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us. While he was alive it was all right for him to act in other than the best interest of his reputation. That was his decision to make, and I respected it. But he is dead. It is our decision to make now. We must do what we think is best.”
    â€œI wish I could find the letter he wrote me about this,” said Caroline. “He was reading someone’s biography—I can’t remember whose; Maugham’s, perhaps—and he said he couldn’t bear for his life to be, well, I forget his words, but he compared it to a corpse being publicly exhumed.”
    â€œBut you don’t understand!” exclaimed Adam. “He will not have to bear it. He is dead! He bears nothing now!”
    â€œYes, I see your point,” said Caroline. “It must seem foolish to you, but I am afraid I cannot concede. There is so little we can give the dead, beyond respecting their wishes. In fact, it is all we can give. It is all I can give, and I intend to give it.”
    â€œWhat about you, Arden?”
    â€œI see both sides,” said Arden. “I understand—I think I understand—both of your positions. And I think if there is a mistake to be made, the greater mistake would be in disregarding Jules’s wishes. If you’re right, Adam, and it’s a mistake not to take advantage of what a biography would offer, that’s the mistake I’d rather make. That mistake hurts no one, really. It can be changed in the future. But the other mistake is hurtful, and cannot be changed. You cannot take something out of the world once it is put in, but you can add things, later, if you want.”

    They were all silent a moment, and then Pete appeared with steaming and fragrant bowls of soup. They all stood up.
    â€œIt smells delicious, Pete,” said Caroline.
    They sat at the table and began eating the chicken rice soup, to which Pete had added lemon and cilantro and wine. It was delicious. They all agreed on that.
    As it was all uphill, it was a slower walk back to the big house. And the two women were stunned by the heat and the wine they had drunk before, during, and after lunch. They would take naps when they got home, both of them, drowsing on large old beds in bedrooms at different ends of the house. They often did the same thing at the same time, unwittingly, for they were more alike than they cared to know, and there was something real between them, a rhythm, like love, that allowed them to live together as peacefully as they did.
    They walked in silence, the sun on their bare arms and legs. Caroline carried her hat, trailing its ribbons. They passed the field of wildflowers, but the butterflies had disappeared. The flowers were left behind, however, like an image in a mirror that remains reflected after its subject passes.
    â€œI’m glad that it’s been decided,” said Arden.
    Caroline murmured something.
    â€œI think we’ve made the right decision,” said Arden. “I don’t think a biography would make much difference anyway. I’m not convinced by that. It’s better to proceed cautiously. I shall tell him we have no interest in a biography at this time.”
    â€œYes,” said Caroline. “Tell him that.”
    â€œI’ll write to him as soon as we get home,” said Arden. “We mustn’t keep him waiting.” As she said this her mind made a little leap, and a field appeared beside the field in which she had been thinking: She could write the biography. They couldn’t stop her from doing that. And what else was she to do with her life? It was
the project that she needed, that would give her direction and purpose, save her from this aimless fretting. She supposed she could do it. It was just a formula after all, a gathering of information, a filling-in of blanks, a compiling and arranging of facts. It seemed impossible but it must not be, as biographies were so often written. And with Adam and Caroline around it