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of anything but the corridor outside David’s hospital room, the slick linoleum, the smell that jammed itself down her throat—cotton sheets washed in water too hot, ammonia, alcohol, plastic, rot.
     
    And then, like that, it was over, life pushing on, and Sally had to keep going. She didn’t want to, but how could she stop? She had three girls, nine, six, and three. There was the insurance money to figure out, the will to go through, and David’s clothes and belongings to deal with. Before she knew it, the children were a year older. Then two, then ten, all Sally’s worries of the future shielding her from the present. Mia was in college, suddenly pregnant, her life gushing way past the predictable lines Sally and David had imagined for her when she was little. At least Katherine never did anything like that, complicating her life so quickly, and Dahlia had followed Sally’s suggestions perfectly, waiting exactly two years after graduating before marrying Steve, who from all accounts still seems perfect for her. So when had Sally had the chance to think about David and illness and death? By the time the girls were out of college and into their lives, Sally’s life with David seemed like a dream she’d once had, a book read long ago on a summer beach, the memory soaked with sun and forgetfulness. But it was a book she still couldn’t put down.
     
    Sally wants to cry, but there aren’t tears. Just pain. Her throat hurts; her head aches. The smell of the burned popcorn makes her nauseous. For a second, she imagines this is what the chemo will be like, her body full of sickness, all her cells trying to regenerate, clawing to life.
     
    “Christ,” she says, rubbing her face and pushing herself up slowly. “Holy cow.”
     
    Everything in her feels heavy, wrong. Did David feel this way? If so, he never told her, never complained. Oh, how he must have hurt.
     
    Sally slaps the counter. “Enough!” She closes her eyes, waits, and then opens them and looks out the window. The red bud tree her gardener Rigo planted last year has lost the last of its pink flowers, the green fan shaped leaves open toward the afternoon light. Sally needs air, light, sun, so she puts the popcorn bowl into the dishwasher and walks out of the kitchen. She’s going to take a walk. She’ll put on her turquoise pants and even slather on sunscreen, though the light is almost gone from the sky, though wrinkles and skin cancer are the least of her worries now.
     
    If she runs into Dick Brantley and Mitzie, she’ll smile, say something nice. Maybe Sally will ask him in for coffee or maybe he’ll want one of the beers she keeps handy for Ford. They will sit in the living room, and she’ll listen to his stories about his wife, find out where he’s going to travel to next. That’s just what she’ll do. For good karma, as Mia would say. For plain good luck.
     
     
     
    Sally is in bed, sitting up with a magazine on her lap, watching the television in her room. She’s popped in the second video, one that her neighbor Nydia Nuñez brought over with a lemon pound cake. This one is entitled Reconstruction: Not a Misnomer .
     
    “My son-in-law, he’s a surgeon, you know. His hospital made this. I had it for my sister,” Nydia said as she handed Sally the cake and the video.
     
    Sally wondered how Nydia found out about the cancer, and then remembered the phone call she’d had to make to Vera Lyons, the head of the home improvement committee for the complex. Sally knew she wouldn’t be able to chair the deck paint choice committee now.
     
    “Oh,” Sally said, gripping the cake gently, the hard video against her chest. “How is your sister?”
     
    Nydia waved her hand. “Hers was different.”
     
    How? Sally wanted to ask. How was she different from me? Was her cancer terrible, spread throughout her body? In every lymph node and cell? Was the tumor site huge, over 4 CM? Sally wanted to tell Nydia that her site is only 1.3, small, so