. Couples stood at every street corner. The Empire State Building was lit up green and red. Christmas trees down from Nova Scotia, where Tim had been the previous summer, filled the city air with the lovely fragrance of deep pine forests. Dianne loved the holidays. She was a good person, full of love, and she saw the holidays as one more chance to make her family happy – to bring joy to their daughter, he was sure.

As he thought of the little girl he had never met, Tim’s eyes stung. Dianne had told him her name was Julia. It didn’t help that Alan was her pediatrician, that he used to send letters to Tim through Malachy. Tim had torn them all up. The child had been born damaged.

No renegade lobsterman wanted to be reminded of lousy things he’d done. Dianne had given birth to a sick baby, and Tim hadn’t been able to handle it. That’s what fishing the Atlantic was for: tides and currents and a big lobster boat named after the goddess of love to take him the hell away.

Tim handed the driver a pile of money and jumped out at St. Bernadette’s Hospital – a complex of redbrick buildings too huge to figure out. He ran into the ER, pushing past a guard who told him he had to sign in. The nurses were nice. They took one look at him and knew he needed help fast. Tim had been aboard Aphrodite for days, and he needed to wash and shave.

“The woman and girl,” he said to the head nurse. “Who were brought in earlier, the accident, you called me …”

“You’re the fisherman,” she said kindly, handing him his grandmother’s earring.

Tim shuddered and groaned. He dried his face with the oil-stained sleeve of his brown Carhartt jacket. His knuckles were cracked and bloody from winter in northern waters. He clutched the ancient earring Dorothea McIntosh had given Dianne on their wedding day, and he remembered it sparkling in the Hawthorne sun as they’d said their vows.

Tim had been roaming for so long, searching for something that would help him forget he had run out on his wife and daughter. Julia had been born sick and crippled. Tim had been too afraid to see her.

“Where’s Dianne?” he asked, wiping his eyes.

The nurse led him through the hospital. Tim followed, their footsteps echoing down long corridors. The hospital seemed old, several brick buildings connected by a warren of hallways. Accustomed to starlight, Tim blinked under the fluorescent lighting. Entering a more modern wing, they rode an elevator to the twentieth floor.

“I’m taking you to see the child,” the nurse said. “Her mother is still in surgery.”

“No –” Tim began.

“The girl is scared,” the nurse said. “She’s hurt, and she’s all alone.”

“My daughter,” Tim whispered. Was it really possible? After eleven years, was he about to meet his little girl? His stomach clenched. He had never seen her, but in his imagination she was stunted and palsied, like other damaged children he had seen. By then, sure he was on the brink of meeting her, Tim steeled himself for what he would see.

“In here,” the nurse said, opening a door.

“Which one?” Tim asked.

It was a double room. Both beds were filled. The occupants of each were quiet, their faces in shadow. The nurse indicated the girl with a broken arm. She lay in traction, her arm suspended overhead with lines and crossbars, like the elaborate rigging of a brigantine. Stepping closer, Tim was stunned.

Lying there was a beautiful young girl. Her arm was in a cast, her forehead was bruised, but she was perfect. Dark lashes lay upon delicate skin. Her face was oval, her nose straight, her lips full. As Tim stared, he began to shake.

“My daughter,” he said, his voice croaking.

“She’s waking up,” the nurse said.

The child began to stir. She licked her lips, tried to move her arm. Her cry was awful to hear, and Tim wanted to put his arms around her.

“Oh,” she wept. “My arm hurts.”

“There, honey,” the nurse said soothingly, bending over the girl. She spoke quietly, helping the child to orient herself, blocking Tim from her sight. Tim pulled himself together the best he could. He didn’t want to meet his daughter for the first time in shock and looking like Captain Ahab – or worse.

“I want to go home,” the girl cried. “I want to go back to Hawthorne.”

“It’s okay,” the nurse said kindly. “You’re going to be fine, honey. And you’re not alone. There’s someone here to see you.”

The young girl blinked. Stepping out from behind the white-clad nurse, Tim watched the child bring him into focus. Blood pounded in his ears like waves smashing over a ship’s bow. He tried to smile, not wanting to frighten her. But he needn’t have worried. Her fearful expression changed instantly the moment she saw him into one of sheer delight and love.

“Dr. McIntosh!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears.

Tim was too choked up to speak. Hearing only his last name, he thought for one minute that his daughter knew him already. Dianne had showed her his picture. Maybe they kept it on the mantel. They had talked about him all this time.

“Oh, Dr. McIntosh,” she said again, and now Tim heard the rest, the “Doctor.” Shit. She was calling for his brother. Alan. In her groggy, posttraumatic state, she had caught sight of one McIntosh and mistaken him for the other. Tim’s heart fell. He closed his eyes and knew that the little girl had made a mistake.

And so, he thought, probably he had too. But he was going to set it straight. He had to see Dianne.

Two

Conscious only of bright light and searing pain in her arm and head, Dianne moaned. Her eyes tried to focus. Shapes swam before her, green beings saying her name over and over.

“Dianne?” she heard. “Dianne, can you hear me?”

“Mrs. McIntosh, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Amy …”

“Hold steady, that’s right.” She felt the pressure of a hand on her forehead. The Plaza, Christmas lights. Headlights came at her, and she cried out. But they weren’t headlights. A man in green was standing there, shining a light in her face.

“Dianne, do you know where you are?” came a woman’s voice.

“She’s lost so much blood,” a male voice said.

“Her pressure’s dropping,” came another voice.

“Please, help,” she murmured. Was this a nightmare? She could not move, and her thoughts swarmed in her mind. “Julia,” she mouthed, but she had been with Amy, hadn’t she? Julia was at home with her mother. Alan should be here … if he came, he would know what to do. He would save her. Memory fragments began to materialize, shifting around like parts of a terrible puzzle.

“Mrs. McIntosh,” the nurse said gently. “Amy is being taken care of. Everything we can do is being done. You need to be strong. Stay with us.”

Dianne’s mind was fuzzy with pain and injury and blood loss and whatever drugs they had given her. She felt herself losing consciousness. She wished she could open the door and walk through the snow to the marsh. Trying to see, her eyes would hardly focus. She was in New York. That’s right, they had come to New York to see The Nutcracker.

Shivering, thinking of Amy’s imagined terror, Dianne cried out in anguish.

“Stay with us, Dianne,” one voice said. “Mrs. McIntosh!” called another.

She thought of her home by the Connecticut marshes, her mother and daughter, and Alan. The nurse had called her “Mrs. McIntosh” as if she were still married to Tim. A long time ago Dianne had dated both McIntosh brothers. They had both loved her, and at different times she had loved each of them. Alan was day, Tim was night. Dianne, for whom life had always been gentle, fair, and kind, had chosen the brother with a dark side. She had married Tim, and she had paid a price.

But over the last three magical seasons, she and Alan had started to come back together. For the first time in eleven years, Dianne had just started to love again, and now she lay in this strange bed in a New York hospital, so far from home, feeling as if she were starting to die. She spun back: winter, fall, summer, all the way to last spring.…

It was April, and the scent of flowering pear trees filled the air of Hawthorne. The trees had been planted one hundred years earlier, along the brick sidewalks around the waterfront, and their blossoms were white, fragile, and delicate. Looking up as she passed underneath, Dianne Robbins wondered how they survived the fresh sea wind that blew in from the east.

“Flowers, Julia,” she said.

Her daughter slept in the wheelchair, unaware. Reaching up, Dianne stood on her toes to grab hold of the lowest branch and break off a twig. Three perfect blossoms curved from thread-fine stems. The petals were pure white, soft pink in the center. Dianne thought they were beautiful, the more so because they lasted so short a time. The flowering pears of Hawthorne stayed in bloom less than a week.

Julia had once seen a flower and said “la,” her first word. So Dianne placed the twig on her sleeping child’s lap and continued on. She passed White Chapel Square, named for the three churches that surrounded it. The sea captains’ houses came next, gleaming white Federals with wide columns and green-black shutters, overlooking the harbor and lighthouse. Dianne had always dreamed of living in one of these houses, ever since she was a child.

She slowed in front of the one she loved most. It had an ornate wrought-iron fence surrounding the big yard and sea-flower meadow. At age nine Dianne had stood there gripping the black fence rails and imagining her life as a grown-up. She would be an architect and have a wonderful husband, beautiful children, two golden dogs, and they would all live blissfully in this house on the harbor.

Glancing at her daughter, Dianne pushed the wheelchair faster. The breeze had picked up, and it was cold for April. Low clouds scudded across the sky, making her wonder about rain. They had been early, with time for a walk after parking the car. But now it was almost three o’clock, time for Julia’s appointment with her uncle, Dr. Alan McIntosh.

Alan McIntosh sat as his desk while Mrs. Beaudoin went through Billy’s latest pictures in search of the perfect one for the Wall. She was a very young mother – Billy was her first baby – and Alan had long since learned that every patient’s mother’s goal was to see her child properly enshrined in the collage of photos hanging behind his desk.

“In this one he’s drooling,” she said, smiling and proudly handing it over nevertheless. “And in this one he’s squinting. He looks just like an old man!”

“He is one,” Alan said, cradling Billy in one arm while he wrote out a prescription for ear drops with his other. “Six months on Tuesday.”

Martha Blake, his nurse, appeared at the door. She raised her eyebrows, as if to ask whether Alan needed help in hurrying Mrs. Beaudoin along. He’d had an emergency at the hospital that morning, so now he was backed up with a packed waiting room. He’d been so busy, he hadn’t had time for lunch, and at that moment his stomach let out such a loud grumble that Billy’s brown eyes flew open with surprise.

“I like this one where he’s squinting,” Alan said, glancing over for permission to hang the picture on the Wall. “He looks like he’s thinking deep thoughts.”

Walking Mrs. Beaudoin to the door, he gave her the prescription and told her to keep Billy’s ears dry when she bathed him. His office was in an old brush factory dating back to the early 1800s, and some of the doorways were very low, built for humans two hundred years shorter of bone. Alan, six four since eighth grade, had to duck to walk through.

When he straightened, he saw the waiting room packed with patients: mothers and children everywhere. Children sniffling, huddled at their mothers’ sides, trying to read picture books, their big eyes looking in his direction as if the big, bad wolf had just stepped off the page. Only two children looked happy to see him, and they filled his heart with the kind of gratitude he had become a doctor to feel. They were both young girls, just a year apart in age, and only one of them had an appointment.

Amy was sitting in the big playhouse in the corner. She was twelve, slight, with silky, uncombed brown hair and big green eyes, and she was theoretically too old to be playing there. Hidden in shadows, she ducked down so she couldn’t be seen by any of the mothers, but she gave Alan a wide grin. He gave her a secret smile, letting her know he was playing the game and would find time to talk to her later.

Julia was in her wheelchair. She had huge, eloquent eyes. When she smiled, every tooth in her mouth showed. Seeing Alan, she let out a bellow of joy, causing her mother to lean over from behind and wrap her in a hug. Dianne Robbins laughed out loud, pressing her lips against Julia’s pale cheek. When Dianne looked up, the expression in her blue eyes made her look as happy and carefree as a young girl sailing. Alan started to say he was running late, but something about the moment left him temporarily unable to speak, so he just walked back into his office.

Amy Brooks was invisible. She was as clear as her name: a clean brook that ran over rocks and stones and pebbles, under fallen trees and arched bridges, through dark woods and sunny meadows. Amy was water. People might look in her direction, but they’d see right through her to things on the other side.

Amy felt safe there in Dr. McIntosh’s playhouse, and she wasn’t sure which part was best. Knowing that Dr. McIntosh was in the next room or sitting in the little house itself. Some lady in Hawthorne had made it to look just like one of those white mansions down by the water. Outside, it had glistening white clapboards and dark green shutters that closed. The heavy blue door swung on brass hinges, with a bronze sea horse door knocker.

A little kid knocked on the door, wanting to come in.

“Grrrr,” Amy growled, like the new puppy in the cage at home. The little kid couldn’t see her because she was invisible, but he could hear her. That was enough.

“Mine again,” Amy whispered to the house.

Glancing at her father’s watch, a huge Timex weighing down her wrist, she wondered what time Dr. McIntosh would see her. She had had a good day at school – she was a sixth-grader at Hawthorne Middle, three blocks from his office – and she had purposely missed the bus to tell him about it. Just then she heard a strange noise.

It was a kid: From across the room, some child with its back to Amy started making funny sounds, like water trying to flow through a broken pipe. Its mother was pretty, like the golden-haired mother in storybooks, with silver-blue eyes and a smile meant only for the child. The two mothers on either side bent double like jackknives trying to get a peek at what was wrong. The kid’s ratchety noise turned pretty, like a dolphin singing, and suddenly the kid’s mother joined in.

The nurse called them, and they disappeared down the corridor. The mother caught Amy’s eyes as she passed the playhouse. She smiled but just kept going. When the office door shut behind them, Amy missed their odd song.

“Pretty music,” Alan said.

“Julia was singing,” Dianne said, holding her daughter’s hand as the young girl rolled her eyes. “I just joined in.”

“Hi, Julia,” Alan said. He crouched beside Julia’s wheelchair, smoothing the white-blond hair back from her face. She leaned into his hand for an instant, eyes closed with what appeared to be deep trust. Dianne stood back, watching.

Alan spoke to Julia. His tone was rich and low, the voice of a very big man. But he spoke gently to Julia, tender and unthreatening, and the girl bowed her head and sighed contentedly. He was her uncle; he had been her doctor for the eleven years she had been alive. In spite of their history, the awkwardness between them, Dianne would never take Julia to anyone else.

Alan encircled Julia with his arms, easily lifting her onto the exam table. She weighed very little: twenty-nine pounds at the last visit. She was a fairy child, with a perfect face and misshapen body. Her head bobbed against her chest, her thin arms flailing slowly about as if she were swimming in the bay. She was wearing jeans, and a navy blue Gap sweatshirt over her T-shirt, and Dr. McIntosh must have just tickled her because she suddenly gasped. At the sound, Dianne turned away.

She let herself have this fantasy: Julia was healthy, “normal.” She was just like all the other kids in the outer office. She could read books and draw pictures, and when you took her hand, it wasn’t ice cold. She would jump and dance and demand her favorite cereal. Dianne would know that her favorite color was blue because Julia said so, not from hours of watching for slight changes of expression as Dianne pointed at colors on a page: red, yellow, green, blue.

Blue! Is that the one you like most, Julia? Blue, sweetheart?

To be a mother and know your own child’s heart: Dianne couldn’t imagine anything more incredible. Could Julia even distinguish colors, or was Dianne just kidding herself? Julia could not answer Dianne’s questions. She made sounds, which experts had told Dianne were not words at all. When she said “la,” it did not mean “flower”; it was only a sound.

“How are you, Dianne?” Alan asked.

“Fine, Alan.”

“Julia and I were just having a talk.”

“You were?”

“Yep. She says you’re working too hard. Every kid in Hawthorne wants a playhouse, and you’re backed up till Christmas.”

Dianne swallowed. Nervous today, she couldn’t manage the small talk. She was at her worst during Julia’s exams. Her nerves were raw, and just then Alan reminded Dianne of his brother, of being left, and the worst of everything that could happen to her child; waiting for him to examine Julia made her want to scream.

