The reason it looks like I’m lying on a painting is because I’m on top of a table that Judy had painted with a giant bird a month before I was born: by happy coincidence, I happen to fit perfectly between its wings. I didn’t see that table again until I visited Deb in Arizona, where I discovered it in her kitchen. When I left her house two weeks later, which was thirteen days longer than I’d been planning to stay, Deb sent the table home with me. She said she’d always thought of herself as its temporary guardian. All I have to do if I ever need her, she says, is knock on that table—that and pick up the phone—and she’ll be there. I believe her. It turns out that being there, historically not my strong suit, is something Deb is very good at.

DEBORAH BRODSKY: I don’t know whether it was the arrival of that beautiful baby, but suddenly everything seemed fragile. Things had stopped being good between Cass and Leon. First he’d moved out and come back, and then she had, and now they were together again but were both sleeping around. If anyone had asked, I would have said that all was well with me and Judy, but looking back, I think Samantha’s arrival kept us together a year longer than we would have lasted otherwise, just because we were both so in love with being her aunts. Once that was gone—well, we broke up about two weeks after Lilly moved out, but that’s getting ahead of things.

It was five or six days after Lilly had come home from the hospital. When I got back late from a reading, taped to my door was a note: I’m bleeding. The baby’s asleep. Could you bring Samantha up to your apartment and please look after her until I get back from the hospital? Lilly’s handwriting had always been impeccable, but here it was shaky and jumbled and the look of it, together with the words—all I can say is, in that moment, the world contracted into an incredibly small space.

I couldn’t have stared at the note for more than half a second, but that was all it took. Samantha needed a mother. Maybe just for a night, maybe for longer—maybe a lifetime—but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t even a question. And thank goodness, before six the next morning Lilly knocked on my door. She’d woken up at midnight with terrible cramps and bleeding. She hadn’t known what to do, hadn’t been sure she was strong enough to carry the baby up the stairs. So she’d left Samantha sleeping peacefully and stumbled out into the night to find a cab. By the time she’d gotten to Gouverneur, she was terrified by what she’d done, but it was too late.