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When you say, ‘Everything that’s happened we’ve borne together,’ that’s not true, Gracie. You changed the dressings, you applied the ointments, you looked him full in the face and did what had to be done. And I turn my head away.”
    “Atlas.”
    “There’s too much, and I don’t have the strength for it, Gracie. There’s too much of everything. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do Louis. And I couldn’t live without you. That’s why I must go before you. I’m sorry.”
    Atlas was done. They sat on the end of the dock and together watched Louis. He knelt in the grass, then a moment later waved and pointed to something he held in his hand. A perfect strawberry.
    Atlas reached behind Gracie and found her brush in her canvas bag. He began to brush her white hair. Gracie closed her eyes and mistook the smell of pond water for the sea, and thought she was in Atlantic City.

CHAPTER FIVE
    L OUIS WATCHED the funeral from the car. He had come downstairs an hour before, as Gracie was readying herself. When she turned around, he was standing in her doorway dressed in a coat and tie. She expected the hat and scarf—it was the coat and tie that looked odd.
    “Look at you,” she said.
    “Three words guaranteed to make a recluse cringe,” said Louis. He made a sound that was his laugh.
    Gracie smiled. “I haven’t seen that coat in years.”
    “Since I was sixteen.” At sixteen it all stopped for Louis, or was put away, or was in some way changed. “Does the coat smell like mothballs? I mean, I know it does, it’s had mothballs in the pockets for sixteen years. But is it overpowering?” He leaned close.
    Gracie sniffed. She had been crying off and on since she got up, so she didn’t smell a thing. “It’s fine, Louis. Really.”
    “Good,” he said.
    “You’re thirty-two and you still fit in the coat you wore when you were sixteen. That’s not bad.”
    She turned away and began to fix her hair. “Louis,” she said at last.
    He was at the window peering out at the street. He knew all the windows in all the rooms and how to look out of them. He knew how not to be seen, of course, knew what the sun revealed as he stood just so behind a curtain or a shade. And the sun was always changing, so on cloudy days he had to adjust himself this way or that, or alter his stance in the afternoon from what it had been in the morning. Bright days, rainy days, light reflected from the white snow or from the green of a summer lawn—allaffected the way he stood at his windows. Even at night he was wary, of streetlights, passing cars, and sometimes the moon. Stars, too. For someone who does not wish to be seen, even the light from stars must be considered. Sometimes, though, he did wish to be seen. He liked to play with Kitty Wilson. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the windows as she passed by on the street, craning her neck, teeth clamped on a cigarette, squinting through her makeup. He’d flutter curtains and jiggle shades, and her mouth would widen, and if the window was open he could almost hear her panting. When she finally gave up and turned to go, he’d reveal himself completely, there and then gone, and she’d freeze, not knowing if it was a trick of the sun or her imagination, or if he’d really been standing behind the glass.
    “Louis,” Gracie said again.
    He turned and faced her.
    “The coat. Were you thinking… are you coming to the funeral?”
    He moved toward her, then paused and went back to the window. “Jim Rose is here. In a big silver car.”
    Gracie rose instantly and brushed past Louis. “I told him I didn’t want any nonsense. I’m not paying for the privilege of riding in a car owned by Big Bill. I already told Mary Dickson I’d go with her. Those Roses will do anything to squeeze a nickel out of you. Vampires sucking nickels out of the bereaved.”
    Louis put a hand to her face, and she stopped. He said, “Gracie, I’d like to ride in that car.”
    “You’re coming?” she said,