Sometimes, in the years that followed, someone would bring up the Schiavo case in the service of some other cause—disability rights, euthanasia, abortion, even animal rights—and Janine had the strange feeling that she, in her years of praying and wondering, had come to an understanding that others had missed. They—the fighters on both sides—were looking for something that was recognizable, something that looked like them, as if it was some kind of test Terri could pass. Could she feel? Could she hear? Could she respond? Not long after that, the poems started. The first one was about the brain’s experience of electrotherapy, the influence of a monstrous medicine on the slow, godly letting go of neurons, the holy withering of synapses.

A terrified sadness. That was how one of the police officers described the look on Terri’s face before she died. It was the best description Janine could think of for her own helpless imaginings of the things that might or might not happen to the people she loved best. Chrissy was now a high school junior, and Beth was studying meteorology at the community college. Both girls had hundreds of friends on Facebook (Janine was one of them), but seemed to spend their time exclusively with on-and-off boyfriends whom Janine suspected, in her worst moments, of murderous impulses.

She found that the poems helped, like a drug that does not eliminate pain but allows a coexistence with it. And like a drug it only worked to the extent that she could look forward to writing another one. If she had been truly honest with Rick, she would have said that she thought she’d developed an addiction to writing the poems, and she was afraid that she might run out.

Despite her headache, Janine was the first to arrive Monday morning to workshop, in a musty, wood-paneled room with two smallish windows overlooking the gulf. It had been furnished with a long antique table and mismatched chairs. Janine chose the one closest to what she assumed would be the head of the table, then switched for a more comfortable, padded chair. She hadn’t seen Lorraine at breakfast. Concerned about things she might have said—exuberance brought on by too much punch—she had avoided the other students she knew were poets, forking dry eggs and greasy hash browns into her mouth while examining the poems they had to discuss.

Right at ten, the room began to fill with the other poets, carrying their lucky coffee mugs, their day planners, their laptops and carefully tabbed binders. Janine had only a spiral notebook, two pencils, and the packet they’d passed out at the reception. She smiled at each new student, said hello, and ruffled the edges of the packet with her fingers to soothe her nervousness.

It was 10:05. It was 10:10.