“Yeah. You’re right.” She sobered up fast. “I do know. And guess what?” She shot him a glance. “You don’t. You don’t know the first thing about me and all the shits I’ve come across when least expecting it.”

“Which is why you’re not married or close to anyone,” he said.

“Which is why we’re changing the subject. And you’re one to talk, by the way.” She turned the radio up loud as rain beat the top of her personal car.

Hammer was watching the rain out the window of her husband’s room in SICU, while Randy and Jude sat stiffly in chairs by the bed, staring at monitors, watching every fluctuation in pulse and oxygen intake. The stench got worse every hour, and Seth’s moments of consciousness were like weightless airborne seeds that seemed neither to go anywhere nor to land. He drifted and his family could not tell whether he had any awareness of their presence and devotion. For his sons, this was especially bitter. This was more of the same. Their father did not acknowledge them.

Rain streaked glass and turned the world gray and watery as Hammer stood in the same position she had maintained for most of the morning. Arms crossed, she leaned her forehead against the window, sometimes thinking, sometimes not, and praying. Her divine communications were not entirely for her husband. Hammer was more worried about herself, in truth. She knew she had reached a crossroads and something new was meant for her, something more demanding that she might never do with Seth weighing her down, as he had all these years. Her children were gone. She would be alone soon. She needed no specialist to tell her this as she watched the continuing ravenous ingestion of her husband’s body.

Whatever you want, I’ll do, she told the Almighty. I don’t care what. Why does it matter, really, anyway? Certainly, I’m not much of a wife. I would be the first to confess that I haven’t been much in that department. Probably not been much of a mother, either. So I’d like to make it up to everyone out there, okay? Just tell me what.

The Almighty, who actually spent more time with Hammer and was more related to her than she knew, was pleased to hear her say this, for the Almighty had a rather big plan in store for this special recruit. Not now, but later, when it was time. Hammer would see. It was going to prove rather astonishing, if the Almighty didn’t say so Its-Almighty-self. As this exchange went on, Randy and Jude fixed their eyes on their mother for the first time that day, it seemed. They saw her head against the glass, and how still she had gotten for one who generally never stopped pacing. Overwhelmed with the profound love and respect they felt for her, they both got up at once. They came up from behind and arms went around her.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Randy sweetly said.