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didn’t recognize.
    “Your test results are back,” said the doctor.
    She tried desperately to read his tone. Was it good news or bad? She stopped breathing. She wanted to stop the world. “Yes?”
    “I’m afraid it’s not what we’d hoped for,” he said. Softly, gravely. “Lauren, I’m so sorry….”

CHAPTER FOUR
    Whidbey Island, Washington
2:30 p.m.
    Grace Bennett drove off the ferry from Seattle and merged onto the country highway that formed the long, crooked spine of Whidbey Island. Fat raindrops ran backward on the window, like tears blown sideways on a face pushed into the wind. It felt as though the storm was driving her home.
    As she sped up the main road, the wind and rain gradually abated. By the time she pulled to the shoulder and paused to get the mail from the box, tentative slices of sunshine shone through the clouds. She turned into the driveway and sat in the car for a moment, gazing at her house. In all her years as a Navy wife, she’d lived in a lot of places, but this was the only one she’d ever loved. It was a little bungalow on a bluff with an arbor of old roses and a view of the Sound. Some would call it dated, tacky. But Grace didn’t care. It was hers.
    She couldn’t believe she’d bought it without Steve. But lately, she’d done a lot of surprising things—and the person she surprised most of all was herself.
    Especially today. With a pleasant shiver, she picked up her purse and the stack of mail from the seat beside her and slid out of the car. She ducked her head to avoid drops from the ancient cedar trees that arched over the drive and skirted puddles to keep from ruining her new shoes, then let herself in through the front gate. She had just bought the ensemble of expensive skirt and blazer, and a pair of kitten-heeled pumps. The only outfit that had cost her more was her wedding dress.
    On the porch, she stopped to sift through the mail, finding an assortment of bills, letters to the kids from prospective colleges…the usual overabundance of junk mail.
    In the past, she used to sift through the mail with fevered eagerness, looking for a familygram or precious letter from Steve. These days, no one sent letters anymore, just e-mail. What was gained in speed and frequency with the Internet came at the sacrifice of the cozy, ineffable intimacy of a handwritten letter.
    In a letter, Steve’s presence used to be a tangible thing. He had a charming habit of making his point with swiftly drawn strokes, an extension of his energetic personality. He used punctuation marks no one had ever heard of, yet she could practically hear his voice when he wrote, “Iyou 1000x more than flying, girl”
    She used to sleep with his letters under her pillow.
    And she used to spend an hour each evening writing aerograms, watching the shape of each word on the thin blue page as it appeared behind her pen. Her letter-writing was a sort of handicraft, a way to weave her love into every word she wrote. E-mail was different. Faster, to be sure, but different. And completely inadequate for fixing what was wrong between her and Steve. But after today, she had finally figured out what to do. All that remained was to tell him.
    Juggling the mail, her purse and keys, she let herself in. Daisy, who had yet to grow into her paws, scrambled in to greet her, sneezing and wagging her feathery tail as though Grace had been away for a decade. A crystal vase of roses on the hall table filled the house with their soft, evocative scent. The flowers had beendelivered yesterday for her fortieth birthday. They should have been sent by Steve.
    But they weren’t.
    Her leather-soled shoes made a satisfying tapping sound on the hardwood floor. She heard the light beep of the answering machine, indicating a number of messages. She’d check them in a moment.
    She went to the kitchen and let the dog out. As she shut the door, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass.
    The image startled her briefly. She was a different