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going to let up. I’m sorry that I won’t be able to finish the job.”
    “Won’t you come back when it stops?”
    “I can’t. I’m going on holiday tomorrow. I’ll be gone till August.”
    Daisy’s face, falling. The lawn was looking worse than before; not even half done, a zigzagged line of mown grass amid high grass. Before it had looked like a slovenly, uncaring woman lived in the house, now it looked like a lunatic did.
    “I’m sorry,” Patrick, saying. “Really I am.”
    Daisy, “Let me get my purse.” Hurrying off. Returning with a heap of cash.
    Patrick, “Thank you. I guess I should go get the mower. I can’t just leave it there.”
    “But it’s stuck, remember?”
    “Right.”
    The two of them standing there, thinking. Looking away from each other. Daisy, looking down. Catching sight of what she had forgotten.
    The watch. Still on her wrist. Making her panic. Quickly inspecting it. Relieved to see it was still working. Daisy, suddenly clear about one thing: A watch inscribed by Arthur Rubinstein should not be rolling around in the mud. A watch inscribed by Arthur Rubinstein was too valuable to be treated with anything less than the utmost care. Daisy, marveling at what it had already been through. Awestruck that she had removed it, and the baby blankets, only one day before they would have been completely submerged under water, and although the baby blankets would have been able to recover such an assault, the watch could not have. Daisy, thinking, imagine after being boxed up for more than half a century, she had somehow managed to rescue it the very day before its ruin.
    ut to be pills

EIGHT
    DENNIS, HEADING TO his mother’s house to explain all the things the electrician and repair crew had done. Getting there just as Patrick was leaving, before Daisy had a ch that he couldplCrance to clean up. As a result, seeing his mother dripping in mud. Seeing the zigzag of the cut grass. Seeing the lawn mower stuck in the flower garden. Seeing his mother giggling at the situation.
    Leaving him flabbergasted, more certain than ever that he was right. Asking her if she now agreed that she was unable to manage the house on her own.
    Daisy, laughing daintily. Saying, “Yes, I believe I do. I give up. You win. The Carillion wouldn’t be so bad, really, so you can go ahead and sell the house.” Turning away. Walking into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Wiping mud off her cheek and shoulders.
    Dennis, following her in. Daisy, saying she would give up the house, but she didn’t want any part of the selling. She didn’t even want to be around while it was happening, but she had come up with a solution for that.
    She had made up her mind.
    She was going to the U.S. By herself.
    Telling Dennis that much.
    Not telling him the rest. Not saying that she was going to return the watch to Michael, or his children if he had any, and if it turned out he was dead. She had decided that the watch was too valuable to hang on to any longer. Now that she knew it had been engraved by Arthur Rubinstein, she couldn’t keep it. It should never have been boxed up in her cellar for as long as it had been, and it never would have if she had known. But when Michael slipped it on her girlish wrist—amid kisses, tears, and vows—she’d had no idea who Arthur Rubinstein was. She had never even heard of him. She didn’t know that he was one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the twentieth century. It was not until much later that she heard of him, but by then the watch was safely packed away, out of view and out of her mind. For the longest time after Michael’s disappearance she had avoided anything to do with the piano—she couldn’t even hear a chord without feeling ill—but she had kept the grand piano. She got it, not her sister, after her parents died. The very one that Michael had played remained in her living room to this day. The watch had waited a long time to be rediscovered, but now that it had been, she had to