Julia had been born with defects. A blond angel, she had spina bifida and Rett syndrome, a condition similar to autism. No talking, no for-sure affection. There was the maybe affection, where she’d kiss Dianne’s face and Dianne wasn’t really sure whether it was a real kiss or just a lip spasm. Dianne tended toward optimism, and she gave each smooch the benefit of the doubt every time.

Since birth Julia had had thirteen surgeries. Many trips to the hospitals – here, in Providence, and in Boston – had produced wear and tear on the spirit, sitting in those oddly similar waiting rooms, wondering whether Julia would survive the procedure. Hydrocephalus had developed after one operation, and for a time Dianne had had to get used to a shunt in her baby’s brain to drain off the excess fluid.

Dianne, so desperate to lash out at Tim, would often talk to herself.

“Hello! Darling! Kindly bring me a sponge – I seem to have spilled this little bowl full of our daughter’s brain water. Oh, you’ve left for good? Never mind, I’ll get it myself.”

Dianne’s heart never knew which way to twist. She teetered between hope and rage, love and terror. She hated Tim for leaving, Alan for reminding her of his brother, all doctors for being able to keep Julia alive but not being able to cure her. But Dianne loved Julia with a simple heart. Her daughter was innocent and pure.

Julia could not walk, hold things, or eat solid food. She would not grow much bigger. Her limbs looked jumbled and broken; the bones in her body were askew. Her body was her prison, and it failed her at every turn.

Her organs were hooked up wrong. Most of those early surgeries had been to correctly connect her stomach, bladder, bowels, and to protect the bulging sac on her smooth little baby back containing her meninges and spinal cord. Julia was the baby every pregnant mother feared having, and Dianne loved her so much, she thought her own heart would crack.

“You okay?” Alan asked.

“Just do the exam,” Dianne said, sweating. “Please, Alan.”

She took off all but Julia’s T-shirt and diaper. They had been in this very room, on this exact table, so many times. Alan was frowning now, his feelings hurt. Dianne wanted to apologize, but her throat was too tight. Her stomach was in a knot: She was extra upset this visit, her fear and intuition in high, high gear, and it wasn’t going to get better till after Alan did the exam.

Unsnapping Julia’s T-shirt, Alan began to pass the silver disc across Julia’s concave chest. His wavy brown hair was going gray, and his steel-rimmed glasses were sliding down his nose. He often had a quizzical, distant expression in his hazel eyes, as if his mind were occupied with higher math, but right then he was totally focused on Julia’s heart.

“Can you hear anything?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

Dianne bit her lip so hard it hurt. This was the part of the exam Dianne feared the most. But she watched him, restraining herself and letting him work.

Julia’s body was tiny, her small lungs and kidneys just able to do the job of keeping her alive. If she stopped growing soon, as the endocrinologist predicted she would, her organs would be sufficient. But if she sprouted even another inch, her lungs would be overtaxed and her other systems would give out.

“Her heart sounds good today,” Alan said. “Her lungs too.”

“Really?” Dianne asked, although she had never known him to tell them anything but the truth.

“Yes,” he said. “Really.”

“Good or just okay?”

“Dianne –”

Alan had never promised to fix Julia. Her prognosis since birth had been season by season. They had spent Julia’s whole life waiting for that moment when she would turn the corner. There were times Dianne couldn’t stand the suspense. She wanted to flip through the book, get to the last page, know how it was going to end.

“Really good?” she asked. “Or not?”

“Really good for Julia,” he said. “You know that’s all I can tell you. You know better than anyone, any specialist, what that means.”

“She’s Julia,” Dianne said. The news was as good as she was going to get this visit. She couldn’t speak right away. Her relief was sudden and great, and she had a swift impulse to run full tilt down to the dock, jump in his dinghy, and row into the wind until she exhausted herself.

“For so long,” Dianne said, her eyes brimming, “all I wanted was for her to grow.”

“I know … How’s her eating?”

“Good. Great. Milk shakes, chicken soup, she eats all the time. Right, sweetheart?”

Julia looked up from the table. Her enormous eyes roved from Dianne to Alan and back again. She looked upon her mother with waves of seeming joy and adoration. Her right hand rose, making its way to Dianne’s cheek. As always, Dianne was never sure whether Julia meant to touch her or whether the movement was just a reflex, but she bowed her forehead and let her daughter’s small fingers trail down the side of her face.

“Gaaa,” Julia said. “Gaaa.”

“I know,” Dianne said. “I know, sweetheart.”

Dianne believed her daughter had a sensitive soul, that in spite of her limitations, Julia was capable of deep emotion. Out in the waiting room, with those mothers staring at her, Dianne had started singing along with her, to help Julia feel less alone and embarrassed.

Eleven years earlier she had given her deformed baby the most elegant, dignified name she could think of: Julia. Not Megan, Ellie, Darcy, or even Lucinda, after Dianne’s mother, but Julia. A name with weight for a person of importance. Dianne still remembered a little boy looking through the nursery window, who started to cry because he thought Julia was a monster.

Julia sighed, long and low.

Dianne touched her hand. When she had dreamed of motherhood, she had imagined reading and drawing and playing with her child. They would create family myths as rich as any story in the library. Dianne’s child would inspire her playhouses. Together they would change and grow. Her baby’s progress, her creative and intellectual development, would bring Dianne unimaginable joy.

“That’s my girl,” Alan said, bending down to kiss Julia. As he did, his blue shirt strained across his broad back. And now that the exam was over, other feelings kicked in, the other part of why it was hard to be around Alan. Dianne folded her arms across her chest.

She could see his muscles, his lean waist. The back of his neck was exposed. Staring at it, she had a trapdoor feeling in her stomach. She thought back to when they’d first met. To her amazement, he had asked her out. Dianne had been a shy girl, flattered and intimidated by the young doctor. But then she had gone for his brother instead – dating a lobsterman made much more sense, didn’t it? Life had thrown Dianne and Alan together for the long haul though, and she couldn’t help staring at his body. Oh, my God, she thought, feeling such an overwhelming need to be held.

“I can’t believe Lucinda’s retiring,” Alan said. “Lucky for you and Julia – you’ll have a lot more time with her.”

“I know.” Her mother was the town librarian, and even though she wasn’t leaving until July, people were already beginning to miss her.

When he looked over his shoulder, Dianne bit her lip. This was the crazy thing: She had just been staring at Alan’s body, wishing he would hold her, and now she had the barbed wire up, on guard against his familiar tone, against his even thinking he was part of the family. She couldn’t handle this; the balance was too hard.

“The library won’t be the same without her.”

Dianne glanced at Alan’s wall of pictures, catching her breath. He and her mother shared the same clientele: Alan’s patients learned their library skills from Mrs. Robbins. Julia couldn’t use the library, had never even held a book, but many nights she had been lulled to sleep by her grandmother, the beloved and venerated storyteller of the Hawthorne Public Library.

“We’re lucky,” Dianne said to Alan, half turning away from Julia.

Alan didn’t know what she meant; he hesitated before responding.

“In what way?” Alan asked.

“To have that time you mentioned.”

Wringing her hands, Julia bowed her head. She moaned, but the sound changed to something near glee.

“My mother, me, and Julia,” Dianne continued. “To be together after she retires. Time to do something important before Julia …”

Alan didn’t answer. Was he thinking that she had left him off the list? Dianne started to speak, to correct herself, but instead she stopped. Holding herself tight, she stared at Julia. My girl, she thought. The terrible reality seemed sharper in Alan’s office than it did anywhere else: The day would come when she would leave them.

“Dianne, talk to me,” he said.

He had taken off his glasses, and he rubbed his eyes. He looked so much like Tim just then, Dianne focused down at her shoes. Coming closer, he touched her shoulder.

“I can’t,” she said carefully, stepping away. “Talking about it won’t change things.”

“This is nuts,” he said. “I’m your friend.”

“Don’t, Alan. Please. You’re Julia’s doctor.”

He stared at her, lines of anger and stress in his face.

“I’m a lot more than that,” Alan said, and Dianne’s eyes filled with tears. Without his glasses he looked just like his brother, and at that moment he sounded as dark as Tim had ever been.

Stupid young woman, Dianne thought, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks. She had been full of love. She had chosen the McIntosh she had thought would need her most, take every bit of care she had to offer, heal from the sorrows of his own past. Tim had been brash and mysterious, afraid to open his heart to anyone. Dianne had thought she could change him. She had wanted to save him. Instead, he had left her alone with their baby.

“A lot more than that,” Alan said again.

Still, Dianne wouldn’t look at him. She bent down to kiss Julia, nuzzling her wet face against her daughter’s neck.

“Maaa,” Julia said.

Dianne gulped, trying to pull herself together. Kissing Julia, Dianne got her dressed as quickly as possible.

“It’s cool out,” Alan said, making peace.

“I know,” Dianne said, her voice thick.

“Better put her sweatshirt on,” Alan said, rummaging in the diaper bag.

“Thanks,” Dianne said, barely able to look him in the face. Her heart was pounding hard, and her palms were damp with sweat. He kissed Julia and held her hand for a long time. She gurgled happily. The adults were silent because they didn’t know what else to say. Dianne stared at their hands, Alan’s still holding Julia’s. Then she picked up Julia, placed her in the wheelchair, and they left.

By the time Alan finished seeing all his patients, it was nearly six-thirty. Martha said good-bye, rushing off to pick up her son at baseball practice. Alan nodded without looking up. His back ached, and he rolled his shoulders, the place he stored the pent-up tension of seeing Dianne. He knew he needed a run.

He had Julia’s chart out on his desk, studying her progress since the last visit. Maybe he should have done an EKG today. But he had run one two weeks before and found the results to be within normal limits.

Hawthorne Cottage Hospital was a great place to have healthy babies, to schedule routine procedures. Few pediatricians did electrocardiograms; most didn’t even own the equipment. Alan had bought his as soon as it became obvious that Julia was going to need frequent monitoring. She had specialists in New Haven, but Alan didn’t see any reason for Dianne to drive all that way when he could do the test himself.

Alan had a picture in his mind. Dianne was standing in the doorway, waiting for him to come home. She wore her blond hair in one long braid, and she was smiling as if she knew all his secrets. Her blue eyes did not look worried, the way they did in real life. She had finally decided to let Alan love her and help her; she had finally figured out that the two things were really the same.

“Ah-hem!”

Looking up, he saw Amy Brooks standing in his doorway. Her brown hair was its usual tangle, she was wearing one of her mother’s pink sweaters over lint-balled red leggings. Her wide belt and turquoise beads completed the ensemble.

“Oh, it’s the young lady who lives in the playhouse,” he said. With his mind on Dianne and Julia, he felt lousy for forgetting about Amy.

“You saw me?” she asked, breaking into smiles.

“With those beautiful green eyes looking out the window – how could I miss?”

“I was hiding,” she said. “Sick brats were pounding at my door, but I put spells on them and sent them back to their mamas. What do they all have?”

“Never mind that,” Alan said. “What brings you to my office today?”

“I like that little house,” she said, turning her back to stare at the black-cat clock, its tail ticking back and forth each second. “I like it a lot.”

“I’ll have to tell the lady who made it,” he said.

Amy nodded. She moved from the clock to the Wall. Scanning the gallery, she found her pictures in the pack. Last year’s school photo, one from the year before, Amy at Jetty Beach, Amy sitting on her front steps. She had given him all of them.

“Are there any other kids with four pictures here?”

“Only you.”

“No one else has more?”

“No,” Alan said.

Wheeling around, she bent down to read the papers on his desk. Alan heard her breathing hard, and she smelled dusty, as if she hadn’t taken a shower or washed her hair in a while. Her forearms and hands were already summer-tan, and she had crescent moons of black dirt under her fingernails.

“Julia Robbins …” Amy read upside down. Gently Alan slid the pages of Julia’s chart under a pile of medical journals. He knew that Amy was jealous of his other patients. She was one of his neediest cases. Alan had the compulsion to help children who were hurting, but he knew some things couldn’t be cured.

Amy came from a lost home. Her mother was sinking in depression, just as Alan’s mother had drowned in drink thirty years earlier. She didn’t hit Amy or give him any clear cause to contact Marla Arden, Amy’s caseworker. But the state had gotten calls from neighbors. There were reports of Amy missing school, the mother fighting with her boyfriend, doors slamming, and people shouting. They had an open file on Amy. But Alan knew the terrible tightrope a child walked, loving a mother in trouble. They were always one step from falling.

Amy had latched on to Alan. From her first time in his office, she had loved him all out. She would clutch him like a tree monkey. His nurse would have to pry her off. She would cry leaving his office instead of coming in. Her mother slept all day to kill the pain of losing her husband, just as Alan’s mother had drunk to survive the death of his older brother, Neil.

“Come on,” he said to Amy. “I’ll drive you home.”

She shrugged.

Alan knew the cycles of grief. They spun all around him, taking people far away from the ones they were meant to love. His mother, Amy’s mother, Dianne, and Julia, even his brother Tim. Alan wanted to save them all. He wanted to heal everyone, fix entire families. He wished for Julia to live through her teens. He wanted Dianne to meet Amy because he believed they could help each other. People needed connection just to survive.

“I’ll drive you,” he said again.

“You don’t have to,” Amy said, starting to smile.

“I know,” he said. “But I want to.” Doctors were like parents; they weren’t supposed to have favorites, but they did. It was just the way life was.

Amy worried that someday Dr. McIntosh would stop her from coming to his office. She didn’t need to be there: She was as healthy as a horse, her fourth favorite animal following dolphins, cats, and green turtles.

“I only got two spelling words wrong today,” she said.

“Only two?” he asked. “Which ones?”

Amy frowned. She had wanted him to congratulate her: She had never gotten so many right before. “Judge and delightful,” she said.

“How’d you spell judge?”

“J-u-j-e,” she said. “Like it sounds.”

“Did you read those books I gave you?”

Amy fiddled with a loose thread. Dr. McIntosh had bought her two mystery books he thought she’d like. Amy had never read much. She kept feeling as if she were missing the key all other readers received at birth. Plus, it was hard to concentrate at home, where there were real mysteries to be solved.

“Do you have a maid?” she asked, changing the subject.

“A maid?”

Did he think she was dumb for asking? Amy slid down in her seat, feeling like an idiot. They were in his station wagon, driving past the fishing docks. This part of town smelled like clams, flounder, and powdered oyster shells. Amy breathed deeply, loving it. Her father had been a long-liner, and fishing was in her blood.

“You know, someone to clean your house,” she said.

“Not exactly,” he laughed, as if she had said something outlandish.

Amy tried not to feel hurt. He was rich, a doctor – he could afford it! He didn’t wear a wedding ring, and once she had asked him whether he was married and he’d said no. So he was alone, he needed someone to take care of him. Why shouldn’t it be Amy?

“I love to clean,” she said.

“You do?”

“It’s not exactly a hobby, but I’m very good at it. Mr. Clean smells like perfume to me – why do you think I like your office so much? Can you think of many other people who like the smell of doctors’ offices?”

“It’s a rare quality,” he said. “And I appreciate it.”

Turning inland, he drove onto the so-called expressway. In Hawthorne they had three kinds of roads: the beautiful ones down by the harbor, this one-mile highway leading away from downtown, and the ugly streets near the marshlands, where Amy lived.

“I could do it part-time,” she said.

“What about schoolwork?”

“I’d fit it in.”

Dr. McIntosh was pulling onto her street. The houses here were small and crooked. Hardly anyone had nice yards. Broken refrigerators leaned against ramshackle garages. Stray cats – half of which Amy had tried to save – roamed in packs. It was a neighborhood where kids didn’t do their homework and parents didn’t make them. The air was sour and stale.

