“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Denis the First of Portugal was known as the Poet King. He wrote love poems in the troubadour tradition, the Cantigas de Amigo. They’re amazing.”

I hadn’t known that either.

I spoke with Boone a couple of times, brief phone conversations to ask how Viridian was doing. There hadn’t been much to say, besides sorry. I understood that his position was difficult, as Viridian had been a difficult kind of mother. How much was he meant to be responsible for her, how much was he meant to feel?

And no one could say what might happen to her. While she was not expected to recover, to open her eyes and come back to the world, it could not be entirely ruled out. Nor could anyone say how long she might go on exactly as she was, whether she would die tomorrow or linger for years, or what one might decently wish for her.

“There are money issues,” Boone said, during one of our calls. “She’ll qualify for Medi-Cal. But her house is an asset, it’ll have to be sold. Ed says there’s a process for it.”

“You’re selling it?”

“It’ll be a teardown. A buyer’s going to want the property, not that barn of a house.”

“But she’d hate that.” What I meant was, I would hate it.

“I’m not sure that matters anymore.”

After we hung up, I tried to think it through. What would be best, what might be possible.

I went round and round and got nowhere.

Of course, different people—Oscar, Boone, Sacha, Ed—had all made a search for the Mathias poems by now. They weren’t in any obvious place. They weren’t in any nonobvious place. Not in her office files, nor in among the cookbooks, or under the bed. There was no secret drawer, no key to an unknown safe deposit box. At least, none that anyone could find. Maybe she’d destroyed them, some final act of spite toward the poet who had always overshadowed her. We didn’t want to think it, but we had to give the idea room.

“No,” Oscar said. “She wouldn’t. Even if she wanted to. She’d hang on to them like an ace up her sleeve. She’d have some plan in mind. Unfortunately, her plan didn’t allow for incapacitation.”

We were at Viridian’s house. Oscar needed to retrieve more items of his wardrobe. He was still living here, technically, rather than my mom’s, and he’d asked if I could drive him to Fairfax and back again. I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, except that I didn’t want to talk to him. I said I needed to give the garden some attention, he could wait while I did.

He agreed, and we set off for Viridian’s. “So what do you think—” he began, almost as soon as we were out of the driveway.

“Honestly, I try not to think about the two of you.”

“Come on, Carla. Try and get on the happy train.”