id you know she was playing hockey?” Brian asks me, and I shake my head. I wonder what else my daughter has been hiding from us.

We are about to leave the house to watch Anna playing hockey for the first time when Kate announces she isn't going. “Please Mom,” she begs. “Not when I look like this.”

She has an angry red rash all over her cheeks, palms, soles, and chest, and a moon face, courtesy of the steroids she takes to treat it. Her skin is rough and thickened.

These are the calling cards of graft-versus-host disease, which Kate developed after her bone marrow transplant. For the past four years, it's come and gone, flaring up when we least expect it. Bone marrow is an organ, and like a heart or a liver, a body can reject it. But sometimes, instead, the transplanted marrow begins to reject the body it's been put in.

The good news is that if that happens, all the cancer cells are under siege, too—something Dr. Chance calls graft-versus-leukemia disease. The bad news is the symptomology: the chronic diarrhea, the jaundice, the loss of range of motion in her joints. The scarring and sclerosis wherever there's connective tissue. I am so accustomed to this that it doesn't phase me, but when the graft-versus-host disease flares up this badly, I let Kate stay home from school. She is thirteen, and appearance is paramount. I respect her vanity, because there is so little of it.

But I cannot leave her alone in the house, and we have promised Anna we'll come watch her play. “This is really important to your sister.”

In response, Kate flops onto the couch and pulls a throw pillow over her face.

Without saying another word I walk to the hall closet and pull a variety of items from drawers. I hand the gloves to Kate, then jam the hat on her head and wind the scarf around her nose and mouth so that only her eyes are visible. “It'll be cold in the rink,” I say, in a voice that leaves no room for anything but acceptance.

I barely recognize Anna, stuffed and trussed and tied into equipment that, eventually, we wound up borrowing from the coach's nephew. You cannot tell, for example, that she is the only girl on the ice. You cannot tell that she is two years younger than every other player out there.

I wonder if Anna can hear the cheering through her helmet, or if she's so focused on what's coming toward her that she blocks it all out, concentrating instead on the scrape of the puck and the smack of the sticks.

Jesse and Brian sit on the edge of their seats; even Kate—so reluctant to come—is getting into the game. The opposing goalie, compared to Anna, moves in slow motion. The action switches like a current, the play moving from the far goal toward Anna's. The center passes to the right wing, who skates for broke, his blades slicing through the roar of the cheering crowd. Anna steps forward, sure of where the puck is going a moment before it arrives, her knees bent in, her elbows pointed out.

“Unbelievable,” Brian says to me after the second period. “She's got natural talent as a goalie.”

That much, I could have told him. Anna saves, every time.

That night Kate wakes up with blood streaming out of her nose, her rectum, and the sockets of her eyes. I have never seen so much blood, and even as I try to stanch the flow I wonder how much of it she can stand to lose. By the time we reach the hospital, she is disoriented and agitated, finally slipping into unconsciousness. The staff pump her full of plasma, blood, and platelets to replace the lost blood, which seems to leak out of her just as quickly. They give her IV fluids to prevent hypovolemic shock, and intubate her. They take CT scans of her brain and her lungs to see how far the bleeding has spread.

In spite of all the times we have run to the ER in the middle of the night, all the times Kate's relapsed with sudden symptoms, Brian and I know it has never been quite this bad. A nosebleed is one thing; system failure is another. Twice now, she's had cardiac arrhythmias. The hemorrhaging keeps her brain, heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys from receiving the flow they need to work.

Dr. Chance takes us into the little lounge at the end of the pediatric ICU floor. It is painted with smiley-face daisies. On one wall is a growth chart, a four-foot-tall inchworm: How Big Can I Grow?

Brian and I sit very still, as if we will be rewarded for good behavior. “Arsenic?” Brian repeats. “Poison?”

“It's a very new therapy,” Dr. Chance explains. “You get it intravenously, for twenty-five to sixty days. To date, we haven't effected a cure with it. That's not to say it might not happen in the future, but at the moment, we don't even have five-year survival curves—that's how new the drug is. As it is, Kate's exhausted cord blood, allogeneic transplant, radiation, chemo, and ATRA. She's lived ten years past what any of us would have expected.”

I find myself nodding already. “Do it,” I say, and Brian looks down at his boots.

“We can try it. But in all likelihood, the hemorrhaging will still beat out the arsenic,” Dr. Chance tells us.

I stare at the growth chart on the wall. Did I tell Kate I loved her before I put her to bed last night? I cannot remember. I cannot remember at all.

Shortly after two A.M., I lose Brian. He slips out when I am falling asleep beside Kate's bed and doesn't come back for over an hour. I ask for him at the nurse's desk; I search the cafeteria and the men's room, all empty. Finally I locate him at the end of the hallway, in a tiny atrium that was named in some poor dead child's honor, a room of light and air and plastic plants that a neutropenic patient could enjoy. He sits on an ugly brown corduroy couch, writing furiously with a blue crayon on a piece of scrap paper.

“Hey,” I say quietly, remembering how the kids would color together on the floor of the kitchen, crayons spilled like wildflowers between them. “Trade you a yellow for your blue.” Brian glances up, startled. “Is—”

“Kate's fine. Well, she's the same.” Steph, the nurse, has already given her the first induction of arsenic. She has also given her two blood transfusions, to make up for what she's losing. “Maybe we should bring Kate home,” Brian says. “Well, of course we—”

“I mean now.” He steeples his hands. “I think she'd want to die in her own bed.”

