“Tell your brother that used is not a good choice for copiers,” Marianne said. She’d been talking to Eric in a quiet, firm voice, the way she used to imagine herself talking to the chain-smoking Philippe. Opening the side door, she wrenched out a copy of Galway Kinnell’s “Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock,” pleated into the shape of a fan, and tossed it onto the floor. “You have to ask yourself, why did someone get rid of a perfectly good copier?”

Eric shifted in his chair but did not open his eyes, and Marianne remembered, from grad school, that he could sleep just about anywhere, on subway benches or in movie theaters, like an old man or a homeless person.

“The answer is, they wouldn’t,” Marianne said, banging each drawer and door shut a final time. Treating the machine roughly seemed to improve its performance. “This is not a perfectly good copier. I’d be better off copying this by hand, like a monk. I’d be better off photographing the pages and developing the prints in a darkroom.”

Opening a writing school turned out to be more expensive than Mark and Eric reckoned, she’d learned in these last few weeks. The city had its hand out, demanding various fees, applications that required lawyers, and inspections they never passed on the first go. Converting the kitchen into something a caterer could use hadn’t been cheap, nor had the roof repairs, the painting, the landscaping, or the housekeeping services. Marianne told them not to worry, quoting Frances—it was remarkable and important, this work they were doing—but Eric and Mark felt it was better to protect their aunt from the extra expense. Shield her, was the phrase Mark used. In the end, Mark had used his connections to secure venture capital, which provided for the copier and office equipment and unexpected bills. Before the venture capital arrived, Marianne had taken on the reading of the next batch of applications alone while Eric supplemented the school’s income with odd jobs, offering online critiques of college application essays and handling the Twitter accounts for several Mars brand candies. “It’ll come back to you a thousand percent,” Mark had assured them both, when Marianne complained.

“Who knows what he even meant by that,” Marianne muttered. “Effort? Karma? I don’t know what your brother got us into, Eric.”

“Mfff,” said Eric, shutting his eyes more tightly. It embarrassed Marianne to think now of all the ways she’d fantasized about his return: jumping into his arms; running into the shallow waves of the gulf; tumbling, salty-skinned, into bed in Marianne’s shade-drawn room. None of those active, romantic, cinematic sequences had come true, not so far—they’d been too busy, too tense, she told herself. Best to wait until these twelve days were done, then they could start over. Twelve days! It would go by in no time.