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not a writer. Not anymore. I hope this news will gladden your day, which will be in diametric opposition to what your letter did to mine .
    She signs her name, and reads her letter again. Then she tears it up and throws it in the trash. The letter from Margot Langley, she keeps. She puts it in her kitchen junk drawer, beneath the rubber bands, the take-out menus, the extra keys and birthday cake candles. Even as she does this, she wishes she wouldn't. Bad enough that she will parse the attack over and over in her mind; must she also let the evidence live in her house? But for some reason, she feels she is not finished with it.
    Later that evening, she eats a dinner of saltine crackers with peanut butter and great dollops of grape jelly. Then she puts on her pajamas and crawls into bed. She calls Tessa, who does not answer, and leaves her a message. “I didn't get the job at Anthropologie,” she says. “Maybe you already heard and you're out celebrating.” She pauses, and makes her voice more cheerful. “Hey!” she says. “I got your email with the video of that guy doing the Tim Gunn imitation. He sounds just like him .” Another pause, and then, “Want to see a movie tomorrow night? I could come downtown. We could go to a five o'clock in case you have plans for later on. … Let me know.”
    She hangs up, opens the novel she began last night, closes it, and lies staring out the windows into the dark. It is six-forty Tomorrow morning she will call Midge and say, Help. I'm serious. Help me. She will not tell Tessa or Midge about the letter. She will not tell anyone. She closes her eyes and Margot Langley's words float back into her brain; she has the letter memorized.
    She opens the novel again, reads one page, another. Then another. And finally, everything in her own life surrenders to the one being presented here. An uneasy pain thins, lifts, disappears. Dan once had a friend who died from metastatic cancer. Toward the end, Dan visited him with some frequency; and each time he would call before going, to see what his friend might want or need. Each time, his friend requested the same thing: books.

five
    T HE PHONE RINGS, WAKING HELEN UP. SHE PUTS HER HAND OVER her eyes against the strong sunlight coming through her bedroom window and lies still, listening to see who's calling. Steve Parker again. “I don't know if you got the message,” he says, “but I really need to talk to you, Helen. Please call.”
    While he recites his number, she reaches for the phone, but then doesn't pick it up. She's got morning voice; it's after ten o'clock; she'd be embarrassed by her sloth. She'll call him later. She's beginning to be annoyed by his persistence. He's an accountant; can't he figure out whatever he's calling about by himself? What does she pay him for? What help can she possibly be? She feels herself getting angrier and then stops; she's blaming Steve for her husband still being dead. She looks over at the other side of the bed, reaches out to touch the uncreased pillowcase. Odd the way she looks every day to see if it is still so pristine. She knows it will be; yet she looks to see if it is. Sometimes she thinks coming to terms with Dan's death is like a log being rammed into a door. Eventually, it will get through. Until then, she will awaken each day and the first thing she will do is look to his side of the bed.
    She sits up and stretches, then casts about inside herself to see if today, if today , she feels a little bit like working, if she feels that something might be in her that would like to come out. Nope. The very notion of going into her study makes her stomach tense.
    So. What to do. Call Midge, who was not home last night, and so Helen left a message about her experience at Anthropologie; she left what she thought was a very amusing message, considering.
    But now Midge does not seem all that amused. “Listen,” she says, after Helen asks if she got her message, “don't be offended, but I just have to