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350 days a year. Zoe felt proud to be his patient. She brought him a jar of homemade mustard and a bag of her from-scratch soft pretzels every Christmas.
    She had never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at her now. Tenderly, and with fear.
    “Zoe,” he said. “I need you to sit down.”
    “Tell me,” she said. Her voice was froggy. The call had woken her up. “Just fucking tell me.”
    “Penelope,” he said.
    “Is dead.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    It was Penny, she thought.
    “And Hobson has been flown to Boston. He’s in a coma. And he has sixteen broken bones.”
    Zoe swooned. The room melted, and she thought, I’m going down. She thought, Put a bullet in my head.
    “Patsy!” Dr. Field called out. He had Zoe by both arms, he was holding her, but she was done, gone, checking out. There was no life for her without those two. She had made her own way and found a modicum of personal happiness, but there was no life left to her without the twins.
    Patsy, the nurse, helped carry Zoe to the chairs.
    “Get her water and an Ativan,” Dr. Field said.
    “No,” Zoe said. She wanted a bullet, yes, but not drugs. She wouldn’t be weak like that. She opened her eyes and focused on the white of Dr. Field’s coat.
    He said, “Hobby is alive. He’s on his way to Mass General. You have to get to Boston.”
    “Okay,” she said. She was strong enough to open her eyes, but not strong enough to stand, and certainly not strong enough to get herself to Boston. “Can I ask? What happened?”
    “There was a car accident,” Dr. Field said. His voice was floating over her head. “Penelope was driving. Hobson was in the backseat.”
    “Whose car? Jake’s car? The Jeep?”
    “Yes. Jake Randolph was in the car, as was Demeter Castle.”
    “Are they dead?” Zoe asked, though she knew the answer.
    “No,” Dr. Field said. “They’re fine. Cuts and bruises. A bad case of shock.”
    Cuts and bruises. A bad case of shock. Not dead. Not in a coma. Zoe wished she were the kind of person who could be happy that other people’s children were alive and unharmed while her two children were dead and nearly dead—but she wasn’t.
    “Mr. Randolph has offered to make sure you get to Boston safely,” Dr. Field said. “And the Castles have offered to help as well.”
    Zoe pivoted her head and saw the three of them sitting in chairs. Jordan sat on the edge of his seat, staring at her, and Al and Lynne were huddled together. Lynne was crying, and Al—steady, solid Al—was rubbing her back. The Castles and their smug togetherness, their unassailable bond, made Zoe want to scream. She had—admit it!—used their marriage as a fortress. They were her closest friends, and Zoe had ridden on the coattails of their outstanding citizenship.
    Al was a selectman, he owned the local car dealership, he knew everybody, and Lynne, no slouch herself, owned a title-search and permitting business that she ran from home so she could always be around to tend to the fire. They had two sons away at college—Mark at Duke, Billy at Lehigh—and they had Demeter, who was, like Penny and Hobby, in eleventh grade. Demeter was something of a sore spot.
    But she was still alive.
    I don’t have a daughter, Zoe thought. Anymore.
    But no, this was impossible.
    Zoe let out a high-pitched noise, a keening, a sound she had never made before in her life. Dr. Field was standing before her; she was staring at his belt buckle. He was an intelligent man, a distinguished man, and she needed him to fix this. When Hobby had taken that hit from the monstrous inside linebacker on the Blue Hills team and was lying on the field writhing in pain, Ted Field had jogged out and, with his magic hands, popped his shoulder back into place.
    Zoe looked up at him. She was shaking, and this awful noise was escaping from her. Fix this! she thought. She had once carried Penny into the Emergency Room at two in the morning. Penny had been four years old, and she had vomited in