And so, she carried on. They had a week left. Ted was trying to cram everything in at the last minute; he wanted to spend every waking second outside. He played tennis at the casino while Josh had the kids, and he took Vicki, Brenda, and Melanie to lunch at the Wauwinet, where Vicki spent the whole time trying to keep her head off the table. Ted wanted to go into town every night after dinner, to walk the docks and ogle the yachts

—and one evening, impulsively, he signed himself and Blaine up for a day of charter fishing, despite the fact that the captain eyed Blaine doubtful y and told Ted he would have to come prepared with a life jacket for the little guy. Ted bought a sixty-dol ar life jacket for Blaine at the Ship’s Chandlery, seconds later.

Whereas Vicki once would have staged a protest ( he’s too little, it’s not safe, a big waste of money, Ted ), now she stood mutely by. Ted didn’t ask her how she felt because he didn’t want to hear the answer. There were only seven days of summer left; surely Vicki could hang on, could act and pretend, until they got home.

Vicki cal ed Dr. Alcott, Mark, herself, for more drugs.

“Stil the headache?” he said.

“It’s not as bad as before,” she lied. “But we’re so busy, there’s so much going on, that . . .”

“Percocet is a narcotic,” Dr. Alcott said. “For extreme pain.”

“I’m in extreme pain,” Vicki said. “I qualify as a person who needs a narcotic, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Dr. Alcott said. “And that’s why I want you to come in.”

“I’m not coming in,” Vicki said.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Alcott said.

Oh, but there was. Vicki said, “Is there anything else I can take?”

Dr. Alcott sighed. Vicki felt like Blaine. Can I have a hamster when I’m six? A skateboard? Bubble gum? “I’l cal something in.”

Later, out of desperation, Vicki cal ed the pharmacy. “Yes,” the pharmacist said, in a way that could only be compared to the Angel Gabriel announcing the impending birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, “Dr. Alcott cal ed in a prescription for Darvocet and six-hundred-mil igram Motrin.”

“Is Darvocet a narcotic?” Vicki asked.

“No, ma’am, it’s not.”

“But it is a painkil er?”

“Yes, indeed, it is, and it can be taken to greater effect with the Motrin.”

Greater effect. Vicki was mol ified.

Ted lobbied for another beach picnic. He wanted to use his fishing poles one more time, he wanted lobsters again. This time Vicki could organize, right?

Right, Vicki said weakly.

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

“I can’t,” Josh said. “I’m busy.”

“Busy?” Ted said.

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

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

“Real y,” he said. “I’m busy.”

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

“No,” Vicki said. “No way.”

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

“Who’s coming?” Melanie asked.

Vicki said, “Just us.”

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

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

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

“What?”

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

“About what?” Vicki said.

“About money,” Brenda said.

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

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

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

“Vicki,” Brenda said. “Vicki!”

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

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

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

Before it was too late.

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

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

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