But except for the lathe, plus an assortment of lawn furniture and old dining room chairs, the barn was empty. Harry sneezed. The air in the barn, even with the wide doors flung open, was dusty and still, the floors pocked with bird shit. He wanted to get out of there, but instead of exiting the way he had come, he traversed the barn and stepped through the regular-sized back door.

Not ready to go back to the house, Harry sat on the doorjamb. There was a view out over the marsh that abutted the property. Harry felt a sudden and revolting sense of pure grief. It swept through him like an attack of nausea, an absolute knowledge that he was all alone and life was meaningless and devoid of joy. His heart fluttered, and for a moment Harry wondered if he was dying, as though his sudden awareness was bringing on some kind of attack. But then he felt a prick on his arm, and rubbed at it. He looked down and saw that he’d killed a mosquito, leaving behind a smear of blood.

His heart slowed, the terrible thoughts dissipating as rapidly as they had come. Still, he remembered a very stoned conversation he’d had in his dorm room a few months ago. He was with a junior named Tyler whom Harry had met through the cinema club. They’d been listening to a Sparklehorse album, and Tyler had suddenly started to talk about how short our time on the planet was, and how, in the blink of an eye, we would be dead, and everyone who ever knew us would be dead, and that was it. He’d spoken as though he was the first person ever to have had, or voiced, those thoughts. Fortunately, Paul had dropped by, changed the music to a Henry Mancini compilation, and forced Tyler to drink a cocktail. Harry thought of that conversation now, thought of how the deaths of both of his parents had erased a whole portion of his own life that existed solely as their memories. He was half gone, already, more than half gone.

The queasiness and fear returning, Harry made himself stand up. He walked back through the barn and to the front of the house. The car was still there, but the woman he’d seen in the kitchen was now standing on the front stoop, framed in the doorway, saying good-bye to Alice.

“Harry, this is Viv. I don’t know if you two have met.”

The woman turned to Harry, her dark eyes searching his face. She was very thin, her cheeks hollowed out, and suddenly the head scarf made sense. She must be sick with cancer, going through chemotherapy.

“I’m sorry about your father, Harry,” she said, her voice an unsurprising rasp. “I’m afraid I missed the funeral; I’ve been away.”