Vanessa was placed in the intensive care unit after the surgery. Arch was present when she regained consciousness. She seemed too heavily medicated to understand what had happened. And she kept asking for the baby; the drugs made her forget. Or maybe she just kept hoping the death of her daughter had been a dream.

Arch went back and forth from sitting with Vanessa to wandering up and down the hallways, his expression inscrutable. Maybe he had forgotten what it meant to feel powerless. Maybe he’d never really known.

With a bit of persuasion from Averett, Arch roused himself from the darkness of his guilt and grief by deciding that the brave thing to do was to soldier on for the sake of the city. Averett spun the story with skill. The news media played along. The Greene campaign expressed sympathy. And so Arch and Vanessa’s tragedy only enhanced his prospects.

Vanessa went home after two days. She could barely walk to the bathroom. Without Arch’s knowledge, Averett had him photographed through the door, sitting by Vanessa’s bedside, holding her hand while she slept. Averett leaked the photo and feigned righteous fury in a statement to the press at the outrageous invasion of privacy. Every outlet ran the picture. When Arch saw the photograph in the newspaper, he shook his head.

“Vanessa’s not going to like this,” he told me.

“Too late now,” I said.

“I had nothing to do with it, you know.”

I didn’t argue. I had learned by then how men in Arch’s position depend on people like Averett to anticipate their less honorable wishes and needs and fulfill them without prompting.

Nancy Haltom flew in from Naples. At some point, I ended up alone with her, sitting on the couch near the windows facing out to the rose garden, where Jim could be seen walking around with Dolly. Nancy leaned back and rested her head on the cushion so that her hair swept across it, her neck lengthened, and the falling light caught her face just so. In that moment of weary grief, the bitterness fell away from her expression.

“She’s a pretty girl,” Nancy said, gazing out the window. “Favors her mother.”

“She certainly does.”

“Is that hard for you? To see your mother’s eyes and nose and mouth in that precious little face?”

“I don’t see her as often as I’d like,” I said. “The last time before today was at her birthday party. I wasn’t going to go, but Arch and Vanessa insisted.”

“And how did that go?”

“Fine, I guess.”