And because you can’t make this shit up, it was that same night that the upstate winter wind improbably and nearly impossibly blew open the window on the duck house, and the raccoon, who swung by every night like a watchman with his lantern, sniffing at the cracks where the Mars light of the warming bulb shone through, balancing on the sill to check the window against its sturdy latch, on this one particular night, with its stillness and bitter cold and sudden gusts of wind, the window broke open, carrying the latch and two screws with it, and the raccoon climbed in and killed the ducks, even long-term Ira, who had survived other various lesser encroachments, but this time, no. This time they were helpless, tucked into the warm red bordello of the shed.

The next morning when M. went down to let them out he found the carnage, and later he told me about cleaning it up, the crime scene, and how he came across the little homespun brown female who had burrowed down under the straw and survived. The raccoon, like Richard Speck, had lost count somewhere along the way.

It was freezing in the bedroom and the day wouldn’t come but who wanted it to anyway, the office building still and dark, its wastebaskets empty, Union Square for two hours completely silent and then the loud backing-up beeping of the first truck. When it seemed like I could, I went out to the living room in my coat, and when Kathy opened her eyes she didn’t know what to think.

I’m just here to sit with you and have my morning tea.

“Oh, good,” she whispers politely.

After an hour or so Emma comes over too and we drink tea and coffee and talk quietly while Kathy listens, or doesn’t listen. She is gazing beyond us, mostly, her hands open on the bed, like the little boy in the long-ago photograph, staring through the leather ball placed before him. At one point, Emma looks at me and mouths something.

She’s so beautiful.

And it was true—she didn’t bother with the wig because it was us, and that made her even more starkly gorgeous; her face was luminous again, the cheeks washed with pink, the eyes bright, the lips a dusky rose.

The hospice nurse shows up midmorning, looking harried and calm at the same time. We trade places with Daisy, who comes out of the kitchen to help take the vitals. She has poured tea for the nurse, and it’s waiting on the table along with a plate of brownies someone brought the night before. Emma and I listen and stare at each other until the nurse returns.

How long do we think she has? I ask in a whisper.

About five minutes, the nurse answers in her regular voice.