It took three days to set everything up. We were meeting at Ed’s law firm in the city. I hadn’t said anything to Oscar or my mother, in case nothing came of it. And maybe because they’d kept a few secrets of their own from me lately.

I picked up Sacha on the way. She asked me if I was nervous about the meeting and I said, Not so much about that, but . . . She reached across the front seat and squeezed my hand.

The care center was sunny and institutionally pleasant, meaning that attention had been given to making the public spaces welcoming, with plants and cheerful wall art and good furniture. Once you reached the patient rooms, there was a more mechanical look to everything. Carts and wheelchairs and electrically powered beds. Machines for assisting with movement, for providing treatments, for measuring medical deficits. I guess I’d thought Viridian would have her own room, perhaps a window with a view. Things that wouldn’t matter much if you needed to be here in the first place.

Viridian was in the bed closest to the door, and a curtain was drawn around the other bed, the unseen one next to the window. The blinds were closed and the light in the room was dim. Sacha reached for Viridian’s hand. The hand appeared to be weightless, curled in on itself, a bundle of twigs.

“Hi Virdie. It’s Sacha. Carla’s here to see you, too.”

It was my turn. I came closer. Her face had already changed so much. I concentrated instead on the rise and fall of her breathing, thin and regular.

What if the body is a house? Who lives within?

“I’m going to tell them. I’m thinking you’d want me to.”

I’d imagined I’d have more to say, but that was it. We only stayed for a little while. When we were in the truck again on the way to the city, Sacha said, “They say people can still hear. I don’t know how they know that.”

“How’s Anders?” I asked, for the sake of making conversation.

“He’s fine. He’s in Japan doing research on animistic folk tales. He’s trying to branch out a little.” She saw me looking at her. “Anyway, it’s good to take a break now and then.”

Ed’s law office was in a converted warehouse in China Basin. “Artsy but inconvenient,” as Sacha said. It took us forever to find it, long enough at least for my hands to start sweating and my stomach to get seasick. “Now I am nervous,” I announced. “Is this even going to work?”