“Margot.” Lukas sounded, now, like Maman always had when Margot had spent too many hours up at her desk when she should have been sleeping or eating or stitching or knitting or running about with other girls her age. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “You are not going out with such a fever. Drink something. Rest. This is no time to have you fainting from exhaustion or dehydration. I am going to need you, ma bichette. I can make the decisions about the wake and the burial, but I will need you to sort through the rest with me.”

Wake. Burial. Those words weren’t right either, not for Maman. The words for Maman ought to have been ones like smile and laugh and chide and worry. Always worry—worry for Margot, for Lukas, for Willa, for little Zurie. Worry for money and savings and the future. Worry for Gregory from the park and the other secretaries in the office and Mrs. Parsons from the flat two down from theirs. Worry for everyone but herself.

She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be.

Lukas brushed a lock of hair away from the side of Margot’s face. “Do you hear me, Margot? I know it is louder within your head than outside of it right now, but I need you to hear me.”

Her eyes hurt. Burned. For all their different ways, he did know her. Always had. She forced her head to dip down, to rise again.

“All right.” He pressed another kiss to her forehead and levered himself back up. “Dot will stay with you. I will come back when I can.”

He slid out of her central vision, out of her peripheral, out of her hearing with a click of the 3E door. Three of six. Eighteen.

Eighteen.

Her eyes slid shut again, blocking out the window and the raindrops clinging to it and the clouds on the horizon and the sun chasing them away. Blocking out the faded wallpaper on the walls and the chipping paint on the sill and the radiator to the left of her chair. She could feel the heat coming off it, but still it was cold.

What was eighteen? The door, but no. That wasn’t it. That was just today. Eighteen was more than just today. Eighteen was . . . Spain. Bilbao. Erri Barro. Wolfram. Anthrax.

She went even colder. Eighteen.

“Here.”

Margo raised her eyelids again, though it took three seconds when it should have taken a third of one. A cup steamed in front of her, held in a familiar hand wearing a familiar sleeve of a shirt with 10,360 stitches. Give or take twenty.

“Tea. With honey. It’ll soothe your throat.”

Eighteen.