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people, some kneeling, were gathered around an old woman lying on the floor. Don’t move her, the people were saying to themselves. Give her some air. Avery edged closer and saw a thin line of blood running from the woman’s nostril. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing, hard, through her open mouth. He didn’t recognize her, although that didn’t mean anything. She must be a guest, maybe a friend of Grandad or his new wife, just one of the many old people in attendance. It was revolting to see an old lady lying like that, he thought, flat on her back on the hard carpet of the entranceway. Why didn’t someone cover her legs, at least? They shouldn’t be out in the open like that, all bony and ridged with veins. Avery stared at the shiny new sneakers on her feet, unable to look away. He owned the same brand, same style.
    “Coming through,” someone said, and Avery allowed himself to be pushed aside by the EMS guys and their wheeled stretcher.
    Not sure where to go, he wandered slowly outside. The soft suburban night air was filled with crickets or cicadas; a bat loopedunderneath the awning over the door. A feeling he’d had earlier in the day, at the church, flashed back to him—a horrible feeling, like a nightmare…There was everything in place for a wedding: the altar, the minister, the flowers. The bride’s white dress, the groom in a suit, everything normal until you looked in the smiling faces of the marrying couple and saw how old they were, how gray and wrinkled and stooped. A warp-speed fast-forwarded life. Twilight Zone stuff.
    Now suddenly all the parts of his grandfather’s big day curdled inside Avery. He pulled his tie over his head and stuffed it in a pocket. What was the point? Sure, it was great how the old man had found someone again, this close to the end of his life. Everyone was saying so. But now it hit Avery just how insubstantial it all was—love, marriage—compared to the hard physical reality of the world. The old lady on the floor in her neon sneakers; her bloody nose. This was coming soon for Grandad, whether he knew it or not. Wasn’t it ridiculous for everyone to get all dressed up and pretend otherwise?
    Avery watched as one of the valet attendants tossed a pair of keys high into the dark air and then caught them behind his back, one-handed. Nice. Then he stepped off the porch and walked slowly into the lush night streets of Hartfield. He’d find his way to the train eventually.

Four
W INNIE
    How could it be after eleven? Jerry would be back from the clinic any minute, where he twice weekly submitted to the cheerful, horrible ministrations of a physical therapist named Becka. In her kitchen of twenty-two days—big enough to hold her old dining-room table and a desk and chair set, not to mention the two ovens and a gleaming stainless-steel refrigerator whose front door dispensed not only carbon-filtered water but either crushed ice or cubes—Winnie took out a small battered saucepan and set a wood spoon across it on the stove. Then she unpacked the brown paper bag with this morning’s shopping load: four different cans of soup. For lunch, soup; Jerry always had soup for lunch—he’d had soup for lunch for decades and wouldn’t be stopping soon, despite the month, despite the heat. He wasn’t a man you had to fuss over; he ate what she fixed and said little about it. So yesterday afternoon it had surprised her, when she’d caught him peering closely at the bowl, poking the little vegetables this way and that with a spoon.
    “Is this the kind with the green label?”
    “It’s minestrone, if that’s what you mean—why?”
    “Tastes different.”
    “Different bad? Let me go check. I can’t remember what brand it is.” Jerry had waved that away, and then he’d gone on to eat the rest. But before washing up Winnie had fished through the garbage, and then the recycling box, and held up the offending red-labeled can.
    So, to the store. Or several, as it were: at