That word, between us, explodes like a grenade. “She isn't going to—”

“Yes, she is.” He looks at me, his face carved by pain. “She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming.”

My eyes fill up with tears. “But I love her,” I say, because that is reason enough.

“So do I. Too much to keep doing this.” The paper he has been scribbling on falls out of his hands and lands at my feet; before he can reach it I pick it up. It is full of tearstains, of cross-outs. She loved the way it smelled in Spring, I read. She could beat anyone at gin rummy. She could dance even if there wasn't music playing. There are notes on the side, too: Favorite color: pink. Favorite time of day: twilight. Used to read Where the Wild Things Are, over and over, and still knows it by heart.

All the hair stands up on the back of my neck. “Is this… a eulogy?”

By now, Brian is crying, too. “If I don't do it now, I won't be able to when it's really time.”

I shake my head. “It's not time.”

I call my sister at three-thirty in the morning. “I woke you,” I say, realizing the minute Zanne gets on the phone that for her, for everyone normal, it is the middle of the night.

“Is it Kate?”

I nod, even though she cannot hear that. “Zanne?”

“Yeah?”

I close my eyes, feel the tears squeeze out.

“Sara, what's the matter? Do you want me to come down there?”

It is hard to speak around the enormous pressure in my throat; truth expands until it can choke you. As kids, Zanne's bedroom and mine shared a hallway, and we used to fight about leaving the light on through the night. I wanted it burning; she didn't. Put a pillow over your head, I used to tell her. You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.

“Yes,” I say, sobbing freely now. “Please.”

Against all odds, Kate survives for ten days on intense transfusions and arsenic therapy. On the eleventh day of her hospitalization, she slips into a coma. I decide I will keep a bedside vigil until she wakes up. And I do this for exactly forty-five minutes, until I receive a phone call from the principal of Jesse's school.

Apparently, the metal sodium is stored in the high school science laboratory in small containers of oil, because of its volatile reaction with air. Apparently, it is water-reactive, too, creating hydrogen and heat. Apparently, my ninth-grader was bright enough to realize this, which is why he stole the sample, flushed it down the toilet, and exploded the school's septic tank.

After he is expelled for three weeks by the principal, a man who has the decency to ask after Kate while basically telling me that my eldest is destined for the State Penitentiary, Jesse and I drive back to the hospital. “Needless to say, you're grounded.”

“Whatever.”

“Until you're forty.”

Jesse slouches, and if it is possible, his brows knit even more closely together. I wonder when, exactly, I gave up on him. I wonder why, when Jesse's history is not by any stretch as disappointing as his sister's.

“The principal's a dick.”

“You know what, Jess? The world's full of them. You will always be up against someone. Something.”

He glares at me. “You could take a conversation about the frigging Red Sox and somehow turn it back to Kate.”

We pull into the hospital parking lot, but I make no move to shut off the car. Rain pelts the windshield. “We're all pretty gifted at that. Or were you blowing up the septic tank for some other reason?”

“You don't know what it's like being the kid whose sister is dying of cancer.”

“I have a fairly good idea. Since I'm the mother of the kid who is dying of cancer. You're absolutely right, it does suck. And sometimes I feel like blowing something up, too, just to get rid of that feeling that I'm going to explode any minute.” I glance down and notice a bruise the size of a half-dollar, right in the crook of his arm. There's a matching one on the other side. It is telling, I suppose, that my mind immediately races to heroin, instead of leukemia, as it would with his sisters. “What's that?”

He folds his arms. “Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“None of your business.”

“It is my business.” I pull down his forearm. “Is that from a needle?”

He lifts his head, eyes blazing. “Yeah, Ma. I shoot up every three days. Except I'm not doing smack, I'm getting blood taken out of me on the third floor here.” He stares at me. “Didn't you wonder who else was keeping Kate in platelets?”

He gets out the car before I can stop him, leaving me staring out a windshield where nothing is clear anymore.

Two weeks after Kate is admitted to the hospital, the nurses convince me to take a day off. I come home and shower in my own bathroom, instead of the one used by the medical staff. I pay overdue bills. Zanne, who is still with us, makes me a cup of coffee; it is fresh and ready when I come down with my hair wet and combed. “Anyone call?”

“If by anyone you mean the hospital, then no.” She flips the page of the cookbook she's reading. “This is such bullshit,” Zanne says. “There is no joy in cooking.”

The front door opens and slams shut. Anna comes racing into the kitchen and stops abruptly at the sight of me. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” I say.

Zanne clears her throat. “Contrary to appearances.”

But Anna doesn't hear her, or doesn't want to. She has a smile as wide as a canyon on her face, and brandishes a note in front of me. “It was sent to Coach Urlicht. Read it read it read it!”

Dear Anna Fitzgerald,

Congratulations on being accepted into the Girls in Goal Summer Hockey Camp. This year camp will be held in Minneapolis, from July 3-17. Please fill out the attached paperwork and medical history and return by 4/30/01. See you on the ice!

Coach Sarah Tenting

I finish scanning the letter. “You let Kate go to that sleep-away camp when she was my age, the one for kids with leukemia,” Anna says. “Do you have any idea who Sarah Teuting is? The goalie on Team USA, and I don't just get to meet her, I get to have her tell me what I'm doing wrong. Coach got a full scholarship for me, so you don't even have to pay a dime. They’ll fly me out on a plane and give me a dorm room to stay in and everything and nobody gets a chance like this, ever—”

“Honey,” I say carefully, “you can't do this.”

