“Well, it certainly wasn’t before,” said Jane, marching toward the dining room and the boxes of photographs. “And we have a snapshot of you and a glass, taken in Cora’s kitchen. It’s black and white, so if you want to say it’s orange juice, great. But you’re mixing up life with pictures again.”

Polly thought of all the things she wished she could remember from photographs, all the photographs she wished existed. She’d like photographs of herself being hugged by any number of dead people: Frank and Evie, Papa and Dee, boys dead in the first AIDS rampage when she worked in New York. She’d like anything from the year 1968, when her world blew up. She’d like photos of the casual lovers of her youth, to see why she’d done such things; she’d like a photo of herself in a bikini in approximately 1986, to see why they’d done such things; she’d like the look on Ned’s face the first time he’d entered her; she’d like a photo of Sam or Helen, nursing.

If Jane could have anything, Polly guessed it would be one true memory of her mother Asta’s face. Young, in the moment, no sense of doom. Maybe this was what they were arguing about, the idea that Polly could remember the dead and her mother could not.

“I’m not lying.”

“I never claimed it was a lie. I know you believe it.”

Polly stomped upstairs with a pile of Drake files. Her small office was at the head of the stairs, looking over the yard. This was the room, walls currently covered with notes and postcard images, pinned like ugly butterflies, that she would need to clean for Maude. Now she looked out the window to see Merle studying the perimeter fence, tugging on boards and testing looseness, peering up into the fruit trees to see if they needed pruning. He seemed to be counting her tomato plants, and he poked at the bean trellis to see if it was solid.

Merle looked up and waved to Polly in the window, Mr. Happy. Everyone was so fucking cheery with her.

Ned was with Harry and Drake on the river again that Sunday afternoon, and Jane and Polly left Merle with the kids while they joined Nora and Josie and dozens of others in searching assigned stretches of riverbank. They thrashed through willow thickets and mosquito bogs; they were nearly charged by a bull, nearly eaten by an unnaturally vicious retriever. Nora, a filmy blonde who ran marathons, cut her ankle on barbed wire and promised to give herself a tetanus shot. She was a pediatrician, back to working mornings after her third child—Connie was her sitter—and this wasn’t her idea of a break. As they walked, she gave them a graphic description of just how one died from tetanus, something she’d seen as a resident.