Polly’s remaining independent source of income came from vetting scripts for Drake Aasgard, an actor she’d known since he was a teenager. Drake understood what had happened—Ned had been at his cabin when Polly went flying over the Bentley in March—and his agenda was so wayward that Polly could operate with little harm. He overpaid her to read and assess, to issue simple, graceful kiss-offs—this was sometimes a challenge now, given her damaged impulse control—to the scripts and novels his heartbroken agent still sent to Montana. Jane was snooty about the job, but trying to describe each script or novel plot was a good way for Polly to work toward making sense again. Drake, who hadn’t filmed anything in four years, had no real intention of working soon, but he checked the notes before they went out.

The world became terribly fragile; the center, the imperfect brain Polly had been fond of, had fallen apart. The bleaks, short but sharp, swept over her after every error in judgment or memory, and when she sensed pity, she blew up in a nasty stew of confusion and panic. Polly felt sure she would need a minder forever, she would wear Ned out and he would leave, she would now be a horrible mother. What would Helen and Sam remember out of this mess?

You’ll be fine, said Ned. We’ll be fine. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand her fear, and he knew having Jane around opened this question up like a wound. Polly had always known she was lucky to have Jane, but the bad mothers, cruel mothers, absent mothers, rang in Polly’s head. She still loved the feel of Jane’s fingers on the good side of her skull, fluffing her fresh-cropped hair, stroking her cheek.

Good mothers, good mothers were rarities, the center of everything.

On that Sunday morning, Polly had things to do, errants, most having to do with the looming arrival of Maude Swanberg, great-aunt, for whom they’d planned a large birthday party on July 5. These plans were now complicated by Ariel Delgado’s accident—it was hard to throw a party for a hundred people when someone you loved was probably floating facedown in the river. It was almost equally hard not to have a birthday party for a woman turning ninety. “What if they find her right away?” asked Maude, her voice reedy on the phone.

“Fifty people, not a hundred,” said Jane, who was depressed by the idea that Polly’s younger brothers and sister couldn’t come—they’d used their time off helping after the accident that spring. “The ones you truly care about. Do you want to come later, when we can do it right?”