She shakes her head, as if she's trying to make my words fit. “But it's not now, or anything. It's not till next summer.”

And Kate might be dead by then.

It is the first time I can remember Anna ever indicating that she sees an end to this time line, a moment when she might finally be free of obligation to her sister. Until that point, going to Minnesota is not an option. Not because I am afraid of what might happen to Anna there, but because I am afraid of what might happen to Kate while her sister is gone. If Kate survives this latest relapse, who knows how long it will be before another crisis happens? And when it does, we will need Anna—her blood, her stem cells, her tissue—right here.

The facts hang between us like a filmy curtain. Zanne gets up and puts her arm around Anna. “You know what, bud? Maybe we should talk about this with your mom some other time—”

“No.” Anna refuses to budge. “I want to know why I can't go.” I run a hand down my face. "Anna, don't make me do this.”

“Do what, Mom,“ she says hotly. ”I don't make you do anything.“ She crumples the letter and runs out of the kitchen. Zanne smiles weakly at me. ”Welcome back," she says.

Outside, Anna picks up a hockey stick and starts to shoot against the wall of the garage. She keeps this up for nearly an hour, a rhythmic beat, until I forget she is out there and begin to think a home might have its own pulse.

Seventeen days after Kate is admitted to the hospital, she develops an infection. Her body spikes a fever. She is pancultured—blood, urine, stool, and sputum sent out to isolate the organism—but is put on a broad-spectrum antibiotic right away in the hopes that whatever is making her sick might respond.

Steph, our favorite nurse, stays late some nights just so that I don't have to face this by myself. She brings me People magazines filched from the day surgery waiting rooms, and holds sunny onesided conversations with my unconscious daughter. She is a model of resolve and optimism on the surface, but I have seen her eyes cloud with tears as she is sponge-bathing Kate, in the moments when she doesn't think I can see her.

One morning, Dr. Chance comes in to check on Kate. He wraps his stethoscope around his neck and sits down in a chair across from me. “I wanted to be invited to her wedding.”

“You will,” I insist, but he shakes his head.

My heart beats a little faster. “A punch bowl, that's what you can buy. A picture frame. You can make a toast.”

“Sara,” Dr. Chance says, “you need to say good-bye.”

Jesse spends fifteen minutes in Kate's closed room, and comes out looking for all the world like a bomb about to explode. He runs through the halls of the pediatric ICU ward. “I'll go,” Brian says. He heads down the corridor in Jesse's direction.

Anna sits with her back to the wall. She is angry, too. “I'm not doing this.”

I crouch down next to her. “There is nothing, believe me, I'd rather make you do less. But if you don't, Anna, then one day, you're going to wish you had.”

Belligerent, Anna walks into Kate's room, climbs onto a chair. Kate's chest rises and falls, the work of the respirator. All the fight goes out of Anna as she reaches out to touch her sister's cheek. “Can she hear me?”

“Absolutely,” I answer, more for myself than for her.

“I won't go to Minnesota,” Anna whispers. “I won't ever go anywhere.” She leans close. “Wake up, Kate.”

We both hold our breath, but nothing happens.

I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there.

Brian and Kate and I are a circuit. We sit on each side of the bed and hold each other's hands, and one of hers. “You were right,” I tell him. “We should have taken her home.”

Brian shakes his head. “If we hadn't tried the arsenic, we'd spend the rest of our lives asking why not.” He brushes back the pale hair that surrounds Kate's face. “She's such a good girl. She's always done what you ask her to do.” I nod, unable to speak. “That's why she's hanging on, you know. She wants your permission to leave.”

He bends down to Kate, crying so hard he cannot catch his breath. I put my hand on his head. We are not the first parents to lose a child. But we are the first parents to lose our child. And that makes all the difference.

When Brian falls asleep, draped over the foot of the bed, I take Kate's scarred hand between both of mine. I trace the ovals of her nails and remember the first time I painted them, when Brian couldn't believe I'd do that to a one-year-old. Now, twelve years later, I turn over her palm and wish I knew how to read it, or better yet, how to edit that lifeline.

I pull my chair closer to the hospital bed. “Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you'd changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so that when it pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there, waiting for you.” I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. “You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you.”

I bury my face in the blankets and tell this daughter of mine how much I love her. I squeeze her hand one last time.

Only to feel the slightest pulse, the tiniest grasp, the smallest clutch of Kate's fingers, as she claws her way back to this world.

 

ANNA

HERE”S MY QUESTION: What age are you when you're in Heaven? I mean, if it's Heaven, you should be at your beauty-queen best, and I doubt that all the people who die of old age are wandering around toothless and bald. It opens up a whole additional realm of questions, too. If you hang yourself, do you walk around all gross and blue, with your tongue spitting out of your mouth? If you are killed in a war, do you spend eternity minus the leg that got blown up by a mine?

I figure that maybe you get a choice. You fill out the application form that asks you if you want a star view or a cloud view, if you like chicken or fish or manna for dinner, what age you'd like to be seen as by everyone else. Like me, for example, I might pick seventeen, in the hopes I grow boobs by then, and even if I'm a pruny centegenarian by the time I die, in Heaven I'd be young and pretty.

Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.

The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. What if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?

Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?

Campbell calls my father at the station when we're having lunch, and says that opposing counsel wants to talk about the case. Which is a really stupid way to put it, since we all know he's talking about my mother. He says we have to meet at three o'clock in his office, no matter that it's Sunday.

I sit on the floor with Judge's head in my lap. Campbell is so busy he doesn't even tell me not to do it. My mother arrives right on the dot and (since Kerri the secretary is off today) walks in by herself. She has made a special effort to pull her hair back into a neat bun. She's put on some makeup. But unlike Campbell, who wears this room like an overcoat he can shrug on and off, my mom looks completely out of place in a law firm. It is hard to believe that my mother used to do this for a living. I guess she used to be someone else, once. I suppose we all were. “Hello,” she says quietly. “Ms. Fitzgerald,” Campbell replies. Ice.

My mother's eyes move from my father, at the conference table, to me, on the floor. “Hi,” she says again. She steps forward, like she is going to hug me, but she stops.

“You called this meeting, Counselor,” Campbell prompts. My mother sits down. “I know. I was… well, I'm hoping that we can clear this up. I want us to make a decision, together.”

Campbell raps his fingers on the table. “Are you offering us a deal?” He makes it sound so businesslike. My mother blinks at him. “Yes, I guess I am.” She turns her chair toward me, as if only the two of us are in the room. “Anna, I know how much you've done for Kate. I also know she doesn't have many chances left… but she might have this one.”

“My client doesn't need coercing—”

“It's okay, Campbell,” I say. “Let her talk.”

“If the cancer comes back, if this kidney transplant doesn't work, if things don't wind up the way we all wish they would for Kate—well, I will never ask you to help your sister again . . . but Anna, will you do this one last thing?”

By now, she looks very tiny, smaller even than me, as if I am the parent and she is the child. I wonder how this optical illusion took place, when neither of us has moved.

I glance at my father, but he's gone boulder-still, and he seems to be doing everything he can to follow the grain of wood in the conference table instead of getting involved.

“Are you indicating that if my client willingly donates a kidney, then she will be absolved of all other medical procedures that may be necessary in the future to prolong Kate's life?” Campbell clarifies. My mother takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

“We need, of course, to discuss it.”

When I was seven, Jesse went out of his way to make sure I wasn't stupid enough to believe in Santa. It's Mom and Dad, he explained, and I fought him every step of the way. I decided to test the theory. So that Christmas I wrote to Santa, and asked for a hamster, which is what I wanted most in the world. I mailed the letter myself in the school secretary's mailbox. And I steadfastly did not tell my parents, although I dropped other hints about toys I hoped for that year.

On Christmas morning, I got the sled and the computer game and the tie-dyed comforter I had mentioned to my mother, but I did not get that hamster because she didn't know about it. I learned two things that year: that neither Santa, nor my parents, were what I wanted them to be. Maybe Campbell thinks this is about the law, but really, it's about my mother. I get up from the floor and fly into her arms, which are a little like that spot in life I was talking about before, so familiar that you slide right back to the place where you fit. It makes my throat hurt, and all those tears I've been saving come out of their hiding place. “Oh, Anna,” she cries into my hair. “Thank God. Thank God.”

I hug her twice as tight as I would normally, trying to hold on to this moment the same way I like to paint the slanted light of summer on the back wall of my brain, a mural to stare at during the winter. I put my lips right up to her ear, and even as I speak I wish I wasn't. “I can't.”

My mother's body goes stiff. She pulls away from me, stares at my face. Then she pushes a smile onto her lips that is broken in several spots. She touches the crown of my head. That's it. She stands up, straightens her jacket, and walks out of the office.

Campbell gets out of his seat, too. He crouches down in front of me, in the place where my mother was. Eye to eye, he looks more serious than I have ever seen him look. “Anna,” he says. “Is this really what you want?”

I open my mouth. And find an answer.

 

JULIA

“DO YOU THINK I LIKE CAMPBELL because he's an asshole,” I ask my sister, “or in spite of it?”

Izzy shushes me from the couch. She is watching The Way We Were, a movie she's seen twenty-thousand times. It is on her list of Movies You Cannot Click Past, which also includes Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing. “If you make me miss the end, Julia, I'll kill you.”

“'See ya, Katie/ ” I quote for her. “ 'See ya, Hubbell.'”

She throws a couch pillow at me and wipes her eyes as the theme music swells. “Barbra Streisand,” Izzy says, “is the bomb.”

“I thought that was a gay men's stereotype.” I look up over the table of papers I have been studying in preparation for tomorrow's hearing. This is the decision I will render to the judge, based on what is in Anna Fitzgerald's best interests. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether I side in her favor or against her. Either way I will be ruining her life.

“I thought we were talking about Campbell,” Izzy says.

“No, / was talking about Campbell. You were swooning.” I rub my temples. “I thought you might be sympathetic.”

“About Campbell Alexander? I'm not sympathetic. I'm apathetic.”

“You're right. That is what kind of pathetic you are.”

“Look, Julia. Maybe it's hereditary,” Izzy says. She gets up ands tarts rubbing the muscles of my neck. “Maybe you have a gene that attracts you to absolute jerks.”

"Then you have it, too.”

“Well.“ She laughs. ”Case in point."

