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disappoint her.
    Lois arrived an hour later. She wore a plain black skirt and blouse, and looked considerably older than he remembered, as if time had suddenly swept down upon her, done its vulture’s dance on her face and eyes.
    “Hello, Jack,” she said as she stepped over to him.
    “Lois.”
    “How long’s it been?”
    “Four years, five? I’m not sure.”
    “Not exactly,” Lois said. “I was at your grandmother’s funeral.”
    “You were?”
    “I came over, said hello.”
    “I’m sorry, Lois, a lot of that time …”
    “A blur, I know,” Lois said briskly. “It doesn’t matter. I was always just ‘Ray’s wife’ to you anyway.”
    As she walked away, Kinley wondered if what she’d said was true, if his mind had done its old trick of making people invisible. If so, there was nothing he could have done about it. He had long ago accepted the fact that his mind had its own postures and inclinations. So much so that he sometimes felt it hardly belonged to him at all, that it was something separate, a small gray animal curled up in his skull, peering out from behind his eyes, lurking there, alive and breathing in the dark, airless chamber.
    Lois paused at the casket, then, without turning around, walked directly out of the house and into the backyard. From his chair in the living room, Kinley could see her there, her back to him as she stood half concealed by the slender tendrils of the enormous weeping willow that consumed the small backyard. For a moment, she stood very rigidly, her shoulders lifted, her head held slightly upward, as if she were watching the willow’s shredded tent as it trembled around her.
    A moment later, Serena joined her there, and even from a distance, Kinley could tell they were arguing, a struggle he assumed to be the last exchanges in an Oedipal war whose outcome no longer mattered.
    Still, it was clear that the war went forward anyway, and as the seconds passed, it built steadily, the voices growing louder, until Kinley could almost hear the words themselves. It only ended when Lois suddenly glanced toward the house, caught Kinley’s silent, staring eyes, and lifted her hand to silence Serena. After that, the two of them walked back inside.
    “Serena and I were just discussing the house,” Lois said to Kinley as she returned to the living room. “I was trying to give her some advice.”
    “Well, you could rent it, I suppose,” Kinley told them, already uncomfortable in the role of family advisor.
    “No,” Lois snapped. “I think she should get rid of it. Ray was able to keep it up. But for somebody like Serena, a single woman, living away at college, I think she’d be better off without it.”
    Serena stared at Kinley pointedly but said nothing.
    “She needs to sell it,” Lois said. “That’s the best thing.” She turned back toward the casket. “With him gone, there’s …” She stopped, let her eyes drift back over to Serena. “There’s nothing else to do.”
    Serena’s face grew tense, but she did not speak.
    Lois turned to Kinley. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow.”
    “Yes.”
    She offered him her hand. “Funerals. That’s where we seem to have all our meetings.”
    Kinley shook her hand. “Lois, about last time …”
    “Don’t worry about it, Jack,” Lois said. “I’ve learned that when people forget you’re around, they also stop bothering you.” She smiled thinly. “Ray told me what you said, you know.”
    “Said?”
    “Years ago,” Lois explained. “When he told you about my mother’s death.”
    Kinley said nothing.
    “You were very matter-of-fact, just like always,” Lois went on, her intensity building, set to explode. “Your theory was that I’d loved my mother and hated my father, and so I’d decided to make him a murderer.”
    “Yes, I remember that,” Kinley said unemphatically, trying not to prime the powder.
    “Well, you were wrong, Jack,” Lois told him flatly. “I loved my father and