“Nice,” Steven says, shaking the last teaspoon of milk in the carton. He seems surprised when I don’t come back with a response, then sees the latest addition to my wardrobe. “You got the new model! Awesome. Julia has one too, except hers is purple with silver stars. Just got it today. She showed me when I was walking home from the bus.”

I don’t hate my son. I don’t hate my son. I don’t hate my son.

Except right now I do, a little bit.

“Read the letter, Jean,” Patrick says.

President Myers was on television again today. He’s always on television, it seems, always trumpeting a new plan to turn the country around, constantly telling us how much better off we are. The economy’s up—but not in our household, as the broken air-conditioning reminds me; unemployment is down—as long as you don’t count the seventy million women who lost their jobs. Everything’s great and everything’s fine.

Everything wasn’t so fine today as he fielded questions from the press.

“We’ll find someone,” he said. “Whatever it takes, we’ll find someone to cure my only brother.”

Like hell you will, I thought. The same slight smile on Anna Myers’ lips told me she thought it, too. Good for you, sister.

Even if I agreed, there were no guarantees of success. Wernicke’s aphasia is a tricky devil. Maybe I’d have a chance if I could make sure Lin Kwan was actually on the team, and not just the backup Reverend Carl mentioned. Even better, Lin and Lorenzo.

But I don’t want to think about Lorenzo just now. I don’t like to think about him when Patrick is around.

“You going to open it?” Patrick says.

I slide a nail under the flap of the envelope. Inside is a single trifold sheet of bond paper, off-white letterhead. It’s addressed to me, Dr. Jean McClellan. So I’m back to “Dr.” for the time being.

The body of the letter is one sentence long.

“Well?” Patrick asks the question, but his eyes tell me he already knows what the president has to say.

“Hang on.”

He gets another beer from the fridge but doesn’t drink it with the same celebratory mood as he did the first bottle. This one is medicinal, liquid anesthesia to get him through the wait while I remove myself from the kitchen with my yet-unvoiced decision. Maybe he expected me to do backflips on the tile. I don’t know.

Anyway, it’s too hot in here to think. The back garden, under Mrs. Ray’s magnolia, is better.

Please call me with your price, the president says. It’s rather pleasant to see that the bastard is begging.