“I want to hate him, you know. Just for the record.” Reaching over my shoulder, Izzy takes the Coke I'm drinking and finishes it off. “What happened to this being strictly professional?”

“It is. There's just a very vocal minority opposition group in my mind wishing otherwise.”

Izzy sits back down on the couch. “The problem, you know, is that you never forget your first one. And even if your brain's smart about it, your body's got the IQ of a fruit fly.”

“It's just so easy with him, Iz. It's like we're picking up where we left off. I already know everything I need to about him and he already knows everything he needs to about me.” I look at her. “Can you fall for someone because you're lazy?”

"Why don't you just screw him and get it out of your system?”

“Because,“ I say, ”as soon as it's over, that's one more piece of the past I won't be able to get rid of."

“I can fix you up with one of my friends,” Izzy suggests. “They all have vaginas.”

“See, you're looking at the wrong stuff, Julia. You ought to be attracted to someone for what they've got inside them, not for the package it's presented in. Campbell Alexander may be gorgeous, but he's like marzipan frosting on a sardine.”

“You think he's gorgeous?”

Izzy rolls her eyes. “You,” she says, “are doomed.” When the doorbell rings, Izzy goes to look through the peephole. “Speak of the devil.”

“It's Campbell?” I whisper. “Tell him I'm not here.”

Izzy opens the door just a few inches. “Julia says she's not here.”

“I'm going to kill you,” I mutter, and walk up behind her.

Pushing her out of the way, I undo the chain and let Campbell and his dog inside.

“The reception here just keeps getting warmer and fuzzier,” he says.

I cross my arms. “What do you want? I'm working.”

“Good. Sara Fitzgerald just offered us a plea bargain. Come out to dinner with me and I'll tell you all about it.”

“I am not going out to dinner with you,” I tell him.

“Actually, you are.” He shrugs. “I know you, and eventually you're going to give in because even more than you don't want to be with me, you want to know what Anna's mother said. Can't we just cut to the chase?”

Izzy starts laughing. “He does know you, Julia.”

“If you don't go willingly,” Campbell adds, “I have no problem using brute force. Although it's going to be considerably more difficult for you to cut your filet mignon if your hands are tied together.”

I turn to my sister. “Do something. Please.”

She waves at me. “See ya, Katie.”

“See ya, Hubbell,” Campbell replies. “Great movie.”

Izzy looks at him, considering. “Maybe there's hope,” she says.

“Rule number one,” I tell him. “We talk about the trial, and nothing but the trial.”

“So help me God,” Campbell adds. “And may I just say you look beautiful?”

“See, you've already broken the rule.”

He pulls into a parking lot near the water and cuts the engine. Then he gets out of the car and comes around to my side to help me out. I look around, but I don't see anything resembling a restaurant. We are at a marina filled with sailboats and yachts, their honey-colored decks tanning in the late sun. “Take off your sneakers,” Campbell says.

“No.”

“For God's sake, Julia. This isn't the Victorian age; I'm not going to attack you because I see your ankle. Just do it, will you?”

“Why?”

“Because right now you've got an enormous pole up your ass and this is the only G-rated way I can think of to make you relax.” He pulls off his own deck shoes and sinks his feet into the grass growing along the edge of the parking lot. “Ahhh,” he says, and he spreads his arms wide. “Come on, Jewel. Carpe diem. Summer's almost over; better enjoy it while you can.”

"What about the plea bargain—

“What Sara said is going to remain the same whether or not you go barefoot.”

I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna. I want to believe the latter, idiot that I am. Campbell waits patiently, the dog at his side. Finally I untie my sneakers and peel off my socks. I step out onto the strip of lawn.

Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction. Campbell sits down on the grass. “What's rule number two?”

“That I get to make up all the rules,” I say. When he smiles at me, I'm lost.

Last night, Seven the Bartender slipped a martini into my waiting hand and asked me what I was hiding from.

I took a sip before I answered, and reminded myself why I hate martinis—they're straight bitter alcohol, which of course is the point, but they also taste that way, which is always somehow disappointing. “I'm not hiding,” I told him. “I'm here, aren't I?”

It was early at the bar, just dinnertime. I stopped in on my way back from the fire station, where I'd been with Anna. Two guys were making out in a booth in the corner, one lone man was sitting at the other end of the bar. “Can we change the channel?” He gestured toward the TV, which was broadcasting the evening news. “Jennings is so much hotter than Brokaw.”

Seven flicked the remote, then turned back to me. “You're not hiding, but you're sitting in a gay bar at dinnertime. You're not hiding, but you're wearing that suit like it's armor.”

“Well, I'd definitely take fashion advice from a guy with a pierced tongue.”

Seven lifted a brow. “One more martini, and I could convince you to go see my man Johnston and get your own done. You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots.”

I took another sip of the martini. “You don't know me.”

At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled.

“Maybe,” Seven said, “but neither do you.”

Dinner turns out to be bread and cheese—well, a baguette and Gruyere—on board a thirty-foot sailboat. Campbell rolls up his pants like a castaway and sets the rigging and hauls line and catches the wind until we are so far away from the shore of Providence that it is only a line of color, a distant, jeweled necklace.