“You know I want to help you,” he said, looking at her house. “Is it really bad, Amy? Do you want me to call Ms. Arden?”

“No,” Amy said with force.

“I know you worry about your mother. Maybe it would be good for you to stay somewhere for a little while, see if we can get her some help.”

“I’m not leaving,” Amy said. The whole idea filled her with panic. Her mother might die if she weren’t there. She would fall asleep and never wake up. Or her mother’s boyfriend, Buddy, might hurt her. Or – and this was the worst fear – her mother might just run away with Buddy and never come back.

“Do you have friends? Girls you hang out with?”

Amy shrugged. He didn’t get it. Her best friend was Amber DeGray, but Amber smoked and wrote on her legs with razor blades. Amy was scared of her. Other kids didn’t like Amy. She believed she wore her life on her person, that good kids would look at her and see her mother depressed in bed, Buddy’s angry fingers plucking out “Midnight Rambler” on his expensive electric guitar, Buddy’s new dog cowering in the back of its cage.

“I’m asking,” Dr. McIntosh said, “because I know someone you might like. She’s a young mother with a daughter. Do you ever baby-sit?”

“No,” Amy said. Who would ask her? Besides, Amy wanted only Dr. McIntosh for her friend. He already knew her and didn’t think she was gross. He was kind and funny, and she trusted him.

“It’s my sister-in-law and niece,” Dr. McIntosh said.

Amy gasped. She hadn’t known he had a family! Suddenly she felt curious, excited, and horribly jealous all at once.

“Julia’s disabled. She needs a lot of attention, and sometimes Dianne gets pretty worn out. They live nearby – I know they’d like you.”

“You do?” Amy said, feeling so happy he thought she was worth liking, her eyes filled with tears.

“Sure I do,” he said.

Amy swallowed her feelings. Disabled, he had said. Was Julia one of those children with braces and crutches, hearing aids and glasses? Amy sometimes saw kids like that and felt just like them: different, set apart, very badly hurt.

“I used to be special …” Amy began, wanting to say something about her father and mother when they were young, when Amy had been their beloved newborn babe in a dark blue pram, when they had lived in the fishermen’s park, where the air was always fresh and the smells were of saltwater, spring blossoms, and fish.

“You’re wonderful just the way you are,” Dr. McIntosh said.

My mother’s depressed … she cries and sleeps all day … no one wants to come to my house … I’m so lonely!

Those were the thoughts running through Amy Brooks’s mind, but since she couldn’t begin to put them into words, she just jumped out of the doctor’s car and ran straight up the cement sidewalk into her house without a look back.

Dianne built playhouses for other people’s children. Tim had run a lobster boat, and Dianne had set up shop in the oyster shack, where they lived, on the wharf. During their thirteen months together, her playhouses had smelled a lot like shellfish. By then she had orders pouring in from everywhere. She advertised in magazines appealing to parents, romantics, and lovers of New England. Word of mouth did the rest. Her houses were big enough to play in. They had gingerbread, dovecotes, eaves, peaked rooftops, and cross-and-Bible doors; her company was called Home Sweet Home.

Dianne’s HMO paid for several hours each week of physical therapy and nurse’s aides. If Julia were left alone, she would spend all day in the fetal position. She would curl up, drawing herself inward like the slow-motion nature films of a flower at dusk. Therapy helped, but Dianne didn’t like strangers in her home. She preferred to work with Julia herself. No one loved Julia like Dianne did.

Many people had suggested Dianne institutionalize Julia. She could go to St. Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital or to Fresh Pond Manor. They had told Dianne that Julia would be too much for anyone, even a saint. Sometimes Dianne felt guilty, imagining those people thought she wanted credit for her sacrifice and devotion. She asked herself: Wouldn’t Julia get expert care in a place like that? Wouldn’t she be exercised and changed and fed and monitored? Wouldn’t Dianne be set free to live a less burdened life, be lighter of heart during the time she spent with Julia?

But Julia needed massage. Her muscles would knot up. Her stomach would tighten, and she’d get constipated. And only Dianne knew exactly how she liked to be rubbed. With baby oil on her rough hands, Dianne would soothe her baby’s woes. Julia liked circular motions on her angel wings. She liked light pressure around her rib cage, in the area of her kidneys, and she hated being touched on her scars.

Who at the institution would know that? Even if one nurse’s aide got used to Julia’s preferences, what if that person got transferred or moved away? Julia would have to go through the whole thing again, getting used to someone new. Also, there was the matter of her constipation. Most newcomers didn’t realize it was part of the territory for Rett syndrome kids. Medical people were always so quick with laxatives, when all Dianne needed to do was gently rub her belly – using a flat palm, no fingers – to help things along.

Julia would sigh. She would gurgle like a baby, and Dianne would talk back in words: “There, honey. Is that better? Let me tell you about the owl and the pussycat.…Ever hear about how monarch butterflies migrate to Belize? …About the otters that live in the marsh and the hawks that hunt along the banks …”

Dianne was no saint. Her anger and frustrations knew no bounds. She banged nails with a vengeance. She’d yell while she sawed, swearing at God, the universe, and the McIntosh boys. Money was tight. She charged huge sums for her playhouses, targeting the richest people possible. But production was limited; she lived rent free with her mother and paid nearly everything she made to insurance and deductibles. When the aides were there, she’d take off on breakneck runs along the beach, rows through the marsh in her father’s old dinghy. Crying and exercise were free.

Her studio was now in the small cottage behind her mother’s house, where she and Julia had come to live after Tim left. The windows overlooked the estuary, the green reeds golden in this twilight hour. Sawdust was everywhere. Like pollen carried on the spring air, it filmed the cottage floor, workbenches, table saw, miter box, and the inside of the windowpanes. Stella, her shy tiger cat, hid in her basket on a high shelf. Julia sat in her chair.

They listened to music. Dianne loved out-of-date love songs that expressed mad longing and forever love; she sang them to Julia while she worked. “The Look of Love,” “Scarborough Fair,” “Going Out of My Head.”

Dianne had been without a man for Julia’s entire life. Sometimes she saw women with husbands and imagined what it would be like. Did they have all the love they needed, was it worth the fighting and disagreements to be part of a secure family? In the dark, Dianne sometimes felt lonely. She’d hug her pillow and imagine someone whispering to her that everything would be okay. She tried not to picture a face or hear any certain voice, but the night before she had imagined how Alan’s back might look under his shirt, how his muscles would strain if he held her really tight.

Measuring carefully, she used a pencil to mark lightly the places she wanted to cut. The table saw let out a high-pitched whine as she guided the wood through. Her father had been a carpenter. He had taught her his craft, and Dianne never cut anything without hearing his gentle voice telling her to mind her priceless hands.

“Home from the wars,” Lucinda Robbins said, walking in.

“Hi, Mom,” Dianne said. “Tough day?”

“No, darling,” said her mother. “It’s just that I can feel my retirement coming in July, and my body is counting the days.”

“How many?” Dianne asked, smiling.

“Eighty-seven,” Lucinda said, going over to kiss Julia. “Hello, sweetheart. Granny’s home.”

Lucinda crouched by Julia’s side. Julia’s great liquid eyes took everything in, roaming from the raw wood to the finished playhouses to the open window before settling on her grandmother’s face.

Dianne stood back, watching. Lucinda was small and thin, with short gray hair and bright clothes: a sharp blue tunic over brick-red pants. Her long necklace of polished agate came from a street market in Mexico, bought on the only cruise she’d ever taken with Dianne’s father, eleven years earlier – the year Julia had been born and he had died.

“Maaa,” Julia said. “Gaaa.”

“She’s saying our names,” Lucinda said. “Ma and Granny.”

“She is?” Dianne asked, dumbstruck by her own need to believe.

“Yes,” Lucinda said soothingly. “Of course she is.”

Julia had hypersensitive skin, and Dianne smoothed her blond hair as gently as she could. Her hair felt silky and fine. It waved just behind the girl’s ears, a white-gold river of softness.

“At Julia’s age, you had the same cornsilk hair,” Lucinda said. “Just as soft and pretty. Now, tell me. What did Alan say?”

“Oh, Mom.” Dianne swallowed hard.

Lucinda touched her heart. “Honey?”

Dianne shook her head. “No, no bad news,” she said. “No news at all, really. Nothing definite one way or the other.”

“Has she grown?”

“An eighth of an inch.”

“Isn’t that a lot?” Lucinda asked, frowning. “In so short a time?

“No!” Dianne said more sharply than she intended. “It isn’t a lot. It’s completely normal, Mom.”

“Good, honey,” Lucinda said, striking what Dianne had come to consider her Buddha pose: straight back, serene eyes, hands folded in prayer position under her chin. She might have the same turmoil inside as Dianne, but she hid it better. “Were you nice to him?” she asked.

“Nice?” Dianne asked.

“To Alan,” her mother said. “When you saw him today …”

“Well …” Dianne said, remembering the look on his face as they’d left his office.

“Dianne?”

“Why does he have to remind me so much of Tim?” she asked.

“Oh, honey,” Lucinda said.

“They move in identical ways,” Dianne said. “Their voices sound the same. Alan’s hair is darker, but it gets light in the summer. He wears glasses, but when he takes them off …”

“Superficial similarities,” Lucinda said.

“I tell myself that,” Dianne said. “I feel so bad, holding this miserable grudge against him. But my stomach hurts every time I think of what Tim did. I lie awake hating him for hurting Julia, but I also hate him for leaving me too. It’s horrible, like I swallowed a rock.”

“Ouch,” Lucinda said kindly.

“I know. And every time I look at Alan, I think of Tim. He makes me think of all the hurt and betrayal, of how much I hate his brother –”

“No,” Lucinda said sharply. “That I don’t believe.”

“I do, Mom. I hate Tim.”

“But I don’t believe Alan makes you feel that way. He can’t. He wouldn’t-he’s too good. He cares for you and Julia, he’s always been there. Those feelings are yours alone. Wherever they come from, you’re taking them on yourself.”

Dianne thought of Alan’s eyes, how kind and gentle they were when he looked at Julia. She pictured his hands examining Julia’s body, holding her crooked hands as if they were the most precious things on earth.

“I know he’s good,” Dianne said quietly.

“Listen to me, honey,” Lucinda said. “When you talk about swallowing that rock, I can see what it’s doing to you. I can. You’re tough as can be, you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, but those hard feelings are tearing you up.”

The reality of her mother’s words brought tears to Dianne’s eyes. Her stomach clenched, the rock bigger than ever. Once the sorrow over Tim’s departure had gone and the only things left were bitterness and anger and the rock in her stomach, Dianne had realized in a flash that she had made a mistake from the very beginning: She had chosen the wrong brother.

“I’m fine,” Dianne said.

“You say that, but I can see how worried you are. And then when Alan calls, you snap at him – as if it’s him you’re mad at instead of Tim. When he’s just trying to help.”

“Sometimes he gets me at a bad time,” Dianne said.

“With him it’s always a bad time,” Lucinda said.

“I’m tired, Mom,” Dianne said, uncomfortable with the conversation and the way her mother was smiling at her.

“When I retire,” Lucinda said, putting her arm around Dianne, “I’m going to spend some time taking care of you.”

Dianne’s throat ached. It felt so good to be loved. She closed her eyes and let her mother’s strength flow into her. She may have chosen the wrong brother, screwed up her life, but she had the best mother in the world.

“Julia and I have big plans for your retirement,” Dianne said.

“Oh, honey,” Lucinda said. “Not a party, okay? I know you want to do something for me, and I appreciate it, but I’m not the surprise-party type.”

“No party,” Dianne said.

“Besides, there’s the library dance,” Lucinda said. “I think they’re going to give me a plaque or something this year. I’ll have to pretend to be surprised. How’s this?” She made a Betty Boop face: round eyes and mouth, fingertips just brushing her jaw.

“Very convincing,” Dianne said, laughing.

“Not that I’m not appreciative,” Lucinda said. “I am – I love them all and I’ll miss them like crazy. But I’m ready, honey. My feet have been swollen for forty years, and I just want to kick these dumb oxfords right into the marsh and never see them again.”

“Julia and I will come up with something that involves bare feet,” Dianne said.

“Ahhh,” Lucinda said, closing her eyes in bliss, ticking off the time until July fifteenth.

“Gleee,” Julia said.

“Just imagine, Julia. I’ll have all this free time, I’ll be able to read all the books I’ve missed. Will you help me catch up?” Lucinda asked before opening her eyes.

Dianne exhaled slowly. Julia’s life was full of love, but it was so horribly, disgustingly unfair: to have her grandmother be the town librarian and be unable to read, to have her mother make real-life playhouses and be unable to play.

“Do you think she’s happy?” Dianne heard herself ask.

“Well, I know she is,” her mother said. “Just look at her.”

Dianne opened her eyes, and it was true. Julia was rolling her head in slow rhythms, as if she were keeping time with music in her head. She stared at Dianne. Lucinda touched Dianne’s shoulder, and Dianne leaned against her.

“My happy girl,” Dianne said, wanting to believe.

“Maaa,” Julia said. “Maaaaaa.”

Could a person die from loving too much? Could the weight of Julia crush her, squeeze the breath right out of her? Summer seemed like a sweet dream. Her mother would be retired; she, Dianne, and Julia could lie on the beach, feeling the hot sand under their backs, letting the breeze take away all their troubles.

“Go for a row, sweetheart,” her mother said. “I’ll stay with Julia.”

Dianne hesitated. She thought of that perfect white house down on the harbor: Lately all her own dreams went into the playhouses she built. Her own home was broken. Dianne felt hard and frozen inside. Her muscles ached, and she knew it would feel good to pull on the oars, slip through the marsh into open water.

“Thanks, Mom,” Dianne said.

Lucinda held her gaze. She was small and strong. Even without touching Dianne, her support and force were flowing into her. Outside, a light breeze blew through the golden-green rushes. Sea otters slid off the banks, playing in the silty brown water.

“Go,” her mother urged.

Nodding, Dianne ran down to the dock.

Three

As kids, the McIntosh boys had lived by the sea. Neil, Alan, and Tim had grown up on Cape Cod, ten miles east of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Alan had spent several summers working in the hydrophone lab there. His mentor, Malachy Condon, told him he had the best ear for dolphin talk of any student he’d ever met. But Alan was destined to be a pediatrician.

Now, eighteen years later, on his Wednesday afternoons off Alan went to the library to read the latest issues of Delphinus Watch and Whale Quarterly–to keep up with his old interest and to see an old friend – Lucinda Robbins. The Hawthorne Public Library was two blocks from his house. But Alan went running first, so it took him forty-five minutes to get there.

“Did you do six miles?” Mrs. Robbins asked, standing behind the counter.

“Seven today,” he said.

She handed him a folded towel she had picked up from a cart of books to be reshelved.

Several months after Tim had walked out on Dianne, Alan had stopped by the library after his run. He had been missing Mrs. Robbins. She had always been good to him, accepting him into her family from the very start. He had more in common with her than Tim did – he had practically lived in libraries at Woods Hole and Cambridge, and during Tim and Dianne’s marriage, Alan and Lucinda were always talking books and ideas.

But that day, eleven years ago, he had stood there, noticing the trail of sweat dripping on the brown linoleum floor, feeling the librarian’s wrath. What had he expected? He was a McIntosh, Tim’s brother, and that fact alone was bound to set her off.

