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Without you … there will be no one.”
    â€œNothing is going to happen to me,” she said. “Lie back.”
    â€œ Say you understand.”
    She hesitated. “Do you know what you’re asking me?”
    â€œI do.”
    But did he? Did he really? It pained her to think about what he was asking. This man she’d loved for nearly three decades was dying but he was talking about life. Not his life. He was talking about life after him.
    â€œI’m going now,” she said. He loosened his grip. “Rose has her French practice exam tomorrow.” Then, to make him laugh (because they all knew she was hopeless at languages), she added, “I promised I’d quiz her on grammar.” But he didn’t laugh.
    â€œI just wanted to make you smile.”
    There were tears in his eyes; there were always tears in his eyes now, just on the edge of spilling.
    â€œIris. Please … she’ll have no one. Do it for me.”
    Iris held her breath.
    Then he spoke the words she didn’t want to hear. “Try to find her … find Hilary.”
    He didn’t know what he was saying. Find Hilary? It was an impossibility. They’d had one meeting with her. The three of them and a social worker. Years ago. It was crazy. Iris rose from the bed and went to the window. Pulling the curtain aside, she saw the poppies needed staking.
    Iris tidied the bed tray, smoothed the blanket, poured water into a plastic cup, and straightened the pile of magazines— The Economist, Wine Spectator —and the novel Luke was still hoping to read, The Third Policeman. She couldn’t think straight but she pretended calmness. He knew. He knew her inside out. When she came to kiss his forehead, he caught her arm. His voice was hoarse.
    â€œIris, we have to keep showing up for each other, for Rose.” He closed his eyes and fell back.
    She kissed him on his forehead and let her cheek linger on the side of his face. The softness of his skin at that moment was extraordinary. As though he was already becoming transparent, already leaving the world.
    She whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this is happening.” She clenched her teeth. She didn’t want to cry. They’d been all through this. The unfairness of it. The sadness. The end.
    â€œSay you’ll promise.” He held his grip on her arm.
    â€œI’ll make a phone call this week,” she’d said. Then she held his face between her hands. “I promise.”
    *   *   *
    Luke died a few days later on a sunny day at the end of May, two weeks before Rose’s Leaving Cert exams, a month before her seventeenth birthday.
    Iris had rallied as best she could. She’d coached their daughter through the exams because there was no other way. She had to take them, but she only had to pass. And somehow they’d got on. Somehow they did. Iris and Rose, with a lot of help from Tess. Then, four months later, Rose entered London’s Royal Academy of Music.
    The surviving pieces, after the center had been blown out their lives, fell into place, as if ordained from on high, as if in compensation. The life insurance benefits were held in trust for Rose, and after paying her rent and school fees she had a monthly stipend for living expenses.
    *   *   *
    Iris stayed in Ashwood. And in the unyokedness of being a widow she was adrift in the world, like a dandelion when its yellow florets have died and turned to seed, parachuting into the air, like a ruptured cloud burst. She was all over the place. No center to hold on to.
    She’d never imagined a life without Luke. She hadn’t prepared. And yet now here she was, a damp morning in the beginning of June standing in her kitchen with the radio playing requests, wearing her nightdress with its watering-cans-and-Wellingtons pattern Luke had given her one Christmas, and her long, wavy red hair that Luke never wanted