On the fifth of June, Alice walked along the neighborhood’s narrow paved paths to Einar’s, where the door was never locked. She went through the yard and into the kitchen, and here she found the invalid with a schnapps and a cheroot. The invalid appeared anxious and apathetic, and Alice met him with warm thin hands and a steady gaze. Then they smoked together, while Alice told him how to deal with a serious illness. Her father had been a dentist and there was nothing to be done but take things as they came, yet Einar had a faraway look in his eyes. He stared at the birdfeeder outside the window and said, “When Mother died, a robin appeared at the feeder. It kept coming back that entire winter. It was Mother who was​ 84visiting me.” That same evening, Alice rang around and said she feared that Einar’s cancer had metastasized to the brain.

The tenth of June, Einar went to a doctor’s appointment with his sister to discuss treatment options. It was in the morning, and what the doctor said was that as long as he drank schnapps, they couldn’t treat him. In the evening Alice called everyone and said that the sister had found empty schnapps bottles and flattened boxes of wine in the invalid’s home, but not much in the way of food. “You can’t be cured if you don’t eat,” Alice explained, that’s what her father had always said. That’s also what she’d always said herself, back when her son was little. “You’ve got to have something to bring to the fight.”