“They told me if I’m good I’ll go to heaven.”

“What do you think about that?”

She paused for a long time, narrowing her eyes at the little white cloud. Finally she said, “If we just go to heaven, why are people so sad when someone dies? What do you think?”

“Well,” I said, feeling strangely excited by the conversation. I didn’t have to answer to this little girl’s parents. I could tell her whatever I wanted. I could tell her the truth. I said, “I don’t know. It’s not something we can research. No one can come back from the dead and tell us what it was like, so I just don’t know.”

“But,” she said, “what’s going to happen?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “Think back before you were born. What do you remember?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t know what will happen when we die, but I think it might be nothing, just like before we were born.”

“I don’t want it to be nothing,” the girl said quietly.

I thought about telling her, We must face all of life’s unknowns with courage. I felt like telling her, Within nothing there is no fear, no sadness. I felt like telling her, That’s why you have to appreciate what you have now.

Instead, I just said, “I know,” daring to give her a little pat on her bare belly. “I know.”

28

CARLOW’S STUDIO WAS COMPLETELY EMPTY SAVE FOR A wooden table and one old rolling chair, the stuffing peeking out of a rip along the seam. The walls were white, with big windows on opposite sides, looking out on a path that cut through the trees and down to the ocean. The floorboards were painted white too, giving the whole space the impression of a blank canvas. In one corner a ladder stretched up to the wooden beams that cut across the vaulted ceiling.

“I expected more . . . paintings,” I said.

The table had a gridded cutting mat and a stray X-Acto knife, but otherwise the space was void of art supplies as far as I could tell. There were drawers under the table; I guess he kept his paints in there.

“I keep most of the ones I don’t sell back in the city. I have a few downstairs I can show you. I don’t like to be surrounded by my old work.”

I stepped into the middle of the room. The windows that faced away from the ocean showed an expanse of lawn and then a large Edwardian house, which the studio had probably belonged to at one time. Carlow was standing by the door. The sun was setting outside and he fiddled with the lights so a bright bulb lit up over my head. He was looking at me, his face tilted a little in contemplation. I felt uncomfortable, unsure why I was in that empty room.