The next week he had gone home to shower first. He didn’t want to alienate Mrs. Robbins. He had realized how important she had become to him, and now she wanted nothing to do with him. Taking care of Julia, he felt the family connection more than ever, and he had come to apologize. To his surprise, Mrs. Robbins had greeted him with a striped towel.

“I’m sorry about last week,” she had said. “My evil eye is an occupational hazard.”

“You had every right,” he had said.

“No,” Mrs. Robbins had insisted, vigorously shaking her head. “You come in here sweaty anytime you want. What Tim did isn’t your fault. You do so much for Julia and Dianne.…”

Alan had started to protest, but he’d stopped himself, accepted her offer. His relationship with Dianne was tenuous, and he’d do whatever he could to guard it. He had considered the towel a one-time peace gesture, but Mrs. Robbins continued to bring it in every Wednesday afternoon.

Today he said thanks, took the towel, and found his favorite armchair. The oldest library in the state, its rooms were bright and lofty. The reading room had a stone fireplace large enough to roast an ox, and Alan settled beside it with a stack of journals to read. Clear April light flooded through the arched windows; he lost himself in the latest literature on marine mammals. And then he thought of his own family.

Their oldest brother, Neil, had loved whales. When they were only teenagers, he, Tim, and Alan had run their own whale-watching business, taking people out in their runabout to the feeding grounds off Chatham Shoals. Leaving from the steamship dock in Hyannis, they had charged ten dollars per person. It had been Neil’s idea to give full refunds, no questions asked, if they failed to spot whales or dolphins. That was Neil through and through – generous, good-hearted, and confident enough of their whale-finding abilities to know those refunds would be few and far between.

Neil died of leukemia. The summer they were sixteen and fourteen, Alan and Tim had watched their older brother slip away. Locked in the house, the curtains drawn and no one allowed to make any noise or enter Neil’s room, Neil had suffered horribly. Not just from the pain of his disease, but from isolation. He had missed the sea, the whales, the boat. He had missed his brothers. At eighteen Neil had died of leukemia, but also of a broken heart. Tim had spent the last two nights of Neil’s life sitting on the grass under his window. Alan had snuck inside to be with him.

Alan’s parents had been afraid the cancer was catching. It didn’t matter that Neil’s doctor had told them it wasn’t. They had a primal fear of the blood disease, and they had lived in terror of losing all their sons. They were simple people, a fisherman and his wife. Alan’s dad would go to sea, barely coming home at all. His mother had turned to drink.

Alan and Tim had spent the next few years caring more about fish and whales than about people. Tim had dropped out of school to lobster. Like his father, he would lose himself at sea. Alan had latched on to Malachy Condon at WHOI. The old guy was as crusty as a fisherman, but he had a Ph.D. from Columbia. Tim would steam in from a night off Nantucket, meet Alan on the docks at Woods Hole, and listen to Malachy’s colorful stories about research trips to the North Sea and the Indian Ocean. Both brothers were numb with losing Neil and the attention of their parents, and Malachy had been a steadying force.

In Alan’s senior year at Harvard, he had found himself dreaming every night of Neil. One cold November morning he ripped up his application to Woods Hole and applied to Harvard Medical School instead. Malachy had been disappointed, and Tim had thought he was crazy. Tim had had the idea they could share a boat, him catching fish and Alan studying them. He had confronted Alan on the steps of the Widener Library, wanting to talk some sense into him.

“Stick with fish,” Tim had said. “If they die, who cares?”

“Exactly,” Alan had said. “I’m studying plankton past midnight every night, and I can’t get that worked up about it. I’m going to be a doctor.”

“And do what?”

“Help people,” Alan had said, thinking of their brother, their parents.

“You want to spend your life with sick people?” Tim had shouted. “You think you can make any difference at all?”

“Yeah, I do,” Alan had said.

“Like Dr. Jerkoff did with Neil?”

“He should have talked to us,” Alan had said. “Told Mom and Dad what could happen. Helped them to understand, to prepare us better. He should have helped us help Neil die, Tim. I hate thinking of us all going through that alone.”

“What’s the difference, how it happened?” Tim had asked wildly. “He’s gone. Nothing can change it.”

“But he suffered,” Alan had said. “It didn’t have to be so bad –”

“I know he fucking suffered,” Tim had shouted, shoving Alan. “I was there. You think you have to tell me?”

“Quit acting like an asshole,” Alan had said. “Neil would hate it.”

“He’s dead,” Tim had shot back, hitting Alan’s chest with the heel of his hand.

With Neil gone, Alan was the oldest brother. Tim was tougher, but Alan was big and had never lost one of their fights. He’d stepped away, shaking with rage.

“You sat outside his window,” Alan had said. “You were afraid to go in. I want to help people not be afraid.”

“Fuck you, afraid,” Tim had said. “I’ll shove it down your throat.…”

He hooked a right, and Alan took it in the gut. Their eyes met, wide and surprised. Alan grunted and swung back, driving a left into Tim’s side. Tim moved in, and Alan tried to push him off, but Tim raked his fingers down Alan’s neck, and the brothers were rolling on the sidewalk in the middle of Harvard Yard.

Alan slammed him with a right to the head. Tim had him by the hair, and Alan jerked his arms hard to break the grip. A gash over Tim’s eye was bleeding, and Alan felt the nail marks down his throat. Springing up, he reached down to yank Tim to his feet. Tim wasn’t done fighting. He swung blindly through the blood in his eyes. Alan came to his senses.

“Hey, knock it off,” he’d said, shaking Tim by the shoulders.

Another left hook.

Alan caught it in the air. The brothers circled, unsteady on their feet. Both were wary, but Alan’s burning anger was gone. As Tim swung again, Alan hit him in the solar plexus and sent him to his knees. He stepped away, but Tim kept coming back for more. It’s insane, Alan thought. All he wanted was to help children, cure them when he could and comfort them when he couldn’t, and here he was, fighting to the death with his brother.

After the fight, Alan and Tim drifted even further apart: Alan buried himself in his studies, Tim chose to escape back to the sea.

For the next few years Tim had stayed at sea. Lobstering took most of his time. It weathered his face and toughened his hands; even more, it hardened something deep inside him. He forgot how to be with people. He’d drink and fight, or he’d flash a smile that let some girl know how lonely he was. That he needed her to hang on to.

One of those girls was Dianne. Knowing that Dianne was interested in Alan made Tim go after her full blast. He had pulled out all the stops. Tim wanted someone to save him, and he chose a woman with a special talent for giving. Some of his behavior was an act, he thought, as he played the part of a lonesome, drunken lobsterman just to get her attention. But it worked, because it was real. So he thought he was playing a role, but he really wasn’t. And Alan had watched it happen, Dianne falling in love with his brother.

Alan gave up without a big fight for only one reason: If he couldn’t have Dianne, maybe she could at least straighten his brother out. At least that was what he told himself. Dianne was strong and solid, and Tim had been heading downhill since the day Neil had died. Maybe marriage and children would fill the void, make him stop hurting. But they hadn’t.

“I hear you saw my girls yesterday,” Mrs. Robbins said, startling Alan as she wheeled in a cartload of periodicals to be shelved.

“I did,” Alan said.

“How is Julia?”

“She’s a champ,” Alan said.

Mrs. Robbins had been the Hawthorne librarian for forty years. Alan had heard kids in his office claim she had read every book on the shelves, and he could almost believe it was true. Her blue eyes were clear with intelligence and compassion. Curiosity kept women like Mrs. Robbins young.

“But how is she?” Mrs. Robbins asked evenly.

“You know,” Alan said. “She’s holding her own.”

Mrs. Robbins bit her lip. She shuffled through a pile of National Geographics as if to make sure the issues were in order. But Alan knew she was just pulling herself together.

“Well, Alan,” Mrs. Robbins said. “We count on you.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“I’m worried for Dianne,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, alert.

“She wears herself out,” Mrs. Robbins said, starting to whisper. The words came out fast, and her brow was creased with worry. Alan leaned forward to hear her. “Julia’s light as a feather. She’s no weight at all. But the effort … even when she’s just sleeping, resting in the corner of Dianne’s workshop. It takes every bit of energy Dianne has just to let her be. Not knowing the future.”

“That’s the challenge …” Alan said, pulling something out of his generic repertoire. Doctors were supposed to be wise. Inside, he was a mess, hearing about Dianne’s pain.

Thinking of Neil, Alan understood what Mrs. Robbins meant. Seeing a person you love suffer is the hardest thing there is. Taking action – bandaging the wound, setting a fracture, cleansing a burn – was always easier than sitting back, accepting there was nothing you could do.

“Dianne’s brave,” Alan said.

“Most of the time.”

“She could ask me for more help than she does.”

“Oh, Alan,” Mrs. Robbins said. “Don’t you know how hard it is for her to be around you – as kind as you are – you will always be a reminder of Tim.”

“Yeah,” Alan said, hurt to know the truth from Lucinda.

“Heard from him lately?”

Alan shook his head. Two months earlier, Tim had called from Camden, needing to borrow a thousand dollars. Before that Alan would get collect calls or postcards from ports from Lubec to Halifax. Tim had become a seafaring drifter. Sometimes he visited Malachy. He had no home, no address. That was the price he’d paid for what he’d done: leaving his wife and child.

“The poor wretch,” Lucinda said. “It’s almost impossible to loathe him when he’s so tormented. But not quite.”

“I know what you mean,” Alan said, feeling Lucinda’s gaze. He wondered whether she had figured it out. She was too loyal to Dianne, too discreet to ask, but he believed she knew.

Alan was in love with Dianne.

The feeling had never gone away. Even when she’d chosen Tim, with Alan tricking himself into thinking Dianne was stopping Tim’s decline, saving his life, he loved her anyway. He’d do anything to help her, then or now.

He told himself he was a doctor, his compassion was natural. Dianne’s eyes showed everything. Her hair was the color of Cape Cod marshes in autumn, golden in the October sun. She smelled like paint, lumber, and the sea. Frustration often creased her brow, but when she looked at Julia, the lines would disappear into such deep love that Alan sometimes felt pressure in his throat.

Psychiatrists – and Malachy Condon – would say he loved his sister-in-law because she was totally inaccessible. Fear of commitment? No problem – pick someone your brother has left, a woman who hates your family with a passion. Alan was screwed up in the area of relationships – he knew it well. He dated good women. They were all better than he deserved. He had a lousy habit of forgetting to call after the third or fourth time. He had never been married, and as much as he loved children, he had none of his own. And it would probably stay that way.

“Dianne’s hoping for a good summer,” Mrs. Robbins said.

“I know,” Alan said.

“I’ll be home to help her out more.”

“Do you think Dianne would consider a baby-sitter?” he asked. “I’m thinking of someone, kind of like a mother’s helper.”

“She might,” Mrs. Robbins said. “You could try.”

“Coming from me, I’m not sure.”

“You’re very good to her, Alan,” she said. “She might not show it, but I know she appreciates it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

The librarian’s eyes connected with his. “It matters a lot,” Mrs. Robbins said. She took his damp towel and hung it on the metal handle of her cart. Alan knew she would wash it and bring it back for him next week. He understood that Lucinda wished that he had been the one to win. That Dianne had stayed with Alan, never married Tim at all.

Things that Alan wished himself.

Amy came home from school early. Her mother was in bed, and her mother’s boyfriend, Buddy, was rehearsing with his band. They were in someone’s garage down the street, and Amy could hear the ugly metal sound. Who wanted to make music that sounded like train wrecks? But the good news was, he was busy and she would hear if he stopped playing.

The shades were pulled down, but spring sunshine outlined the window frames like square halos. Emptied beer bottles gave off their usual fragrance. Amy walked through the dark room with a can of pine-scented air freshener, spraying full blast. She thought of brooks and forests, hoot owls and whippoorwills. Peeking into her mother’s room, she saw her mother lying under the blankets.

“Mama?” Amy whispered.

Her mother didn’t move. Thick curtains were pulled over Venetian blinds, so the air was dark and heavy as brown corduroy. It was stiflingly hot, and Amy resisted the impulse to throw open the window. She knew her mother needed her rest. Wanting company, she went back to the living room.

“Hi, puppy,” she said, falling on her knees before the dog cage.

The young dog bared his teeth, growling and cowering in the back of the cage. Buddy, training him to be a guard dog, had named him Slash, but there was no way on earth Amy would ever call him that.

“I’m your friend,” she said.

“Grrrr.”

“You don’t believe me?” Amy ran to the kitchen and came back with two slices of American cheese – even Buddy wouldn’t miss two little slices. Breaking them up into small pieces, she placed one near the front of the cage.

“Grrr,” the dog growled. Amy thought back to an early time in Dr. McIntosh’s office. Amy had been scared – she had had a sore throat, burning like fire, and a fever of one hundred and four. She had been so afraid to open her mouth. Dr. McIntosh hadn’t rushed her at all, just won her over slowly with a lollipop, a story about dolphins, and his gentle voice.

“I’m your friend, puppy,” Amy said, trying to imitate Dr. McIntosh’s voice. And it was working, because soon the small black dog began creeping forward. Both eyes on Amy, he inched ahead.

It took ten whole minutes, but the little dog finally took the cheese. Then another piece, and another. Very carefully Amy unlatched the metal door. The hinges squeaked, and the dog scurried back. But Amy just kept putting out cheese, and the little guy came up to eat it all. Soon he was eating out of her hand. His coat was bristly and warm, and he had that baby-animal smell that made Amy wish she were a dog.

“The music!” Amy said, realizing one second too late that it had stopped.

“What’s going on here?” Buddy asked, standing in the door.

Amy tried to shield the dog from his sight. The room was so dark, even with the window halos, he might not be able to see. The little dog could crawl back into his lair, and everyone would be safe. Amy lay full-length in front of the cage, praying for the dog to retreat.

“Nothing,” Amy said. “How was band practice?”

“Lousy. I broke a string, and our bassist had to get to work. What –”

“You sounded great,” Amy said, her heart pounding. Reaching behind her, she tried to shove the puppy back.

“You heard us?”

“Yes. Even with a broken string, you play the best. Who’s that famous guy, the one Mom listens to – not James Taylor, the other one …”

“Eric Clapton?”

“Yes! You play better than him.”

“Huh,” Buddy said. No one could get more out of the word “huh” than Buddy. Coming from his string-thin lips, he could make the word sound like a ton of cement falling from the Empire State Building. But just then he made it sound like an expression of wonderment. When Ponce de León had emerged from the hot jungle to find the Fountain of Youth his “huh” had sounded just like Buddy’s.

“Much better,” Amy said warmly, her chest cracking with anxiety. The puppy had discovered her cheese-flavored fingers again and was licking them madly.

“You think? I think I’m more Hendrix myself. When my string snapped, I damn near … what’s that?”

“That noise?” Amy asked, thinking fast. The puppy was slurping away.

“Did that dog get out?” Buddy asked.

“No,” Amy said immediately, pushing the puppy inside his cage, blocking the door with her outstretched arms. “I let him out, it’s my fault, I just wanted –”

With one motion Buddy lifted Amy away from the cage and tossed her onto the sofa. Reaching in, he grabbed the dog by the scruff of his neck. Amy’s eyes were open wide. She watched the terrified puppy dangle from Buddy’s hand like a ham on a hook.

“What did I tell you?” Buddy asked, and Amy didn’t know whether he was talking to her or to the dog.

