“I don’t always find the best words.” Antonio consulted the menu, though we never ate on these occasions, and tapped the table with it. “I don’t know. Maybe, as you say, she didn’t want me to feel sorry for her.”

I had begun to appreciate Maddy’s refusal to do Antonio’s bidding, her courage in not letting him know she was ill. Well, are you going to tell your family about me?? It was her bargaining card. I decided her secrecy was a character strength, one that reflected well on how I had raised her.

“At the beginning, she was pretty open about what was happening. But it was so long and so—unrelenting. I guess there came a time when talking didn’t help. She used to cry in the shower.”

Blinking, he took this in.

“Toward the end she didn’t want to see her friends. Or even Jack. She sent them away. But before that, all she really wanted to do was listen to music and make her animation.”

“She got comfort from that?”

It was my turn to study Antonio until he shifted in his chair and looked away. Without a word, I unzipped my bag and removed my laptop. I set it on the table, inserted the memory stick, opened “final final final,” positioned the screen between us, and pressed play.

Maddy gazed out, in the presence of both of us at last. Our eyes briefly met, and returned to our daughter. Antonio’s eyes were fixed to the screen as Maddy’s had been during the march. Slowly her eyelids closed and the blanks appeared on her head, joining and spreading to consume all of the earth’s riches, and be consumed in turn by the seas, while her face underwent its terrible changes. I pressed stop. Antonio looked up. “Is that the end?”

I nodded, closing the file into its folder. I had left it to providence or instinct or the wisdom of the moment to decide whether to show him the other ending. “It was played after the speeches during the march. Maddy was weak by then, but she got to see it on TV. The response was amazing. The applause. You should have seen her face. You should see your face.”

His voice was muffled. “I’m knocked over. I’m so impressed. I wish—”

“Don’t wish.”

“She was courageous,” he said simply.

“They want to use it again, you know, for the campaign. They’re asking me to release it. I might not. I might want to keep it private.”

“Would Maddy want you to?”

“How do I know!” After a minute, I said: “It’s complicated. Maybe the fact is, if she can’t be here, I want it all to happen.”

“What?”

“Catastrophe. Cities underwater. Everything destroyed.” He was silent. “I don’t really mean that.”

“Don’t you?”

“Only a little. Sometimes.”