The rest of the conversation was a blur. She asked a few questions that were probably unimportant, but she wasn’t ready to get up, to walk out, to have to face the world. The doctor answered each query and apologized that his answers were vague. “There’s no way to know for sure,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Kevin said nothing the whole time, a robot devoid of feeling. But after they’d squeezed into Taylor’s truck—together, yet alone in their solitary pain—they rode back to Edgartown and onto the On Time, and Kevin silently cried. Which, of course, made Annie cry, too. She held his hand, rested her head on his shoulder, and stayed that way until they reached the Inn and Taylor dropped them off.

She really wished that John was there. And that she’d asked him not to go to Barnstable tomorrow.

* * *

“What are we going to do?” Kevin finally spoke once he and Annie were in the cottage and she’d put on the kettle.

“Exactly what the doctor told us,” Annie said. “We’re going to make sure she’s comfortable. And we’re going to let Georgia Nelson be in charge, because the doctor was right; they are merciful angels.” She remembered the hospice volunteers who had brought Murphy comfortably through her last days. Propping her elbows on the table and cupping her chin with her hands, Annie said, “We’ll do this together, Kevin. Like Donna wanted. I really think it’s why she came here.”

He went to her refrigerator and popped a beer. “Tell me about your parents again. How they died. If you don’t mind.”

It occurred to her then that Kevin had not witnessed death. The closest he’d come had been with Meghan, whose tragedy would linger as long as she was technically alive. So Annie took a deep breath and began. First, she told him about Brian. Then about Murphy. “I might have more experience at this than you, but, it’s not the same. My dad and my husband died suddenly. My mother was in the hospital for six weeks and died there in her sleep. Murphy had her family, and by the time she passed away I was down here on the Vineyard. So I’ve never taken care of anyone. Not like this.”

He chugged his beer. “And now you have to do it for a woman you barely know. That sucks.”

Annie got up and fixed her tea, a bundle of emotions twisting inside her. “She’s my mother, Kevin.”

“Right,” he replied, peeling the label from the bottle with his thumb. “And your father was the guy you know nothing about.”

Annie leaned against the counter next to him. “That’s not important anymore.”

He nodded several times. “So we’ll do this together? You. Me. And Georgia whatever-her-name-is?”