“It’s my fault,” Amy said again. Her voice sounded funny, like the sandpaper she sometimes used in art class.

“I don’t care about fault,” Buddy said softly. “What I care about is obedience.”

“Don’t hurt him,” Amy said.

“What good is a guard dog that won’t obey? You teach them young, or you have to shoot them later.”

“Don’t hurt him though,” Amy said.

Without another word Buddy kicked the dog with his pointy cowboy boot. The dog yelped in pain, and Buddy kicked him again. “For your own good,” Buddy said, holding him down. “For your own stupid good.”

Amy started to sob. The little dog couldn’t get away. He struggled and squirmed, yelping loudly. Buddy kicked him over and over, and when he was done, he hurled the dog into his cage. Picking up a rolled-up newspaper, he smacked the palm of his open hand.

“Got it now?” he asked. He never hit Amy, but she had the definite feeling he was threatening her then. “Are we clear who’s master around here?”

In the bedroom, blankets rustled. Amy’s stomach ached. She didn’t know what she wanted more, for her mother to rescue the dog or for her to stay out of the way.

“C’mere,” Buddy said.

Amy refused to look, afraid he was talking to her.

“Come here,” Buddy said, and the cage door rattled. He was reaching in, pulling the dog out again. He was petting the dog, whispering to him, scratching him behind the ears. The dog whimpered, trying to get away.

“I’ll break you, boy,” Buddy said. “If that’s what it’ll take, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Don’t break him,” Amy whispered.

“What?” he asked.

Amy shut her mouth. She didn’t want Buddy to hear her. She knew from experience it made him mad when people intervened – like Amy would do with her mother.

The puppy pulled to get away, crying almost like a human child. Amy’s body ached, straining to get over there and help him, but she was glad the dog had fight left in him. It would be worse if he licked Buddy’s hand the way he wanted the puppy to. Amy knew she had to be very quiet so Buddy would leave the room. If she made herself invisible, this would stop sooner.

“I said, what?” he asked softly.

But Amy slipped away in her mind, turned herself into a babbling brook. She was tumbling over mossy ledges, through shady glens and sylvan glades. Herons were nesting on her banks, and spiders spun glassy webs across her clear water. She was flowing downhill, toward the sea, where her father had fished. She was on her way when the phone rang.

“Hello?” Buddy said.

Amy watched him. He was ramrod-straight, the king of his castle, when he picked up the receiver. Beating the puppy must have given him confidence, because he sounded very sure of himself. But as he listened to the voice at the other end, Amy watched him wilt before her very eyes. His spine gave out, and he drooped like a tulip stem.

“Yes, she’s right here,” he said. “I’ll get her.”

“For Mom?” Amy asked.

“For you,” he said, covering the receiver. He seemed about to admonish her, to tell her he was expecting a call, or remind her to keep family matters private. His thin lips opened and closed a couple times, but he just handed her the phone.

“Hello?” Amy asked.

“Is this Amy Brooks?” came the deep voice, and she recognized it right away. Relief spread through her like a heat wave, tears cresting in her eyes.

“Hi, Dr. McIntosh,” she said.

“What are you doing next Saturday?” he asked.

Four

On Saturday morning Dianne was wallpapering the parlor wall of a small Victorian. The blue and white paper was English, a pattern of tiny white peonies. Dianne worked from the interior out. She would do the inside work first, making sure every detail was perfect, then nail the house together.

“Your grandmother would like this paper,” she said to Julia. “Peonies are her favorite flower.”

Julia sat close by, propped up in her chair. Every window was open, and a warm wind blew off the marsh. Stella crouched on the sill, inside the screen, watching life in the yard. Julia was very quiet today, enjoying the breeze in her hair. Everyone got spring fever in their own way. Dianne felt April moving toward May.

A car door closed, and the cat instantly slid out of sight. Born in the wild, Stella was intensely shy. Dianne craned her neck, but she couldn’t see the driveway from the window. Washing wallpaper paste off her hands, she went to the door.

“Oh, my God,” she said, feeling her stomach lurch as she saw Alan getting out of the car. Dianne thought of Julia’s test results, wondered whether he had come by to break some bad news in person. But then she saw the young girl, and she relaxed a little. He wouldn’t have brought someone with him if that were the case. Dianne’s hands were trembling as she dried them with an old rag, and she watched them come toward the studio.

Alan shielded his eyes, looking around. The marsh was bathed in sunlight, a hundred shades of green. Cattails rustled, and red-winged blackbirds darted in and out. Long Island Sound sparkled beyond. The Robbinses had the last house on Gull Point, ten blocks and a world away from Amy’s.

“You know these people?” Amy asked, standing beside him with wide eyes.

“I do.”

“They’re witches,” she said. “All the kids say so.”

“What kids?”

“In my neighborhood.”

“What do they say?”

“That the ladies cast spells and turn kids into monsters and trolls. Then they keep them prisoner.” Amy was staring at the house. It was a tidy Cape, its white cedar shingles weathered to silver. The blue shutters had cut-out sea horses; the white window trim gleamed. Window boxes were filled with purple and yellow pansies.

“Well …” Alan said.

“Is it true?” Amy asked, standing so close, her shoulder bumped his jacket.

“You’re going to have to decide for yourself,” he said, feeling a shiver under his skin as he saw Dianne standing in the doorway.

Amy had never doubted Dr. McIntosh before, but she couldn’t imagine why he was bringing her to the witch-ladies’ house. She had been so happy about spending the day with him, she had prepared by taking a bath in Rain Magic bath salts, then putting on fresh jeans and the cleanest shirt she could find. But now, standing in the clamshell driveway on Gull Point, she felt afraid.

Tall privet hedges lined the yard, blocking any view from the street. Although Amy lived just a few blocks away, she had never seen the house before and was surprised that it looked so cute. Would witches live in a Cape with sea horse shutters? Instead of walking up the front path, Dr. McIntosh headed around the side yard. It was a meadow of sea grass, bristly and greenish-brown, but there were gardens of daffodils, pink azaleas, and tiny blue scillas.

Set back at the edge of the marsh was a small white cottage. Most unwitch-like! Amy thought. And standing in the doorway was the golden-haired lady Amy had seen once before, at Dr. McIntosh’s office.

“Oh!” Amy said.

“I should have called,” the doctor said to the lady.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sounding scared.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said quickly. “I happened to be in the neighborhood, picking up my friend Amy Brooks, and I wanted to introduce her to you.”

The lady bowed her head, looking relieved. She wore a white shirt tucked into blue jeans. The sleeves were rolled up; she wore old sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, and she’d tied the end with a thin piece of marsh grass. Her eye color reminded Amy of periwinkles, just as they had the other time she had seen her.

“I know who you are,” the lady said, smiling slowly.

Amy stood slightly behind the doctor.

“You were in the playhouse,” the lady said.

“Dr. McIntosh lets me,” Amy blurted out, thinking maybe the lady was going to give her a hard time about it.

“It makes me happy you like it,” the lady said.

Amy frowned, unsure of why the lady should care one way or the other. Confused, she looked at the doctor, and he placed his hand on Amy’s shoulder.

“Miss Robbins made that playhouse,” he said. “I bought it from her to put in my waiting room. And my brother delivered it in his truck. That’s how we all met.”

“That’s a very old story,” the lady said. “I’d like Amy to call me Dianne. Come on in.”

Once Dianne got past that first lurch, seeing Alan’s car and thinking bad news, she felt herself relax. Their eyes met and held for a moment. She took in his open expression, the smile lines every mother in Hawthorne loved, and she was so aware of the distance she wanted to keep between them, she forgot to open the screen door.

“How are you?” he asked, entering her studio.

“Fine, thanks. Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, looking around as if her studio were new to him. He made frequent emergency visits, but they were mainly up at the house.

“You’ve been in here, haven’t you?” she asked.

“You usually have it pretty well barricaded,” he said.

She glanced up, saw him smiling wryly.

“You’re related,” Amy said. “He told me.”

“Distantly,” Dianne said.

“I’m her daughter’s uncle,” Alan explained with kindness in his voice that even Dianne couldn’t miss. He was nice to all kids – no one could mistake the fact that he had a gift for talking to them.

How could someone so different from Tim remind Dianne so much of him? Alan was brainy, Tim was cocky. Alan wore the most faded blue shirts Dianne had ever seen, old blue jeans, and hiking boots. His glasses were slipping down his nose, and Dianne had to fight the urge to push them back up. Tim was the family bad boy, and Alan was the scientist. But they were both tall, lean, with an easy, graceful style of movement. Seeing Alan, Dianne always pulled back, as if from Tim himself.

“Deeee,” Julia said, coming to life. “Deeeee!”

“Oh!” Amy said, shocked, stepping back at the sight of Julia.

Dianne’s stomach flipped. Whenever someone saw Julia for the first time, all Dianne’s mother-lion instincts kicked into gear. If the people seemed upset, unfriendly, or disgusted, Dianne found a way to get them out fast. She might have expected Alan to warn the girl, but it seemed obvious that he hadn’t.

“Is that –” Amy began.

“My daughter,” Dianne said steadily.

“Her name is Julia,” Alan said. “You were asking about her the other day.”

“I saw her chart!” Amy said. Her eyes wide, she took a step toward Julia.

Dianne’s shoulders tightened. She clutched herself with folded arms. The young girl had sounded so scared, and now she had a look of morbid fascination on her face. Anger welled up in Dianne, and she started forward to get between Amy and Julia.

“You showed her Julia’s chart?” Dianne asked, furious.

Alan just shook his head as if it didn’t merit an explanation.

“This is Dianne’s workshop,” Alan said.

“Where you make the playhouses?” Amy asked.

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” Amy said. She cast a low glance at Julia, then looked quickly away. She was curious about the little girl. She wanted to stare, but she was polite enough not to. While Alan visited with Julia, Dianne pointed at the half-finished house, directing Amy’s attention away.

“I’m wallpapering this section,” Dianne said, feeling like a protective bird, leading the girl away from her nest. On the other hand, the child seemed so vulnerable. She had flyaway brown hair, bitten-down fingernails, a deep worry line between her eyebrows.

“Ooh, pretty,” Amy said, touching the white flowers.

“I do one wall at a time,” Dianne said. “Then put them together.”

“Oh,” Amy said, looking back at Julia.

“Once the house is assembled, I add the trim. These wooden curlicues are called gingerbread. I’ll attach that to the eaves, then add this little dovecote, these shutters. Then I’ll paint it.…”

“Does she have one in her room?”

“What?” Dianne asked.

“Julia,” Amy said carefully. Leaning to see around Dianne, she looked across the room. “Does she have her own playhouse?”

“Well, no,” Dianne said slowly. Couldn’t Amy see?

Amy must have picked up on her surprise, because she blushed. “I just thought, her being your daughter and all …”

“That Dianne would build her a house,” Alan said, stepping in to help.

“Julia is …” Dianne searched for the words to explain.

But Amy couldn’t contain herself anymore. She walked straight over to Julia, bent down to look her in the eyes. Her face was full of warmth and friendliness.

“Gaaa,” Julia said.

“Hi, little girl,” Amy said, crouching beside Julia’s chair.

Dianne stepped forward, wanting to get Amy away from her.

“Let them …” Alan whispered, grabbing Dianne’s wrist.

“Pretty little girl. Oh, you pretty little girl,” Amy said.

“Gaaa,” Julia said again. She had seemed happy to see Alan, but she was utterly entranced with Amy. Julia’s hands drifted in their strange ballet, gently tracing the air in front of Amy’s face.

“How old are you?” Amy asked.

Dianne wanted to reply for Julia, but she found that her voice wouldn’t work.

“She’s eleven,” Alan said.

“Almost my age,” Amy said, holding Julia’s left hand. She spoke not to the adults but to Julia herself. “I’m twelve.”

“Deeee,” Julia said. “Deee … Gaaaa …”

“She’s not surprised,” Dianne said quietly to Alan. “Most people see Julia and think she’s so much younger.”

“Amy’s young for her age,” Alan said. “I got it into my head she could baby-sit for Julia. Maybe not by herself, but when you or your mother are around. It would give you a little free time, and I think it would be good for Amy. I mentioned it to your mother.…”

“You don’t have to look after us, Alan –”

“I know that,” he said.

“This is my father’s watch,” Amy said, holding out her wrist for Julia to touch. “It weighs a ton, but I don’t care. I’ve had it eleven years now, and it’s still running strong. It was being fixed at the jeweler’s the day he died. He was a hero, he went down with his ship.…”

Dianne had to turn away. She walked to the window and stared out at the garden. The tall, purple irises swayed in the wind. A wild cat hunted along the edge of the rushes. Dianne felt like howling. Emotion flooded her chest, and she had to hug herself hard to keep it in. Alan came up behind her; Dianne felt his presence before he said a word.

“Do you hear the way she talks to Julia?” Dianne asked, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I do,” Alan said.

With her back to Alan, Dianne covered her face and wept silently. Her body shook, and she felt his fingers brush her shoulder. His hands were big, and they felt strong and steady. She felt the heat of his fingers through her thin shirt. Across the room, Amy was telling Julia about the puppy at her house, imitating its bark so well, she sounded like a young dog.

“Julia’s never had a friend before,” Dianne whispered.

“I don’t think Amy has either,” Alan whispered back.

Five

Amy began stopping by occasionally after school. By the second week she was coming every other afternoon. Julia liked Amy and seemed soothed by her. So often Julia seemed to be fighting demons in her head. She would wring her hands over and over. When Amy was there, she didn’t struggle as much. She seemed more placid and serene, and she smiled.

By two-thirty each day, Dianne had started glancing out the screen door of her studio, listening for Amy’s footsteps. Amy would run so fast across the marshy land, she sounded like a young filly in the homestretch, bursting through the screen door with a wild grin. She was a little hellion, awkward and messy. Dianne had taken to making lemonade, and she would set out the pitcher on a tray bearing glasses, oatmeal cookies, and square linen napkins.

Their second Tuesday together, they had their snack at the small table beside Julia’s chair. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and the marsh smelled warm and salty. They ate a cookie in silence, then, as was becoming their custom, talked for a few minutes before Dianne returned to work.

“I love these glasses,” Amy said, admiring one. Old juice glasses, they were enameled with tiny baskets overflowing with wildflowers. Each petal was a distinct, nearly microscopic brushstroke of scarlet, cobalt, cadmium yellow, or sap green.

“They were my grandmother’s,” Dianne said.

“All your things are … so careful.”

“How?” Dianne asked, tickled by the word.

“Everything is just so. You make things seem like they matter. Beautiful glasses, real cloth napkins, the way you tie your hair with a piece of marsh grass …”

“That’s just because I couldn’t find an elastic,” Dianne said.

“Hmm,” Amy said, glowing as she took a small bite of cookie. Dianne didn’t think of herself as careful: Sentimental was more like it. She liked things to remind her of other people. She had loved her grandmother, and she had loved Tim’s. Dorothea McIntosh had lived in a meadow, and she had tied her hair with long grass and flower stems. She had married a sea captain who brought jewels and rosewood back from a trip to India, and Dianne had her diamond and sapphire earrings tucked safely away.

Dianne held the cup close to Julia’s chin, guided the straw to her lips. The first day, Amy had tried to feed Julia a bite of cookie, and Dianne had had to explain that Julia could choke. She loved the way Amy accepted Julia’s reality without question, without trying to change it, make it better, conform to hers. Amy leaned forward with a napkin to dab away the lemonade that spilled down Julia’s chin.

