But even as I spoke, I could feel the tangle of my own erroneous logic. By the lake with Norma it was: Maddy’s death was preordained! The snake got the baby birds! There’s nothing wrong with as if! In the presence of my mother, it was: Drop the wishful thinking! No higher meanings! No mysterious patterns! And back again: Had we brought this on ourselves? Was she taken away because we didn’t deserve her? Once a thing happens to you, you become the kind of person that things happen to.

“I can’t explain it, Eve. I don’t know what it’s about or how it affects anything else in my life. All I know is, my faith is something essential to me. It’s in a box over here”—with both hands she set down her invisible box—“and I need it. Selfishly, for myself.”

“Well!” I said. “I can’t argue with that.”

She smiled at me. “Maddy found some solace in it.”

The beating started up again, gong-like in my ears. “How do you know?”

“She came to church with us. It meant something to her.”

“Of course it meant something to her. She liked going out with you and Dad.”

“I’m so glad.”

My eyes settled on the ridges and gullies of my mother’s hands curved around her cup. Eventually age brings all the bones to the surface. “It was the music, Mom. Maddy loved the music. Did you notice she only went to church when there was a concert?”

She shook her head, keeping her body unnaturally still.

“Maddy had her own mind. But she liked to please. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone. Just don’t tell me you know what she was thinking. Do you remember that time we stayed overnight and you were talking to Maddy about God?”

Rose nodded vaguely. Maddy had been six. From the landing I’d listened to my child’s reedy voice and my mother’s resonant one singing “All Through the Night,” a lullaby I too had been raised on. I heard Rose explain that she loved Maddy and so did God, and He would watch over her while she slept.

“Mom . . .” Maddy said to me afterward, “what happens if you don’t like God?”