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Martha.
    I thought what it would be, to live her life.
    “Did you eat?” I asked her gently. And being gentle made me remember a dream from the night before. In the dream, Martha’s bosom was bare and I went, very afraid but full of longing, and put my mouth against it. I expected her to push me away, but instead I felt her hand on the back of my head, pressing me close, and she murmured, “Of course, of course.”
    I wonder if that dream would have changed me even if I hadn’t remembered it. Remembering it made the end of a time in my heart.
    Martha looked so puzzled, and I asked again, “Did you eat?” – ashamed that so simple a human thing from me could puzzle her.
    She shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she whispered, and I saw that her eyes were full. I knelt down on her pallet and held her face against my shoulder, wondering why this had stopped being possible and why it was easy now.
    I poached an egg in milk for her and watched her eat it. I remembered something I tended to forget, that Martha had been my friend first. She came to our house because she liked me, to see me, and then she saw Edward and liked him better. I think if I’d found words for how I felt when that happened, they would have been, “You chose him – now choke on him.”
    Strange not to have the words until they’re not true anymore.
    I wondered how much sooner there might have been a way to live our days, or if there was a rule that you can’t see the way until the end.
    Because Martha and I were ended. I was going with Sarah to feed her and hold her head against me when she was sad and knead her shoulder when it ached. From the beginning I was going to, unless there was a rule that you can’t until the end.

Chapter Three
     
    I won’t claim that I’m fearless or that I disdain to lie at any cost, but I will say that I don’t bother to lie about every little thing. So when Edward asked me Sabbath morning after breakfast why I wasn’t readying myself for Meeting, I didn’t say I was sick; I said, “I’m not going. I’m expecting Sarah Dowling today.”
    I didn’t know what time Sarah might come. It wasn’t even certain that she had a way of telling time. I only knew that she didn’t go to Meeting.
    “Sarah Dowling?” Edward said.
    Martha said, “That – that – ” but her language was not equal to her thought. “Freak” is what she was groping for, I imagine. I allowed myself to feel a little flattered. If she slandered my friends, it could mean she liked me.
    “She’s a very fine person when you get to know her,” I said. I wanted to say “lovely” too, but reconsidered.
    “You shouldn’t miss Meeting,” Edward said. “It’s not a light matter to miss Meeting.”
    That may sound like something to impress children, but from Edward it was not. Even as a boy he was earnest and serious and afraid of being ill thought of. One time back in school, Edward’s grade was studying Heaven, and since I always paid attention to all the other grades, I was listening from my smaller, more lowly seat. “And there shall be no night there,” the teacher said. Edward’s grade, which means Edward and one other big boy, reacted with appropriate bafflement. “No night ?” “No night,” the teacher said, smiling conceitedly. And then Edward stood up and asked, all solemnly, “But won’t there be a – period – of – lesser light?” I was so proud of him I could hardly contain myself. My big brother! Such wisdom! Such a question! So well put! The teacher said, “No. No. No indeed,” but I could see that he was taking some credit for Edward too.
    Well, that’s just a little childhood memory, but it shows that Edward probably really meant it when he said it was no light matter to miss Meeting. I have always felt somehow responsible for Edward’s taking religion so hard. Wasn’t it in an effort to reach the untrembling hearts of the likes of me that the preacher laid it on so? If all faces had shown Edward’s