After a while, when it becomes clear to me that any information Campbell feels like providing me with won't be doled out until after dessert, I give in. I lie on my back with my arm draped over the sleeping dog. I watch the sail, loose now, flap like the great white wing of a pelican. Campbell comes up from belowdecks, where he's been hunting down a corkscrew, and holds out two glasses of red wine. He sits down on the other side of Judge and scratches behind the German shepherd's ears. “You ever think about being an animal?”

“Figuratively? Or literally?”

“Rhetorically,” he says. “If you hadn't drawn that human card.”

I think about this for a while. “Is this a trick question? Like, if I say killer whale you're going to tell me that means I'm a ruthless, cold-blooded, bottom-feeder fish?”

“They're mammals,” Campbell says. “And no. It's just a simple, making-polite-conversation inquiry.”

I turn my head. “What would you be?”

“I asked you first.”

Well, a bird is out of the question; I'm too scared of heights. I don't think I have the right attitude to be a cat. And I am too much of a loner to function in a pack, like a wolf or a dog. I think of saying something like tarsier just to show off, but then he'll ask what the hell that is and I can't remember if it is a rodent or a lizard. “A goose,” I decide.

Campbell bursts out laughing. “As in Mother? Or Silly?”

It is because they mate for life, but I would rather fall overboard than tell him this. “What about you?”

But he doesn't answer me directly. “When I asked Anna the same question, she told me she'd be a phoenix.”

The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. “They don't really exist.”

Campbell strokes the dog's head. “She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them.” Then he looks up at me. “How do you see her, Julia?”

The wine I have been drinking suddenly tastes bitter. Was all this—the charm, the picnic, the sunset sail—engineered to tip my hand in his favor at tomorrows trial? Whatever I recommend as guardian ad litem will weigh heavily in Judge DeSalvo's decision, and Campbell knows it.

Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.

“I'm not going to tell you what my decision is,” I say stiffly. “You can wait to hear it when you call me as a witness.” I grab for the anchor and try to reel it in. “I'd like to go back now, please.”

Campbell yanks the line out of my hand. “You already told me that you don't think it's in Anna's best interests to be a kidney donor for her sister.”

“I also told you she's incapable of making that decision by herself.”

“Her father moved her out of the house. He can be her moral compass.”

“And how long is that going to last? What about the next time?” I am furious at myself for falling for this. For agreeing to go out to dinner, for letting myself believe that Campbell might want to be with me, rather than use me. Everything—from his compliments on my looks to the wine sitting on the deck between us—has been coldly calculated to help him win his case.

“Sara Fitzgerald offered us a deal,” Campbell says. “She said if Anna donates the kidney, she will never ask her to do anything for her sister again. Anna turned it down.”

“You know, I could have the judge throw you in jail for this. It's completely unethical to try to seduce me into changing my mind.”

“Seduce you? All I did was lay the cards on the table for you. I made your job easier.”

“Oh, right. Forgive me,” I say sarcastically. “This isn't about you. This isn't about me writing my report with a definite slant toward your client's petition. If you were an animal, Campbell, you know what you'd be? A toad. No, actually, you'd be a parasite on the belly of a toad. Something that takes what it needs without giving a single thing back.”

A vein throbs blue in his temple. “Are you finished?”

“Actually, I'm not. Is anything that comes out of your mouth ever honest?”

“I did not lie to you.”

“No? What's the dog for, Campbell?”

“Jesus Christ, will you shut up already?” Campbell says, and he pulls me into his arms and kisses me.

His mouth moves like a silent story; he tastes like salt and wine. There is no moment of relearning, of adjusting the patterns of the past fifteen years; our bodies remember where to go. He licks my name along the course of my throat. He presses himself so close to me that any hurt left on the surface between us spreads thin, becomes a binding instead of a boundary.

When we break away to breathe again, Campbell stares at me. “I'm still right,” I whisper.

It is the most natural thing in the world when Campbell pulls my old sweatshirt up over my head, works at the clasp of my bra. When he kneels before me with his head over my heart, when I feel the water rocking the hull of the boat, I think that maybe this is the place for us. Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.

 

MONDAY

How great a matter a little fire kindleth!

-THE NEW TESTAMENT, James 3:5

 

CAMPBELL

WE SLEEP IN THE TINY CABIN, moored to its slip. Tight quarters, but that hardly seems to matter: all night long, she fits herself around me. She snores, just a little. Her front tooth is crooked. Her eyelashes are as long as the nail of my thumb.

These are the minutiae that prove, more than anything else, the difference between us now that fifteen years have passed. When you're seventeen, you don't think about whose apartment you want to sleep in. When you're seventeen, you don't even see the pearl-pink of her bra, the lace that arrows between her legs. When you're seventeen it's all about the now, not the after.

What I had loved about Julia—there, I've said it now—was that she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilted army-surplus jacket and combat boots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit.

No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.

After Julia, there weren't all that many women. None whose names I took the time to remember, anyway. It was far too complicated to maintain the facade; instead, I chose the coward's rocky route of one-night stands. Out of necessity—medical and emotional—I have gotten rather skilled at being an escape artist.

But there are a half-dozen times this past night when I had the opportunity to leave. While Julia was sleeping, I even considered how to do it: a note pinned to the pillow, a message scrawled on the deck with her cherry lipstick. And yet the urge to do this was nowhere near as strong as the need to wait just one more minute, one more hour.

From the spot where he's curled up on the galley table tight as a cinnamon bun, Judge raises his head. He whines a little, and I completely understand. Detangling myself from Julia's rich forest of hair, I slip out of the bed. She inches into the warm spot I've left behind.

