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sadness that he felt somehow obliged to take away. She wanted to say, “I’m fine. Thanks, Tommy. Really. Don’t worry. And stop looking at me that way.”
    As he stepped from his van, leaving the door open, she could hear the noon Angelus ringing on the radio. He opened the box and dropped in her post. Out of nowhere, Cicero, her black cat, appeared at her bare feet and started mewing. She mimed to him to shush, but Cicero paid no attention to mimes and mewed louder and Tommy called “Sibby, Sibby” outside the hedge. (Why all cats in the west of Ireland were called Sibby, she never understood.) He might have come to the gate to see then, but Iris plucked the cat up into her arms and held him tight.
    â€œSibby, Sibby?”
    When Tommy’s van passed away back down the road, Iris slipped through the gap in the hedge. Between the electricity bill and a copy of Gardens Illustrated was a letter from the Breast Clinic. She opened it and read:
    A client’s path through the symptomatic breast clinic is tailored to the individual and may not require anything more than a clinical review (especially in younger women). The medical history will be discussed and the client will be given the opportunity to ask questions regarding their symptoms and future management. A small number of clients require a biopsy. This is a minor procedure where tissue is removed from the breast using a needle under local anaesthetic. Most women experience little or no discomfort with this procedure. The center is equipped to perform a biopsy during the client’s initial assessment, although occasionally biopsies are performed at a later date to facilitate accurate guidance with the mammogram. The tissue is then examined under the microscope. Most clients who have a biopsy do not have breast cancer.
    It is very important that you confirm your appointment: Friday, 12 June, 10:30. Dr. Denise Browne.
    She folded the letter into its envelope and put it in her back pocket and walked up the path, unable to deny it was real. This distortion thing. Swallows reveled in and out of the barn, ignoring her, and Cicero made little cackling noises. The tip of his tail shivered. The appointment was at the end of the week.
    â€œWhat? Don’t look at me like that,” she said. But he did. Expectant. She turned to face again the trees. The female cuckoo would be encamped high up, somewhere out there, biding her time, awaiting her moment. This was the time of year she’d drop her egg into the nest with the meadow pipit and, in the way of nature, the meadow pip mother would raise the baby cuckoo as her own. But where was the cuckoo’s mate? Iris wanted to hear him. It was absurd, but she did. No sound came from the sky except a wind noising in the spruce. She made it across to the stone steps at the top of the garden and sat down, clutched her knees. She rocked back and forth. Tears streamed down her face.
    *   *   *
    Iris had decided not to disturb Tess’s weekend. But on Monday when she rang, Tess hadn’t answered, so Iris had left a voice mail: “Guess what? I have a distortion. Ring me.”
    Now Iris sat in a iron garden chair with a bottle of red wine and a tumbler at the round table under the porch. She sat out in the falling night air with the garden perched on the edge of explosion of more poppies, lupines, and geraniums. A swelling greenness turned the new growth of the boxwood hedge neon, even in the darkness. The swagged layers of Mt. Fuji, the Japanese cherry, had reminded Luke, she remembered, of the bustle gowns in Femmes au Jardin by Monet, with its branches billowing in the wind. Cicero composed himself in a clef shape across the table and played with the pieces of cheese Iris fed him.
    â€œOne for you and one for me.”
    Evening began to fall. She finished the wine and went inside and lay down on the couch.
    *   *   *
    A few hours later Tess woke