“Thank you,” Dianne said.

“Rats, don’t thank me,” Amy said, blushing.

“Your mother doesn’t mind you coming over here?”

Amy shook her head.

“Does she work?” Dianne asked, trying to get a feel for what made Amy want to spend the afternoons away from home. Maybe her mother didn’t get home till five or six; probably Amy didn’t like staying in an empty house.

“No,” Amy said, looking down. “She’s home.”

They didn’t say anything for a while after that. There was a rhythm developing to their time together. They didn’t have to do anything to rush it along; it was growing at its own pace. Dianne tried not to ask herself why this meant so much to her, that a twelve-year-old girl from the neighborhood would want to hang around with her and Julia.

Amy was helping her see something. This was how life would be if Julia were normal: a mother and daughter going through their days together. Dianne was a mother with so much to give. Alan had put them together; Dianne was grateful, but sometimes she felt she was already beholden to him for too many things. And he was always there, even when she least expected him.

Last Wednesday she had driven over to the library to drop off her mother’s lunch. From behind the glass partition in the librarians’ office, Dianne spotted Alan jogging up the library’s wide front steps.

“It’s Wednesday,” Lucinda said, following her gaze. “He visits on his day off.”

“I forgot,” Dianne said, holding Julia.

“Just a minute,” Lucinda said. “Be right back.”

Her mother took the towel she had folded on her desk and walked out to the front desk to meet Alan. Rocking Julia, Dianne watched them greet each other. Alan’s T-shirt was soaked, and wet hair hung in his eyes. She half rose, thinking she’d walk out and say hi. This was her chance to thank him for sending Amy over.

Lucinda gestured, beckoning him around the desk. She directed Alan behind a corkboard partition. From behind the glass Dianne watched him glance around to make sure no one was looking. Then he pulled his wet shirt over his head. His body was strong and glistening with sweat. He dried himself off with the towel, and she watched him rubbing the mat of curly dark hair on his chest.

Dianne was frozen in place. She couldn’t move or look away. She felt like a spy, the library voyeur. The blood was pumping to her brain, leaving her mouth open and dry. Alan’s skin was ridiculously smooth, glossy and taut across his muscles. The two young librarians had walked in to have their lunch. They giggled, and Dianne realized they were checking Alan out too. She mumbled a few words.

The pediatrician’s body. She stared at it: his flat stomach, the narrow line of dark hair trailing into his waistband. His thighs looked massive, the rest of his legs long and lean. When he had finished drying himself, he pulled his wet shirt back on. As his head popped through the opening, his eyes met Dianne’s.

She blinked and looked down. The door opened and Lucinda walked in. The younger librarians were teasing her about keeping Alan to herself. Lucinda bantered back. Julia waved her arms, trying to call her grandmother. When Dianne glanced up, remembering that she still hadn’t thanked Alan for sending Amy to them, he had disappeared.

Having finished the little Victorian yesterday, Dianne was beginning a Greek Revival for the seventh birthday of a little girl in Old Lyme. This required building a portico and positioning ionic columns. While Julia dozed, Amy sat on a high stool watching Dianne work. Stella, still unsure about the newcomer, perched in a wicker basket on a shelf, spying from on high.

“Why doesn’t Stella like me?” Amy asked. “Cats usually do.”

“Stella is a squirrel,” Dianne said.

“No, really. Why doesn’t she like me?”

“She does. She’s just very shy,” Dianne said, measuring the distance between columns. “Her mother was killed by foxes the day she was born, and she was raised by a mother squirrel in the stone wall out back.”

“Poor little thing!” Amy said, staring at the cat, gray-striped with a brown undercoat. “She looks a little like a squirrel.…How do you know?”

“I found her mother’s body. I’d see the tiny kitten going in and out of the wall. After a couple of weeks, when she got too big, the mother squirrel stopped nursing her and kicked her out. She probably thought her babies were in danger –”

“Cats hunt squirrels,” Amy said. “They were her prey.”

“Eventually, but she was still too young. I had to feed her warm milk with a doll bottle. She was tiny, the size of a teacup. I’d hold her in one hand.”

“She must have been so cute,” Amy said in a small voice.

“And wild. At night she’d tear through the house. Once a bat got in, and she chased it till dawn. When people dropped by, she’d hide so completely, I sometimes couldn’t find her all day.”

“Hide where?”

“In my sweater drawer, under my quilt – she’d flatten herself out so much, you couldn’t even see a bump in the bed. Up the chimney, on the smoke shelf.”

“And now she’s up there, hiding in the basket,” Amy said, tilting her head back to see. Stella was there watching them, her eyes an unusual shade of turquoise.

“See, it’s not you,” Dianne said.

“I thought she’d know me by now,” Amy said. “I’ve been coming almost a month.”

“She doesn’t even meow – she chatters like a squirrel. In the morning she peeps. Sometimes I call her Peeper. She’s just a very unusual cat.” Dianne hated the idea of anyone thinking they were rejected, left out, unloved. Including Amy. She came over every day now, sat with Julia, talked to Dianne for hours on end. Gazing up at Stella, Amy seemed thin and unkempt, a lost ragamuffin.

“You raised a wild cat with a bottle …” Amy said, turning to Dianne. Her eyes were full of pain. “People don’t usually do that.”

“You would,” Dianne said.

“How do you know?” Amy asked.

“I can tell how much you care by the way you are with Julia.”

Clearing her throat, Dianne began to make Stella’s sound, the chirping of a squirrel. “Eh-eh. Eh-eh.”

The cat perked up her ears. Julia awoke, her eyes rolling up to Stella’s hiding place. Dianne kept on making the noise. Amy sat very still, and Julia’s hands began to drift, conducting her imaginary orchestra. Tentatively, Stella slid out of her basket. With great stealth, she came down from the shelf.

This was a game Dianne often played with her cat. Stella could play; Julia could not. Amy watched openmouthed.

Afternoon sun bathed the room, and Dianne tilted her watch crystal to catch the light. Directing it against the white wall, she sent the bright disk of reflected light careening along the baseboard. Stella began to chase it, making the “eh-eh” noises as she stalked her prey.

“She thinks it’s alive,” Amy exclaimed. “She wants to catch it!”

“You try it,” Dianne said. “With your father’s Timex.”

“Okay,” Amy said, and Julia sighed.

Dianne watched Amy get the hang of it, sending the tiny moon along the floor, Stella chattering in hot pursuit.

“Watch, Julia,” Amy laughed. “You have one crazy cat!”

Julia strained to focus. Her hands moved rapidly. Her eyes seemed to follow the action, and when Amy sent the tiny moon onto Julia’s tray and Stella jumped into Julia’s lap, Amy squealed with surprise and delight.

“Stella means ‘star,’” Dianne said. “I named her because when I first brought her home, I found her sitting in the window one night, staring at the sky. She always looks toward the same constellation.”

“Which one?” Amy asked.

“Orion.”

“I love the story of Stella,” Amy said.

Dianne nodded. As she watched Julia and Amy pet the cat, she tried not to let Amy’s comment make her feel too sad. She thought of loving the strange, the unlovable. She knew the value of play, of imagination and symbolism. It was every mother’s dream to see her child grow and develop, and to help the child along that path. Dianne had been able to do that more for a cat than for her own daughter.

Leaving the girls alone, she went silently over to her workbench, back to the columns. She loved the ionic capitals; their scrollwork reminded her of moon shells. The girls’ voices drifted over. They were soft and harmonious; at their feet, the cat chirped and peeped.

Listening, Dianne thought: This wasn’t the life she would have chosen. Dianne loved to talk, tell stories, exchange tales about the mysteries of life. Her child, her darling, her beacon of light, was incapable of reflection. Gazing into her eyes, she saw blankness, as if Julia’s eyes saw only inward, deep into her own soul – or nothing at all. Dianne pretended that Julia spoke in words and gestures, and sometimes she was more able than others to admit her own maternal lies.

Somewhere along the line Dianne had turned into an eccentric who talked to cats. Then, since she couldn’t communicate with her daughter, she captivated another woman’s child. To escape the hurt of her life, she imagined that her daughter was aware. That Julia was more, somehow, than a broken human body.

Much more, Julia. Much more, my love.

Dianne glanced over: The girls were talking. Amy was imitating the cat, and Julia was expressing her pleasure with the elaborate hulalike motion of her arms. Dianne bent over her work, positioning columns.

“Does your mother want you home?” she called to Amy.

“Nope,” Amy called back.

Amy rarely spoke of her family, but Alan had given Dianne to understand that all was not well in the Brooks household. Dianne had respect for all mothers, no matter how troubled or imperfect, and she took a long breath to make herself mindful of that fact.

“What do you think we should do for my mother when she retires?” Dianne asked, changing the subject, knowing that she had touched a raw nerve. Amy was clearly not ready to open up to Dianne about the goings-on at home.

“A surprise party,” Amy said.

“She says she’ll kill us if we do that.”

“My friend Amber’s mom took her parents on a cruise for their golden anniversary.”

“A cruise …” Dianne said, mulling it over.

“Dianne,” Amy said. “Julia’s wet.”

“Okay, be right there,” Dianne said.

The game was over, and Stella crept back to her basket. Dianne went to the bathroom and returned with a clean diaper. During Amy’s first visits, Dianne had taken Julia behind the rice-paper screen to change her. They were beyond that now. Julia was eleven. If she went to camp, to gym class, to sleep over at a friend’s house, other girls would see her naked. Amy was Julia’s friend, her good friend.

“Here’s powder,” Amy said, handing Dianne the bottle.

“Thank you,” Dianne said, sprinkling it on.

“I love baby powder,” Amy said to Julia. “It’s better than perfume. I wear it to school.”

“Laaa,” Julia said.

“I always think she means flower,” Dianne said, “when she says la.”

“She does,” Amy said solemnly. As if she knew more about Julia’s language, could hear more, translate better, than even Dianne herself. Dianne was silent, wishing Julia would say something else. But she didn’t.

“La, Julia,” Amy said. “Marigold, lily, daisy, and rose.”

Julia blinked her eyes, rolling her head.

Dianne listened, watching Julia play with her friend, glad she had told Amy the story of Stella. Maybe someday she’d tell Amy the other story, the story of Julia.

The story started with the McIntosh brothers.

Dianne had dreamed of love her whole life. Her parents were wonderful people, devoted to each other and to her. She had always wanted that for herself, to find that kind of true love. Dianne’s mother had been an orphan, and she claimed Emmett had saved her. Dianne was shy, and she lived at home long after other kids her age had left. It was as if she knew that the real world was harsh, that she had to be ready before she stepped out into it.

Taking after her father, she went into carpentry. He had built her a playhouse when she was a little girl, and Dianne made one for the third birthday of a daughter of a childhood friend. She had modeled it after that white house on the harbor, the place where she fantasized someday living with a family of her own, and every mother who saw it wanted one for her own child.

Alan was then a new pediatrician in town and he commissioned Dianne’s father to build shelves in his office. Alan was young, just getting his practice off the ground, and Emmett had liked him a lot. He had suggested he buy one of Dianne’s playhouses for his waiting room. Dianne had gone to the medical arts building to get a feel for the space, and Alan had come out to meet her.

“Your father did such a good job,” he said. “I wanted to see what you could do.”

“I learned everything from him,” Dianne said, feeling shy and a little intimidated. “From the best.”

“I’ll be the only doctor in town with a Robbins playhouse. All the kids’ll want to come to me. I’ll have the edge,” he joked in a way that let her know he was partly serious, a little insecure. He was tall and thin, not much older than Dianne. He had light brown hair that kept falling into his eyes.

“Are you from around here?” she asked.

“Cape Cod.”

“And you decided to be a doctor in Hawthorne?”

He nodded. “I did my residency in New Haven, and I took over this practice when Dr. Morrison decided to retire.”

“Do you miss Cape Cod?”

“It’s not that far away,” he said, “but, yes, I do.”

“Do you have family there?” Dianne asked, knowing how much she’d miss her parents if she ever moved.

He shook his head. “Not anymore. My brother’s a lobsterman, working off Block Island this year. Half the time he ties up right here in Hawthorne.”

“That’s good,” Dianne said, nodding.

“I like the hospital here,” Alan said. “The town’s growing, and the area’s beautiful. But fitting in …”

“My dad says Hawthorners take forever to accept newcomers,” Dianne said. Even though she was just a carpenter and he was a doctor, something about Alan made her feel she could say these things to him. “Even my business started off slow, and I was born here.”

“People will find me,” Alan said.

“I’m sure they will,” Dianne said, sizing him up. If she had a child, she could imagine wanting this man to take care of her. He seemed gentle, and when he’d said ‘people will find me,’ he’d sounded quietly confident, as if he knew he was a good doctor and he knew parents would bring their kids to him.

“Don’t worry,” she said, nodding her head. “I’ll make you a beautiful playhouse.” She didn’t know why, but the promise was incredibly important to her. Back at home, she riffled through architecture books and all sorts of magazines in search of quirky details. Little kids loved things like sea horse door knockers, shutters that really closed, a mailbox to hold letters.

One night a few weeks later her mother called her to the phone and told her it was Alan McIntosh. Thinking he wanted to discuss her progress, she picked up the extension. But instead, he wanted to ask her out to dinner. Dianne was silent, holding the receiver. Working for a doctor was one thing, going out with him was another. What would they have to talk about? What would he think when he found out she’d dropped out of Connecticut College?

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Yes, okay.”

Saturday night he said. He thought she might like to try the Rosecroft Inn.

Dianne loved the place and the evening. They sat in the grill room. Drinking champagne, she had felt the bubbles on her upper lip. It was such a romantic night. There was a pink rose on the table, a fire in the fireplace, candles flickering around the darkened room.

Alan was handsome and attentive. He seemed interested in her background, the fact that she had spent her whole life in Hawthorne. He hadn’t acted surprised when she told him about not liking college, about knowing she wanted to work with her father. He talked about his brother Neil, the reason he had become a doctor. He told her about his brother Tim, the wild man who fished the eastern seaboard, coming home only when he had to.

Curious about how two brothers could be so different, Dianne wanted to hear more. She and Alan were talking so much, the waiter had to stop by four times before they were ready to order. When the time came, she realized she had barely even looked at the menu. She ordered sweetbreads, something she had never tried before.

Alan asked her to tell him her happiest memory. She asked him about his favorite dream. He wanted to know about all her pets, and after she told him, he wanted to know how they got their names. She asked him if he believed in heaven.

She had never had a date like this before. Most of the guys she dated were locals like her. Many of them had gone to grade school together, had known each other their whole lives. But just two hours of talking to Alan gave Dianne the idea she’d been missing something. She had never imagined getting so much pleasure from telling a man about the Scottish terrier she’d gotten for her fourth birthday.

He had shoulders like a football player’s, broad and solid, yet he moved with a sexy kind of grace. He ordered oysters and fed Dianne one, tilting the shell against her lips. His brown hair was a little shaggy, in need of a haircut. Listening to him talk about medicine, she could hear the passion. He wasn’t in it for the money or prestige: He had a true calling to help people.

That night when he drove her home he held her hand across the seat. When he stopped the car, he kissed her. The blood rushed into her face and her knees went weak when he tangled his long fingers in her hair, kissed her hard and steady as she leaned into his chest. He felt strong and sturdy as any workman, even though his hands didn’t have calluses. He was a doctor, what did she expect?

