“Gary doesn’t mind?”

“Of course not. He’d do anything for you.”

“He’d do anything for you, too.”

“I know. But maybe it’s time we let each other go.” I think, but don’t say, that maybe he’d be happier with the girlfriend whose name I don’t even know.

“He doesn’t love her.”

I turn to her. “He told you?”

She nods. “He came yesterday, by himself.”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“He doesn’t tell you a lot of things.” I stare at her as she closes her eyes. “He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not ready yet. And he doesn’t think Teddy is ready, either.” She takes my hand and holds it. “I told you long ago that I was happy to be wrong about you and Gary, and I was wrong. Loss has made you afraid of life, but you have to stay open. Porous. You have to let all the available light—all the tiny shards of joy—still flow through you.” She closes her eyes. “Who knows what beauty the rest of the way will bring.”

Glenn leans her head back, lets out a long slow sigh. “I wish I’d had children. I wish I hadn’t lost two husbands. I wish . . .” Her voice trails off until it is just breath. There is a long silence when we say nothing, when the enormity of where we are and how surreal it is to know that she will soon be gone hangs in the air—taken from the world any day as if by the rapture, with those of us left behind gaping in grief. “I wish,” she whispers, reaching out for Lucy, “I could see how all of this turns out.”

Spotlight

We dress, Gary and I, in our casual best—he in the khakis and button-down chambray shirt he hates, which is what he’s forced to wear to work now after a new Dockers Dude dress code was announced—I in an obligatory black Eileen Fisher pantsuit, either from 2006 or 2016, impossible to date, since each piece is so minimal it can’t possibly ever be in style or out of style.

Teddy has stayed at school, where he’ll be forced to change into whatever costume they’ve decided to dress the kids in for whatever skits they’re putting on. I’m done asking. After last night when I shamed myself with my questions, digging around for a crime before it happened, I’m trying to go with the flow. To let go of my vine of anxiety and fear and just let things happen.

It isn’t going well. My decision to let go has not left me awash in a sense of calm. Internally I’m full of fear and dread, certain that the seeming quiet from Grace—and the fact that there has not been a third pooping incident yet—is a sense of false calm. Don’t bad things happen in threes? Aren’t we due for the Secret Pooper to make his appearance again—and, if so, what better time than tonight, when there will be a captive audience of parents to shock and repulse?