I swear, it makes me hard again.

But instead of doing what comes naturally—that is, calling in sick with some latent strain of smallpox and making the clerk of the court reschedule the hearing so that I can spend the day getting laid—I pull on my pants and go above-deck. I want to make sure I'm at the courthouse before Anna, and need to shower and change. I leave Julia the keys to my car—it's a short walk to my place. It's only when Judge and I are on our way home that I realize unlike every other bloodshot morning that I have left a woman, I haven't fashioned some charming symbol of my exit for Julia, something to lessen the blow of abandonment upon waking.

I wonder if this was an oversight. Or if I have been waiting all this time for her to come back, so that I can grow up.

When Judge and I arrive at the Garrahy building for the hearing, we have to fight our way through the reporters who have lined up for the Main Event. They thrust microphones in my face, and inadvertently step on Judge's paws. Anna will take one look at walking this gauntlet, and bolt.

Inside the front door, I flag down Vern. “Get us some security out here, will you?” I tell him. “They're going to eat the witnesses alive.” Then I see Sara Fitzgerald, already waiting. She is wearing a suit that most likely hasn't seen the outside of the plastic dry cleaner's bag for a decade, and her hair is pulled back severely into a barrette. She doesn't carry a briefcase, but a knapsack instead. “Good morning,” I say evenly.

The door blows open and Brian enters, looking from Sara to me.

“Where's Anna?”

Sara takes a step forward. “Didn't she come here with you?”

“She was already gone when I got back from a call at five A.M. She left a note and said she'd meet me here.” He glances at the door, at the jackals on the other side. “I bet she took off.”

Again, there is the sound of a seal being breached, and then Julia surfs into the courthouse on a crest of shouts and questions. She smoothes back her hair, gets her bearings, then looks at me and loses them again.

“I'll find her,” I say. Sara bristles. “No, I will.” Julia looks at each of us. “Find who?”

“Anna is temporarily absent,” I explain. “Absent?” Julia says. “As in disappeared?”

“Not at all.” This isn't a lie, either. For Anna to have disappeared, she would have had to appear in the first place.

I realize that I even know where I am headed—at the same moment that Sara understands it, too. In that moment she lets me take the lead. Julia grabs my arm as I am walking toward the door. She shoves my car keys into my hand. “Now you do understand why this isn't going to work?”

I turn to her. “Julia, listen. I want to talk about what's going on between us, too. But this isn't the right time.”

“I was talking about Anna. Campbell, she's waffling. She couldn't even show up for her own court date. What does that say to you?”

“That everyone gets scared,” I answer finally, fair warning for all of us.

The shades to the hospital room are drawn, but that doesn't keep me from seeing the angel pallor of Kate Fitzgerald's face, the web of blue veins mapping out the last-chance path of medication running under her skin. Curled up on the foot of the bed is Anna.

At my command, Judge waits by the door. I crouch down. “Anna, it's time to go.”

When the door to the hospital room opens, I'm expecting either Sara Fitzgerald or a doctor with a crash cart. Instead, to my shock, Jesse stands on the threshold. “Hey,” he says, as if we are old friends.

How did you get here? I almost ask, but realize I don't want to hear the answer. “We're on our way to the courthouse. Need a lift?” I ask dryly.

“No thanks. I thought since everyone was going to be there, I'd stay here.” His eyes do not waver from Kate. “She looks like shit.”

“What do you expect,” Anna answers, awake now. “She's dying.”

Again, I find myself staring at my client. I should know better than most that motivations are never what they seem to be, but I still cannot figure her out. “We need to go.”

In the car, Anna rides shotgun while Judge takes a seat in the back. She starts telling me about some crazy precedent she found on the internet, where a guy in Montana in 1876 was legally prohibited from using the water from a river that originated on his brother's land, even though it meant all his crops would dry up. “What are you doing?” she asks, when I deliberately miss the turn to the courthouse.

Instead I pull over next to a park. A girl with a great ass jogs by, holding on to the leash of one of those froufrou dogs that looks more like a cat. “We're gonna be late,” Anna says after a moment. “We already are. Look, Anna. What's going on here?” She gives me one of those patented teenage looks, as if to say that there's no way she and I descended from the same evolutionary chain. “We're going to court.”

“That's not what I'm asking. I want to know why we're going to court.”

“Well, Campbell, I guess you cut the first day of law school, but that's pretty much what happens when someone files a lawsuit.”

I level my gaze on her, refusing to be bested. “Anna, why are we going to court?”

She doesn't blink. “Why do you have a service dog?” I rap my fingers on the steering wheel and look out over the park. A mother pushes a stroller now, across the same spot where the jogger was, oblivious to the kid who's trying his best to crawl out. A titter of birds explodes from a tree. “I don't talk about this with anyone,” I say.

“I'm not just anyone.”

I take a deep breath. “A long time ago I got sick and wound up with an ear infection. But for whatever reason, the medicine didn't work and I got nerve damage. I'm totally deaf in my left ear. Which isn't such a big deal, in the long run, but there are certain lifestyle issues I couldn't handle. Like hearing a car approach, you know, but not being able to tell what direction it's coming from. Or having someone behind me at the grocery store who wants to pass by me in the aisle, but I don't hear her ask. I got trained with Judge so that in those circumstances, he could be my ears.” I hesitate. “I don't like people feeling sorry for me. Hence, the big secret.”

