“Well, it’s over,” Hook said. “This part is over.”

Bobby nodded. “It’s over.”

Jenny turned her head away from Hook’s hand. “I don’t believe any of this,” she said. “I don’t believe this is happening.”

From the doorway Aunt Marian intoned: “The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

Hook looked at his aunt, his father’s sister, rangy like most of the Hooks, but heavy now after all her years in the kitchen, nibbling, testing, cleaning up leftovers, a good kind proper Christian lady on the outside, yet all saddle-leather toughness underneath, tough enough to have kept her Arnie working all this time against all his better instincts, and tough enough to have stepped in and saved them all seven years before, when Hook’s Kate had lost her life in the head-on crash near Alton and Hook for almost a year afterwards had spent his days like a man wandering in a battlefield searching for a death of his own. This same morning he had watched Marian salt her coffee and place the sugar in the refrigerator, and later he had seen her standing in the pantry shaking with grief, yet here she was now, so quick and easy with the mindless platitude. She was not a simple woman.

“I’m not going in the living room,” Jenny said now. “I’m staying right here.”

Her eyes filling, Marian looked at Hook. “Tell her, David. Tell her she can’t. She has to come out.”

Hook got up and put his arm around his aunt, patted her beefy shoulder. “You cover for us for a while, okay? You and Arnie.”

“You’re not coming out either? But you have to, David. You just have to. For a while anyway. A few minutes.”

“Maybe later.”

Uncle Arnie had come to the door now too. “Let ’em do what they want,” he told his wife. “Me and you can handle it. All it takes is sittin’.” Small and light for a Swede, Arnie Bergman at sixty was considerably outweighed by his wife, and usually out-maneuvered and out-opinioned too, but every now and then, when he cared, he would prevail. He prevailed now.

Aunt Marian moved toward the door. “All right. It’s up to you, David. But try to come out, will you? They’ll expect you to.”

Hook would not commit himself. “For now, I’m going to stay back here with the kids, Marian.”

But Jenny did not want that either. “Dad, I just want to be alone now. I just want to lie here alone. I’ll be okay.”

Hook touched her head again, patted her. Why could he not keep his hands off them? he wondered. They were here. They were right here, living. He could see them. “Sure, honey,” he said. “Of course.”

He turned to Bobby. “You want to go out? Walk a while?”

The boy nodded.