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the castles Becky might
     want to see. Trying to squeeze in all those things on Lenny’s list.” Monique tipped her head back, closing her eyes for a
     moment under the light of the sun. “And I’d so really, really wanted to do this for Becky.”
    Judy understood. The whole neighborhood was trying to find a way to help the Lorenzinis. Everyone was offering rides to drive
     Brianna and Brian to their various activities, now that Becky had determined that it was better that she just didn’t drive
     at all. She herself had been making some preliminary phone calls to determine how much it would cost to buy Becky a seeing-eye
     dog when the time came.
    But Judy knew from personal experience that there probably wasn’t a more powerful or effective or immediate treatment for
     an emotionally traumatized Becky than a glorious two-week trip to Europe.
    “In fact,” Monique added, “I was going to ask Becky today. This very morning.” She swiped her sweat-beaded forehead with the
     back of her sleeve. “But after that spat with Kiera, I guess that’s done. I may as well just shove the whole idea of doing
     that bucket list out of my mind.”
    Judy shook her head sharply. “Bad idea.”
    “Yeah, maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe Kiera was right to refuse. It’s a difficult year, with the applications and essays—”
    “No, I mean it’s a bad idea to axe the trip.” Judy pivoted on one foot as they rounded the playground end of the park, the
     dogs leaping and straining at the sight of the kids climbing the jungle gym. “Next year, Monie, there’ll just be another excuse.”
    Monique’s pace slacked. “Excuse me?”
    Judy surrendered to the tug of the dogs, wishing they’d drag her so quickly away that she’d save herself from her own foolishness.
     She eyed the canopy of leaves that turned the path into an emerald green tunnel and told herself she should keep her mouth
     shut. But the words were expanding against her sternum, an unrelenting pressure. Over the past few months, it was becoming
     more and more difficult for her to resist the urge to just say exactly what was on her mind.
    Like when people came up to her and asked how she was enjoying her “new freedom,” now that her last child had flown the nest.
     Or opined on how they couldn’t wait until their teenage son took his smelly socks and his growling, wolfman attitude off somewhere
     far, far away. Or worse, gazed deeply into her eyes and asked her how she was holding up.
    Well, she wasn’t holding up. She was in swirling little pieces. She wasn’t talking about her wonky knee just starting to twinge,
     or the excess of gray that was threading through her hair, or the fact that she’d missed another period. She was falling to
     pieces inside . And one of the pieces that was falling away right now was the pleasant social nicety that insisted she hold her tongue.
    “The bucket list, Monie.” The words tumbled out of her. “You’re scared to death of it.”
    Monie’s protest was a stutter of unformed syllables.
    “The summer after Lenny died, when Kiera was still in that malleable Junior Girl Scout age, you said you just couldn’t bring
     yourself to do that list.”
    “I was exhausted. Six months of treatments, two months of at-home hospice—”
    “One summer later,” she continued, throwing all caution to the wind, “I suggested that filling Lenny’s bucket list might be
     a fabulous way to spend what was probably your last free summer with Kiera. Before Facebook and boys and the whole generational social scene sucked that girl into the inevitable teenage
     void.”
    “I’d just started at the neonatal ICU.” Monique gesticulated with a two-pound weight. “That’s the summer when I hadn’t accumulated
     enough hours to justify taking off for two or three weeks of vacation.”
    “You had enough hours last summer.”
    A puff of air expelled violently. “Kiera was working for that producer.”
    “Kiera will be working next year