A week went by while she worked on his playhouse. She hoped he would like it enough to take her out again. But he was busy with his practice, and she was busy creating the playhouse. He called once, and she was out; she returned his call, and he was at the hospital.

Then came delivery day.

The playhouse was ready. She had it in her studio, and she and her father had planned to carry it over in his truck. But then Alan said his brother Tim was back in town. Since his boat was tied up at the lobster dock, Tim would swing by to pick up the finished house.

She had been wrapping the playhouse in batting to protect it on the drive when Tim McIntosh walked into her studio. He was as tall as Alan but blonder. He spent his life in the sun, and it showed in the lines on his face. He wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing muscular forearms, and his front tooth was slightly chipped. His eyes looked as intelligent as Alan’s, but haunted, as if he were pondering the end of the world.

“Hey” was all he said as he walked over to grab the roll of batting from Dianne’s hand. “Let me do that.”

“No, I –” she began.

But he didn’t listen. He just took the roll of thick padding and began to wrap the house as if he’d been doing that sort of work his whole life. Without speaking, or even really smiling, he stared at her across the small house’s gabled roof. Dianne felt a long shiver down her spine and along the backs of her legs. She wondered how he had chipped his tooth, gotten that scar over his right eyebrow.

“What’re you thinking?” Tim asked.

“Me?” she replied, embarrassed to have gotten caught staring. “Nothing.”

“That’s not true,” he said.

“Then tell me what I’m thinking about.”

“You want a boat ride,” he said.

“No,” she said. “If I’m thinking anything, it’s that you did a nice job. Wrapping that playhouse.”

“You always do your work in that outfit?”

Hoping that she and Alan might have dinner after the delivery, Dianne had put on a dress. It was blue and white striped, with a white collar that suddenly seemed too big. Standing in front of Tim, she felt so awkward, felt sweat rolling down her back. She couldn’t stop staring at Tim’s wide grin. She looked like a schoolgirl in her striped dress, she thought, and she wondered what he would think if he knew she still lived with her parents.

“Strong woman,” he said. “To build this house all by yourself. Tell the truth – did your father help you? Because you honestly don’t look like the hammer-swinging type.”

“I am,” she said.

“I’m a laborer myself. That’s why I don’t expect someone as pretty as you …” He smiled again, showing his broken tooth.

“I love my work,” she said.

“Me too,” he said. “A woman after my own heart.”

With his light hair and ruddy skin, the fine white lines radiating around deep blue eyes, there was no missing the fact that he was a fisherman. He was ruggedly gorgeous, and he had a way of glowering that made Dianne think he was harboring a bad secret. He was full of life, and she could imagine him standing on deck, navigating by the stars. When he took her hand and shook it, she felt the thrill all through her body.

“Tim McIntosh,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Dianne Robbins,” she said, staring at his strong and callused hand. It took a long time for him to let go.

“How about that boat ride?” he asked.

“Your brother’s waiting for us.”

“He can come with us,” Tim said.

“Stop.” She laughed. “We have to take the playhouse over to his office.”

“An island,” Tim said. “That’s where I’ll take you on our boat ride. Somewhere in the Bahamas. We’ll go bone fishing and sleep on the beach. You like the sound of palm trees rustling in the wind?”

“I’ve never heard them.”

“You will,” Tim McIntosh had said, his blue eyes blazing.

“No, I –” Dianne began, unable to take her eyes off Tim. He held her hand lightly, as if he had known her for years, as if he planned to walk her straight off into the sunset. She pulled away, convinced him that Alan was waiting, that they should deliver the playhouse to his waiting room as they had promised.

“Whatever you want,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “You don’t love him, do you?”

“We’ve gone out only once,” Dianne said, her voice cracking.

“Good,” Tim said.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, feeling his hand on the small of her back. Their faces were close, and she knew it was all over. He was a cowboy with a boat, a broken tooth, and a dark secret. Her heart was pounding, and she felt liquid inside. Just looking at him made her smile, made her nervous, made her feel like laughing out loud.

“Because we’re going for a boat ride, and if things work out, I’m going to ask you to marry me,” he said. “What would you say to that?”

“I’d say you’re crazy,” Dianne said as he touched the side of her face with his rough fingertips. But she knew that her time with Alan was over forever.

The truly crazy thing was, Tim McIntosh proposed to her for real less than a month later. He asked her to marry him on the deck of his boat, with all the new spring constellations overhead.

“I need you,” he told her.

“We hardly know each other,” she said.

“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” he said, clutching her. “It feels as if I’ve known you my whole life. Marry me, Dianne,” he said.

“Marry you …”

“You’ll never be bored.”

“Tim!” she laughed, thinking that was a funny thing to say.

“I’m not like Alan,” he continued. “With him you’d have it easy. Stable as hell.” He made it sound dull. “You’d never have to ask him twice to mow the lawn. Perfect all the time. With me …” He bent her over backward. “You wouldn’t have a lawn.”

“No?” she asked, staring into his eyes.

“Just this,” he said, sweeping his arm out to take in the sea, the silver-topped waves spreading to the horizon. “That’s all I can give you.”

“Only the sea.” She laughed again.

“Marry me,” he said again.

Dianne had a sudden strange feeling that Tim was in competition with his brother and she was the prize. The thing was, she was shy and humble, and she didn’t trust her instinct. Alan was a successful doctor, Tim was a handsome fisherman: They could have any woman they wanted. Why would they fight over her?

Shy girls are sometimes insecure. They don’t know how they shine. One date with Alan, and Tim seemed to take it more seriously than she did. If Alan liked her so much, why hadn’t he asked her out again? That night at the Rosecroft Inn, she had had such a wonderful time. Alan seemed solid and true, as if he knew exactly where he was going.

Tim was something else entirely. He trembled when he held her. He said “I need you” at least as often as “I love you.” He told her he kept time by the tides, and she found that incredibly romantic. The first time he was late, he blamed it on an east-setting current. Then he wrapped her in his arms and told her when he’d been out of sight of land, he’d been afraid he might drown without ever seeing her again.

He told Dianne she was all he had.

He called her ship-to-shore twice a day. Anchoring on the Landsdowne Shoal, he shot off white flares spelling “Dianne” in Morse code. He saved the best lobsters he caught and cooked them for her dinner. They drank wine every night.

They made love. Holding her so tenderly, his arms quivered, and Tim whispered her name over and over. They’d lie in the bunk of his boat, wrapped in wool blankets and feeling the rhythm of the sea. At those times his eyes would look serious and afraid. He’d gaze at her face as if trying to memorize every feature.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he’d whisper.

“Never,” she’d whisper back.

“I can’t lose you,” he said. “This has to be forever.”

“How can you think it wouldn’t be?” she asked, feeling scared. She was taking the same risk: To give herself this totally to another human being, she had to believe that he was going to stay always, be true to his word, love her until the end of time.

“Things change,” he said. “For some people.”

“Not for us,” she promised.

“My parents,” he said. That night he told her his version of what had happened to his family. They had been so close: His parents had been childhood sweethearts. They’d gotten married at twenty, had three little boys. Life had been a dream. They had fished, and crabbed, and swum. Their mother had made them picnics. And then Neil had gotten sick.

The family fell apart. His mother lost her mind: The sheer agony of seeing her son die drove her to drink. Unable to help her, his father stayed at sea. Alan turned to books, Tim went fishing. And Neil died anyway. Alan had told Dianne before, but that didn’t make the story any easier to hear.

“I’m so sorry,” Dianne whispered.

“No one’s ever going to leave me again,” Tim said. “Ever.”

“You can’t control fate,” she said. “As much as you want to.”

Pulling back, Tim’s eyes were dark and troubled. He peered into her face, wiping tears from his cheeks.

“I have to,” he said. “’Cause I’m not going through that again.”

“Losing someone you love must be awful,” Dianne said. “But look at Alan – he used your brother’s death for something positive. Deciding he wanted to be a doctor.”

Tim moaned.

“Tim!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she could feel him shaking. “It’s just that there’s nothing positive about Neil dying. And I don’t like you talking about Alan like he’s so wonderful, the great and powerful doctor. He had his chance with you and …” He trailed off, his face bright red.

“I love you,” Dianne said, brushing his hair out of his eyes, scared at the expression on his face. “Not Alan.”

“No woman’s ever come between us before,” he said.

“I don’t want to come between you.”

“Then take my side,” he said.

“I will. I do,” she said, confused.

“I’ve never loved a girl before,” Tim said.

“Never?” Dianne asked, shaken to her core. She had her bad boy all right: He was too handsome, too wild, too charming not to have had girlfriends. He was telling her a blatant lie, and she knew it.

“I’ve been with girls, but I’ve never loved anyone,” he said, kissing her forehead, smoothing her hair. “Never until you.”

“People have to love each other through the worst,” Dianne said, her voice trembling. She had lived a blessed life: There was so much love in her family, and thankfully no one had ever been sick. But for some reason, she thought of Alan asking her about her happiest memory, her family pets, telling her about his life, and she swallowed hard.

“You think we can?” Tim asked, holding her face in his hands.

“Oh, I know we can,” she said.

“We’re sticking together,” Tim said. “Starting now.”

And Dianne believed him. He needed her. Life had hurt him badly, left him damaged, and Dianne was ready to nurture him in their marriage. For the first time in her life, she could believe that her own motto, “Home Sweet Home,” applied to her. Happiness was possible. Love was true. She and Tim would have many sweet babies, and she would build playhouses for all of them. Life would be so beautiful.

They would love each other through the worst.

She would always support Tim’s point of view, and she would try to ease his rivalry with Alan, so the McIntosh brothers could stay close.

She and Tim would never be apart.

They had promised.

Alan hadn’t felt like ripping Tim apart since that day on the Widener Library steps. But the day Tim told him he was going to marry Dianne, the old feelings came tearing back. Tim was going on about how they wanted Alan to be in the wedding, would he be Tim’s best man? Cold fury filled Alan’s chest.

“What d’you say?” Tim asked. “You plan on keeping me in suspense?”

“You asked her to marry you and she said yes?”

“No,” Tim said, his eyes sharp and bright. “We’re walking down the aisle for a joke. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Alan said, his blood racing.

“Bullshit. I know you.” Tim exhaled as if he had the north wind inside him. He began to pace around Alan’s office.

“It’s pretty quick, isn’t it?” Alan asked. “I mean, you hardly know her.”

“I know her fine. Listen, this isn’t because you used to go out with her, is it? Because I’ve been under the impression there was nothing much between you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you had only one date.”

“Yeah,” Alan said. “One date.”

“So what’s the problem?”

The problem was, Alan hadn’t been fast enough. The world could change in the course of one date, and when he’d been out with Dianne, he had known he had met someone amazing. He had felt a deep connection looking into her eyes and kissing her in the car, and he could have sworn she had felt it too. But then he had worked some late nights at the hospital, called Dianne at the wrong time, and lost his chance to see whether the connection was real or just a dream.

“So what’s the problem?” Tim asked again.

“You’re going to marry her and settle down?”

“Yep.”

“Really settle down?” Alan asked, making himself a disapproving jerk so Tim wouldn’t detect the fact he was being eaten alive by jealousy.

“As much as I can,” Tim said. “She knows about the boat, the lobster license, the fact I work offshore. I don’t think it bothers her.”

“She hasn’t watched you come and go,” Alan said. “For the last ten years.”

“Hey, you had your chance. You could have been an oceanographer. You’re the one who nailed yourself to a medical practice.”

“I know.”

“Dianne has no problem with my work,” Tim said. He grinned, showing his broken front tooth. Trying to pull pots in a high sea six winters before, he’d gotten smacked in the face with the winch handle. It pissed Alan off that Tim wouldn’t go to the dentist and get it capped. It was almost as if he had decided to live a role, play a part.

“She likes the maverick lobsterman,” Alan said. “That it?”

“Yeah, she likes it.”

“The renegade home from the sea.”

“Hey …” Tim said, picking up on the sarcastic tone.

“Hope she likes it as much when you’re not home from the sea,” Alan said. “When you decide to head into Newport instead of back to Hawthorne.”

“Those days are over,” Tim said. He grinned again, and there was something of a brother-to-brother wink in his eye. Alan felt the jealousy surge again, and he wanted to knock his brother flat on his back. Tim was right: Alan had dated Dianne only once. But whether he liked it or not, Alan still felt the connection. Alan knew his brother, and he didn’t want him hurting her. Taking a step forward, he stood toe to toe with Tim.

“They’d better be,” Alan said.

Tim stared him down, his eyes lit up and ready to fight. Neither brother had forgotten their last fight up in Cambridge, and Alan could almost feel the heat pouring off Tim’s skin. They were each waiting for the other to throw the first punch.

“She’s different than we are,” Alan said. “She comes from a family where they look out for each other. You hear what I’m saying?”

“You warning me?” Tim asked, jabbing Alan’s chest with his index finger. “About my own wife-to-be?”

“I’m warning you to be good to her,” Alan said.

“Don’t worry.”

“Her parents stick around,” Alan said. “For each other and for her. Not like Mom and Dad. Not like what happened after Neil died.”

“I was there for Neil,” Tim said, head up, chin out.

Alan stared, harsh challenge in his eyes, unable to contradict something his brother held as gospel truth. But thinking back all those years, Alan remembered Tim sitting outside Neil’s window.

It was summer, and the sky was blue and birds were singing, and Tim had sat in the grass throwing his baseball into his mitt over and over again. Alan had snuck past his parents to be with Neil. They could hear the thunk-thunk of Tim’s baseball going into the mitt. That dark bedroom had smelled of sickness and death, and Neil’s eyes had been wide as an owl’s, staring at Alan with the sheer terror of not knowing what was going to happen to him.

“Don’t hurt Dianne,” Alan said now, with a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Go to hell,” Tim said. Stepping back, he turned and started to walk away. “You my best man or not?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Alan said, because Tim was his only living brother. For his sake, and for Dianne’s, he’d finish this right then. Dianne would never know about this fight or about the misery he was feeling inside. “I am.”

“I don’t know why,” Tim said, “but I’m glad.”

Weary and fed up with the fight, Alan had stood by his desk, watching him go. His brother was tall, his posture straight and proud. Why shouldn’t it be? He had won the girl. Alan had the diplomas and degrees, Tim had his boat and Dianne. When he got to the doorway of Alan’s office, he turned around.

Tim’s blue eyes were fierce. Alan’s stomach tensed, knowing that his brother was claiming victory in their latest battle of life. But staring across the office, he saw something else too. Deep in those eyes Alan saw fear. He saw the glimmer of a man who was already lost.

For a moment Alan tried to think of something to say, something to call Tim back and keep him from walking away, make up for the latest breach between them. After all, the brothers were each other’s only living relative. But once Tim McIntosh had decided to walk, nothing anyone could say was going to stop him.

Six

The last Wednesday in May, Alan felt tense, as if he wanted to run twenty miles. Instead, he only ran three, heading over to the library early. Mrs. Robbins wasn’t at the counter, a fact that disappointed him straight off. But there was his yellow and white striped towel, folded like a book, on top of the reshelving cart. Nodding to the young library assistant, Alan reached across the counter to get it.

He picked out his journals, settled down in the reading room, and opened to an article called “Krill: Life Force and Food Source for Blue Whales.” His heart was still pounding from his run. His left knee had started aching lately – for the first time in years-from an ancient injury, the time he’d crashed straight into Tim, sliding home at a baseball game behind Barnstable High School. His throat had been hurting all day, and now he sneezed.

