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the unwritten purpose, Evelyn believed, of making her feel simple, unsophisticated, less than. Benji, on the other hand, had given her nothing, his usual gift for any giving occasion, and Evelyn couldn’t help wondering (more than once while the morning coffee brewed) whether it was worse to be forgotten or to be so profoundly unknown. She put a kettle on the stove for Henry’s tea—the tea, the chair, the music, all recommended by her piled books—and raided the refrigerator for something to paint. She found a head of Boston lettuce, a few white-tipped radishes, a lemon she decided to halve, and carried what would soon become the day’s composition into her studio. Otherwise known as the mudroom off the kitchen.
    With the tea steeped, she brought a mug to Henry and sat beside him, sipping her first cup of coffee. In these quiet hours, they rarely spoke. Speaking, she found, tended to muddy the waters that settled near dawn. A half hour later, before Henry finally dozed off, Evelyn took him by the hand and, with the same assurances she used to whisper to the children after bad dreams shook them, led him back to bed. You’re fine, you’re fine. I’m right here. Now go to sleep. She pulled the covers up to Henry’s waist, drew the curtains, and was halfway out the door when she remembered the ring in her pocket. A strip of light from the hallway fell across her husband’s face as she crept back to the bed, but he was already asleep. She had no trouble slipping the heavy gold band onto his finger, where it belonged.
    In some people’s books—Dr. Bell’s, for instance, or Claudia’s—Evelyn was a fool for not hiring a night nurse to supplement Sandra’s daytime visits. Worse than a fool, in her daughter’s estimation. Irresponsible. “You’re putting Daddy’s health in jeopardy,” the lecture went, “not to mention your own. You can’t stand guard twenty-four hours a day. I don’t care what you say: you can’t get by on four hours of sleep. You’re wearing yourself out. And then we’re going to have two sick parents to deal with. I know you think you’re being selfless in all of this, in putting Daddy’s needs before your own, but Daddy’s not getting the care he deserves, and neither are you. It’s actually very selfish.”
    Evelyn hadn’t the heart or, frankly, the stomach to follow Claudia’s logic, the bread crumb trails whereby every fault led more or less directly to her. And besides, Evelyn didn’t agree. She didn’t agree that a stranger could do better by Henry. They were lucky— she was lucky—to have Sandra, yes, but a second aide at this point would have created more problems than it solved. First, Henry wouldn’t accept it. He grew more suspicious, more paranoid of people he’d known for years, most recently accusing Chip Hanehan, their legally blind neighbor of thirty years, of various and random acts of thievery; how could he be expected to open his arms to a complete stranger? Second, another nurse wouldn’t come free, and though they weren’t exactly in financial jeopardy, Benjamin required more pocket money than most forty-year-olds, and Evelyn couldn’t, wouldn’t, no matter how many times Henry called her an enabler , let her son starve.
    Claudia thought otherwise. But what task did Evelyn have, what was there to safeguard, what was there to hold together, but this ? Her family ? She painted, and painting was nice, but it wasn’t her work. Not in the way writing was Henry’s or architecture Claudia’s. They may have thought she’d done a mediocre job (if they thought at all about the job she’d done), but she’d go to the grave swearing she couldn’t have done better. Let them say what they would. In the meantime, she liked retiring to her “studio” after tucking Henry into bed, where she dabbed away at her lettuce and lemons, at the blushing pinks of her radishes until ten o’clock, when Sandra arrived.
    It was nine thirty when the phone rang. She rushed