Anna stares at me carefully. “I came to your office because just for once, I wanted it to be about me instead of Kate.”

But this selfish confession saws out of her sideways; it just doesn't fit. This lawsuit has never been about Anna wanting her sister to die, but simply that she wants a chance to live. “You're lying.” Anna crosses her arms. “Well, you lied first. You hear perfectly fine.”

“And you're a brat.” I start to laugh. “You remind me of me.”

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Anna says, but she's smiling. The park is starting to get more crowded. An entire school group walks the path, toddlers tethered together like sled-dog huskies, pulling two teachers in their wake. Someone zooms past on a racing bike, wearing the colors of the U.S. Postal Service. “C'mon. I'll treat you to breakfast.”

“But we're late.”

I shrug. “Who's counting?”

Judge DeSalvo is not a happy man; Anna's little field trip this morning has cost us an hour and a half. He glares at me when Judge and I hurry into his chambers for the pretrial conference. “Your Honor, I apologize. We had a veterinary emergency.”

I feel, rather than see, Sara's mouth drop open. “That's not what opposing counsel indicated,” the judge says.

I look DeSalvo right in the eye. “Well, it's what happened. Anna was kind enough to help me by keeping the dog calm while the sliver of glass was removed from his paw.”

The judge is dubious. But there are laws against handicapped discrimination, and I'm playing them to the hilt; the last thing I want is for him to blame Anna for this delay. “Is there any way of resolving this petition without a hearing?” he asks.

“I'm afraid not.” Anna may not be willing to share her secrets, which I can only respect, but she knows that she wants to go through with this.

The judge accepts my answer. “Mrs. Fitzgerald, I take it you're still representing yourself?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she says.

“All right then.” Judge DeSalvo glances at each of us. “This is family court, Counselors. In family court, and especially in hearings like these, I tend to personally relax the rules of evidence because I don't want a contentious hearing. I'm able to filter out what is admissible and what is not, and if there's something truly objectionable, I'll listen to the objection, but I would prefer that we get through this hearing quickly, without worrying about form.” He looks directly at me. “I want this to be as painless as possible for everyone involved.”

We move into the courtroom—one that's smaller than the criminal courts, but intimidating all the same. I swing into the lobby to pick Anna up along the way. As we cross through the doorway, she stops dead. She glances at the vast paneled walls, the rows of chairs, the imposing bench. “Campbell,” she whispers, “I won't have to stand up there and talk, right?”

The fact is, the judge will most likely want to hear what she has to say. Even if Julia comes out in support of her petition, even if Brian says he will help Anna, Judge DeSalvo may want her to take the stand. But telling her this right now is only going to get her all worked up—and that's not any way to start a hearing.

I think about the conversation in the car, when Anna called me a liar. There are two reasons to not tell the truth—because lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt. It's for both of these reasons that I give Anna this answer. “Well,” I say, “I doubt it.”

“Judge,” I begin, “I know it's not traditional practice, but there's something I'd like to say before we start calling witnesses.”

Judge DeSalvo sighs. “Isn't this sort of standing on ceremony exactly what I asked you not to do?”

“Your Honor, I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important.”

“Make it quick,” the judge says.

I stand up and approach the bench. “Your Honor, all of Anna Fitzgerald's life she has been medically treated for her sister's good, not her own. No one doubts Sara Fitzgerald's love for all her children, or the decisions she's made that have prolonged Kate's life. But today we have to doubt the decisions she's made for this child.”

I turn, and see Julia watching me carefully. And suddenly I remember that old ethics assignment, and know what I have to say. “You might remember the recent case of the firefighters in Worcester, Massachusetts, who were killed in a blaze started by a homeless woman. She knew the fire had started and she left the building, but she never called 911 because she thought she might get into trouble. Six men died that night, and yet the State couldn't hold this woman responsible, because in America—even if the consequences are tragic—you are not responsible for someone else's safety. You aren't obligated to help anyone in distress. Not if you're the one who started the fire, not if you're a passerby to a car wreck, not if you're a perfectly matched donor.”

I look at Julia again. “We're here today because there's a. difference in our system of justice between what's legal and what's moral. Sometimes it's easy to tell them apart. But every now and then, especially when they rub up against each other, right sometimes looks wrong, and wrong sometimes looks right.” I walk back to my seat, and stand in front of it. “We're here today,” I finish, “so that this Court can help us all see a little more clearly.”

My first witness is opposing counsel. I watch Sara walk to the stand unsteadily, a sailor getting her sea legs again. She manages to get herself into the seat and be sworn in without ever breaking her gaze away from Anna.

“Judge, I'd like permission to treat Mrs. Fitzgerald as a hostile witness.”

The judge frowns. “Mr. Alexander, I truly would hope that both you and Mrs. Fitzgerald can stand to be civilized, here.”

“Understood, Your Honor.” I walk toward Sara. “Can you state your name?”

She lifts her chin a fraction. “Sara Crofton Fitzgerald.”

“You are the mother of the minor child Anna Fitzgerald?”

“Yes. And also of Kate and Jesse.”

“Isn't it true that your daughter Kate was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia at age two?”

“That's right.”

“At that time did you and your husband decide to conceive a child who would be genetically programmed to be an organ donor for Kate, so that she could be cured?”