He had taken Rachel Palmer, a nurse he knew from the hospital, to the movies Sunday night. Afterward, she’d wanted to get a drink and have dinner. Instead, Alan had convinced her to walk out on the curving sand spit to the lighthouse. It was dark. There was no moon, and they could hardly see their way.

Her shoes were wrong, the too-high heels sinking into the cold sand. She didn’t complain though. She kept up with Alan, talking about the movie. Alan had strode along, hands jammed into his jacket pockets. Across the bay was Gull Point. The channel was black ink, the tide rushing out. The lights of Dianne’s house blazed beyond the dark marsh.

Alan stood under the lighthouse. The beacon swung across the water, lighting a path to Dianne. Rachel held his hand. She was tall and sexy in her tight beige sweater. Alan eased her onto the damp sand, taking off her clothes so roughly, she’d exclaimed. She pulled her own lacy black bra off herself. Lust, thrills, they’d had it all. Alan had held her tight, trying to catch his breath. Wanting to make up for his thoughts, for the fact he couldn’t stop staring at Dianne’s house across the channel, he’d let her wear his sweater and jacket.

“Call me,” she said when he dropped her off.

“I will,” Alan said, kissing her. She gave him back his clothes. Shivering in his T-shirt, he left them on the seat. She was divorced. She worked in the ER, and she had a six-year-old son. Alan felt like a creep who deserved the cold he’d caught. He knew he’d never call her again. Truth, when it came to romance, had never come easy for Alan. He thought back to how he had pretended to forgive Tim for stealing Dianne, when instead he had wanted to kill his brother.

He sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” the reference librarian whispered loudly.

“God bless you,” Mrs. Robbins said simultaneously, coming around the corner with a stack of new magazines.

“Thank you,” Alan said to both of them.

“Are you coming down with something?” Mrs. Robbins asked.

“I always catch the kids’ colds,” he said.

“Then you shouldn’t be running.”

“I need the exercise,” he said.

“Exercise, my foot. Get yourself home and spend your day off in bed,” she said sternly, but then her face softened into a wonderful smile. “If the doctor won’t mind my saying so.”

Alan sneezed again. His throat hurt, and his chest felt heavy. Mrs. Robbins put her hand on his forehead. It reminded him of his grandmother.

“You have a fever, my boy,” she said.

“Hey, how’re Julia and Dianne?” he asked, trying to sound offhand. “Things seem to be working out okay with Amy?”

“Never mind Julia and Dianne,” Mrs. Robbins said. “Never mind Amy. You go lie down and try taking care of yourself for a change. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. Chills came over him suddenly, and he shivered. He was really sick. Being cared for felt strange. Again he thought of his grandmother. Dorothea had done her best after Alan’s parents had absconded into their misery. But she had lived on Nantucket, a sea voyage away, and Alan had hardly ever seen her.

“And call me in the morning!” Mrs. Robbins said.

His grandmother might have joked the same way.

The minute Lucinda Robbins got home, she took two cans of chicken broth out of the cupboard. When Emmett used to get sick, she would boil a chicken and make the stock from scratch. But for now, she made do with canned, throwing in some shallots, carrot, celery, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme from the garden. She set the pot to simmering.

The girls were in Dianne’s studio. They were listening to Carly Simon today: The love songs floated on the air, straight into Lucinda’s open window. Dianne loved Carly. She always had. She’d listen to that voice – full of passion, singing about lost love and a broken heart and the joys of her children and hope about tomorrow – as if only Carly could express the things Dianne felt so deeply inside.

Dianne was a wizard with wood. She had her father’s carpenter hands, his common sense, and his patience. Patience, above all, was the key to good carpentry. The ability to take a careful measurement, down to the last fraction of an inch, to fit pieces of wood together in a tight squeeze with no gaps of buckles. And faith: that she was making the right cuts, that she wasn’t going to ruin a piece of expensive wood with carelessness.

Dianne had all that patience and faith when it came to wood.

But Dianne had no faith at all about love. Why should she? Sometimes Lucinda looked at Dianne’s life and wondered how she had survived the despair. To be madly in love, the way Dianne had been with Tim, to marry him in the wedding of her dreams, to have his baby, and to lose him when the baby didn’t turn out to be the right kind.

Dianne had nearly died. Literally. Lucinda had spent those early days after Tim’s departure caring for Julia while Dianne was too sad to get out of bed. For so many days, once she realized the extent of Julia’s problems, she was flattened by postpartum depression, and the only thing Dianne could do was cry. Julia had pulled her through though. Eleven years ago, that tenacious little baby with her terrible troubles and fierce needs had saved her mother from dying of love.

But Alan McIntosh helped too. He had stopped by every day. There weren’t many doctors who made house calls, but he had never considered not making them. He was a forgiving man to look past Dianne’s leaving him for his brother. He’d come over straight from the office, minister to Julia’s peculiarities. Her third week alive, she’d had surgery to repair a twisted intestine, and they had attached a temporary colostomy bag to catch her little baby bowel movements.

Dianne, wild with grief, had fumbled with the bag. She had pulled the adhesive away from Julia’s stoma, the open place in her tiny belly, and Julia was screaming in pain.

Lucinda still remembered the pandemonium. Julia wailing, Dianne sobbing. Alan had walked into the kitchen, put his black case on the table, and taken Julia from Dianne. He held the infant against his chest, calming her down. A little trail of yellow baby poop stained his blue shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I hurt her,” Dianne said, trembling as she wept.

“No, she’s fine,” Alan said.

“When I went to change the bag, I pulled too hard, and the connection ripped right off! Her skin’s so raw already, she’s been through so much …”

“You didn’t hurt her,” Alan said more firmly. “It was like taking off a Band-Aid, that’s all. It’ll sting only for a minute. We’ll get a new one, get her all set up.”

Gently handing Dianne her daughter, he rummaged through his case. He tore open the packages. Within two minutes he had cleaned Julia’s stoma, attached a new bag, wrapped her in her baby blanket.

Lucinda had stood back, paralyzed. She had raised a healthy daughter, hadn’t had a clue about how to fix a colostomy bag, how to help Dianne from losing her mind. In awe of her own daughter, she had felt afraid to move.

Alan had brought the courage to carry them all. Although he never pretended Julia was normal, he never acted as if she were different. Dianne had given birth three weeks earlier, the same week Tim left. She was pale and nearly insane, a quivering wreck with her dirty hair and blue robe. Afraid to hold her own baby, she had stood in the corner, tearing at her hair.

Lucinda would never forget what happened next. It was summer, and the marsh was alive with crickets. Starlight burned the black sky. A wild cat howled, and it had reminded Lucinda of her own daughter. Alan had walked across the kitchen, tried to put Julia in Dianne’s arms. But she wouldn’t take her.

“She’s your baby,” Alan said.

“I don’t want her,” Dianne wept.

You don’t mean that, Lucinda wanted to say. But maybe she did. Dianne lost her husband and so much more: her sense that love could overcome everything, that the world was a safe place, that good people had healthy children.

“She needs you,” Alan said.

“I want Tim,” Dianne begged. “Make him come back to me!”

“He’s gone, Dianne!” Alan nearly shouted, shaking her arm to wake her up. “The baby needs you!”

“I’m not a good enough mother for her,” Dianne said. “She needs someone much stronger. I can’t, I’m not …”

“You’re the only one she has,” Alan said steadily.

“Take her,” Dianne begged.

“Your daughter is hungry,” Alan said. He led Dianne almost roughly to the rocking chair by the window and pushed her down. Then, in the tenderest gesture Lucinda had ever seen, he opened the front of Dianne’s robe. She had been fighting, but now she stopped. She just sat there, unable to move.

Alan placed Julia at Dianne’s breast. Tears rolling down Dianne’s cheeks, she sat there in the dim light, refusing to look at her child. Outside, galaxies blazed in the night. She stared up, as if she wanted to leave this torment and become the blue star in Orion’s belt. Stubborn, she wouldn’t embrace her daughter. Kneeling before her, Alan supported Julia while she nursed at Dianne’s breast.

A long time passed. Minutes seemed like an hour. After a while, Dianne held her child. Her arms moved up from her sides, seemingly of their own accord. Taking hold of Julia, she touched arms with Alan. Lucinda watched their foreheads nearly brushing, looking down at the baby. Their faces were together, their arms were entwined. Julia sucked hungrily.

Lucinda stood at the stove, remembering. Glancing at the table, she could almost see them now: Dianne, Alan, and Julia.

Lucinda decanted the soup into a big container, leaving the lid off to let it cool a little. She packed some fresh bread and butter into a bag, poured some lemonade into a jar. Then, heading across the side yard, she went to tell her daughter that the doctor was sick and it was her turn to make a house call. There were times, she swore, that Dianne was blind to her own life.

At first Dianne felt impatient. Building a widow’s walk to sit atop her newest playhouse, modeled after one she admired in Stonington, was taking all her concentration. But her mother was insistent, telling her she’d made some chicken soup for Alan, and that Dianne had to drive it over to him.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to his house?” she asked.

“Well,” her mother said dryly. “You have his address in your book. Look his street up in the gazetteer if you’ve forgotten where he lives.”

“Only a librarian would have a gazetteer,” Dianne said.

“Librarians aren’t so different from carpenters,” she said. “The right tool for each job.”

“I know where he lives,” Dianne said reluctantly.

“Julia is so lucky,” Amy said.

They both turned to look at her. She had brought over a game of checkers, and she was playing a brand-new version with Julia.

“To have Dr. McIntosh for an uncle,” Amy explained.

“It has its ups and downs,” Dianne said.

“That’s terrible, Dianne,” Lucinda said. “He’s very good to you both.”

“Mom, I have to finish this order by Sunday,” Dianne said, trying again. “Can’t you take it over?”

“I have the girls coming over for reading group tonight, and I have to get things ready.”

“And you found time to make him soup?”

“Like Amy said. He’s Julia’s uncle,” Lucinda Robbins said.

Dianne had the truck windows open, letting spring air blow through the cab. The birds were in high gear, making the twilight hour zing with feeling. Swallows caught bugs in the fields. Flocks of starlings swooped and swirled in one black cloud. A lone kingfisher sat on the telephone wire above Silver Creek. Dianne smelled rose gardens, fresh earth, and the salt flats. Her mother’s package was in back, nestled among weighty bags of hinges and twopenny nails.

Pearl Street was smack in the middle of Hawthorne. One of the oldest streets in town, many prosperous whaling captains and merchants had built their houses there in the 1800s. Two blocks back from the harbor, it was a little quieter than Front and Water streets.

Driving slowly down Pearl Street, Dianne breathed the salt air. The sun was setting, and the white facades glowed with peachy iridescence. She hadn’t visited Alan at home in many years. His street brought back old memories of being happy with Tim, and she drove a little faster.

Alan’s house was a Victorian. White clapboards, gray trim, three steps leading up to a wide porch. Gingerbread, dovecote, a grape arbor. But the place was in disrepair. Paint peeling, one shutter on a side window missing, the weather vane cockeyed. The grass needed cutting, and the day-sailor on its rusty trailer had not seen saltwater in a long time. She remembered long sails with her husband and brother-in-law.

Their relationship had been smooth back then. She had sensed that Alan wanted the best for her and Tim. He would invite them sailing, and they would invite him to dinner. Everyone was on his, and her, best behavior. Those sailing days were bright and sparkling, the three of them on Alan’s small sloop. He’d be at the tiller, Tim stretched out with a cap over his eyes, Dianne manning the jib as they sailed the Sound.

One brilliant sunny day, the waves splashing over the rail, Dianne had felt incredible joy. They were sailing to windward, Tim trawling for bluefish off the stern, Dianne crouched in the bow. She had turned, mouth open in sheer delight, to say something about the sun or the wind or the three of them being together, and she caught Alan looking at her. His eyes were narrowed, the expression full of regret and longing. In that one glance she knew that his mood had to do with what had once briefly been between them, and for that instant she felt it too. She turned quickly away.

Dianne and Alan kept things polite and superficial. They were each other’s in-laws. She would make fish stew every Friday night, and Alan would come over for dinner between office hours and hospital rounds. He would ask her opinion on what color carpeting he should get for his office. Tim would grin, holding Dianne’s hand, glad to include Alan in their happy family life. But the pretense between Dianne and Alan collapsed the day Tim took to the sea for good.

Crossing the unkempt lawn, she spied something in the grass: an old birdhouse. Dianne had made it for Alan many years earlier, before she had had Julia. As a promise to Alan’s future kids, that she would build them the greatest playhouse in Hawthorne, Dianne had made him the birdhouse. She remembered Tim holding the ladder while Alan climbed up to hang the house in the tall maple. Now it had fallen down. Propping it against the stone foundation, Dianne walked up the front steps.

Dianne rang the doorbell again and again, but no one came to the door.

“Hello,” she called. “Hello!”

It felt strange to be standing there. She remembered the night she and Tim had come to tell Alan their amazing news: that she was three months pregnant. She had stood in the foyer with Tim’s arms around her as Tim invited Alan to touch her belly. She had felt embarrassed for Alan; she could see the discomfort when he met her eyes, but he’d done what Tim asked to please his brother. His touch had been sure and steady. Closing her eyes, Dianne felt Alan connecting with the baby inside her, and she’d shivered.

“Alan,” she called now. “Are you home?”

She tried the doorknob. It turned. Creaking open, the heavy door led into a small entry hall and living room. The decor could be considered minimal: one mahogany table, one rolltop desk with chair, and one bleached-cotton covered love seat. His decorating skills hadn’t improved.

“Alan!” Dianne called. She gave a whistle.

The walls were lined with shelves overflowing with books: Dickens, Shakespeare, Norman MacLean, Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Hemingway, Freud, Dos Passos, Trevanian, Robert B. Parker, Ken Follett, Linnaeus, Jung, Lewis Thomas, Louis Agassiz, Audubon, Darwin, Winnicott, and many more. Tim had never been able to sit still long enough to read books like those.

Turning away, she noticed an upper shelf full of framed photos.

Alan was very tall, so the pictures would be at his eye level. Dianne, standing on tiptoe, could barely see. A portrait of his parents – he looked just like his father, tall and lean. A silver-framed photo of Dorothea, his grandmother. A picture of three young boys in baseball uniforms. The same three boys on a sailboat, at the beach, holding surf-casting rods. Alan, Tim, and their big brother, Neil.

“Tim,” she said, almost shocked by the sight of him.

Dianne and Tim’s wedding picture. She took it down, her hand shaking. People often talked to her about “letting go.” Of the past, anger, her ex-husband. Eleven years had passed. So why was Dianne filled with rage at the sight of him?

They had loved each other once; she could see it in the way her body leaned toward him, the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her. His touch made her melt, his voice had made her want to promise him the stars. His shoulders looked ready to burst out of his tuxedo. His tie was crooked. Dianne had tried to make it her life’s mission to give Tim the happiness he’d lost when Neil died.

Remembering how hard she had tried, Dianne dug her nails into her palms. Eleven years hadn’t diluted her feelings. He hadn’t just left her; he had left their daughter.

She remembered one night, several months into the pregnancy, lying on the deck of his lobster boat. The starry sky curved overhead, and Dianne had whispered: “We can name the baby Cornelia if she’s a girl, Neil if he’s a boy. Either way, we’ll call our baby Neil.”

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