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care of him now in the house on Spring Street. Dina had been reared in that house, two stories with gingerbread trim and a porch that wrapped around the side. There were white lawn chairs under oak trees hung with Spanish moss. Her father had built her a little boat, which she had mostly kept tied to the dock.
    She took it out sometimes along the bayou, which led through twists and turns to the Gulf of Mexico. Dina hated herself for leaving: As the eldest daughter she should care for Costas, but she didn’t want to go back to Tarpon Springs; the town was too provincial and narrow.
    Going back would be like exile.
    Wincing against a new throb of pain in her breast, Dina shifted on the walkway.
    She had, for a time, considered suicide, seduced by the idea, flirting with it as she brought the wheels of her car closer and closer to the shoulder of the road. She had poured into her hand all the pills that the doctor had given her. She had unlocked the cabinet where Sam kept his pistol and stared down at it, gray and cold and final.
    Why hadn’t she done it, then? It was not fear of darn nation for an unholy act. Dina had not believed in damnation for a long time, not since realizing that there was more of it on earth than she thought possible in the hereafter. Dina didn’t consider herself Orthodox anymore, or a Christian of any variety. Sam had no answers, either.
    His mother-long dead-had been Jewish, but he followed no religion.
    If she took the pills or pulled the trigger, then what?
    Nothing. Not even the awareness of nothing. It was much better, she had finally concluded, to remember, and have the pain of it, than to risk having nothing at all.
    Dina blotted her forehead again with her sleeve, then picked up the clippers. She would finish trimming the border, then go in to dinner.
    In the kitchen, Melanie got up from the table to check the heat under the pot roast. Then she crossed the kitchen to look through the sliding glass door a ain. Her mother was nearly at the end of the walkway. She would have to come in soon, Melanie thought. The sun was about to set. Her father was upstairs changing his clothes. He would be down in a few minutes.
    Melanie had put glasses and plates on the counter, with linen napkins folded like fans, and the good silverware on placemats. She was hoping they could all sit down together. Nobody ate in the dining room anymore, even on holidays. Last year-forget it. Matthew had died in September, and Christmas had been awful. They didn’t eat at the kitchen table because it was piled with papers from her dad’s office, a TV to be fixed that had been there a month, and a bunch of mail. Plus her mother’s briefcase and a stack of tax books. Her mother was a CPA. She used to have a private secretary and her own office, but she’d been sick, and she was just starting back to work full-time.
    Melanie had cleared enough space for her homework.
    She slid back into her chair, nibbling on a carrot stick.
    That’s all she would have, salad. Plus maybe a small piece of roast to keep her dad from asking if she wanted to make herself sick, or what. School would be out in three weeks, and all her friends were buying swimsuits.
    She’d been working on a tan in the backyard, but her thighs were gross. Her mom had mentioned it last night: Melanie, you’re getting chubby.
    A fist under her cheekbone, she read aloud, “Find the values of X where the value of the function of X is zero.”
    She tapped the eraser end of her pencil on a piece of graph paper.
    Without even opening the book, Matthew could have figured it out. He was awesome. He made straight As, till he started skipping school. Her mother had said Matthew needed a psychologist. Her dad said he needed a goddamn military school. He never did find out some of the stuff Matthew did, like shoplifting, because their mother handled it herself. Melanie knew only because she’d overheard them talking about it. In tenth grade he got suspended for smoking pot,