There was a simpler explanation, Antonia—the selfish one, the one to break off from the group conclusion—argued. Izzy was grieving the loss of their parents. Yes, their deaths had been timely, Papi in his nineties, Mami, mid-eighties. But Izzy had been left with no one and nothing to fill the void. Until recently, when she came up with her migrant-art-in-the-boonies scheme. Antonia hadn’t heard their sister this excited since . . . since forever. Mona shook her head, exasperated with Antonia’s reluctance to accept that their sister has an actual disease. Mona does have her MSW, in case anyone in the family cares to notice. Antonia, meanwhile, has no training in psychology and so wouldn’t know. The highs are highs, but the crash is sure to come. Classic bipolar.

But Antonia keeps vacillating on what she thinks of Izzy’s moods. Sometimes it seems that Izzy is just suffering from the chronic malaise that comes with being alive. Even in Kyoto— hearing the cuckoo’s cry— I long for Kyoto, one of Antonia’s favorite haikus and one she loves to quote to her sisters. We all have to make peace with that longing, learn to live with the holes in our hearts. It’s the kind of remark that might have gone over well in her classes. But not with Mona and Tilly, who take her to task, Mona claiming that Antonia is in denial about the seriousness of their sister’s illness, Tilly cursing her into compliance: Just go along with the fucking program for once!

Antonia has to defer to Mona’s expertise. Still, it’s a shame how every grand passion has been co-opted by some pathology or other. Indignation is now wounded narcissism. Outrage, an issue with anger management. Revenge, a post-traumatic stress disorder. These old-time passions only exist anymore in Russian novels and on stage, especially in the Met operas broadcast at the Town Hall Theatre. As Madame Butterfly stabs herself in despair or Desdemona spends her last virtuous breaths singing, the victim of Otello’s jealous rage, Antonia weeps with abandon, embarrassed when the lights come up and she is surrounded by her dry-eyed fellow audience members. Catharsis, that’s what she feels, a term she often used when teaching Greek tragedy to her students. Once again, she is reminded how much she misses them.

The medium on tape offers the kind of popularized consolations that would normally irritate Antonia, but instead she finds herself listening closely. How to recognize signs from your spirit loved ones. “Heaven winks,” the medium calls them. You find a penny or a dime and the date on it means something. Antonia is always finding pennies, but she has never thought to check the date. You turn on the radio and your special song is playing. A stranger comes in your life and you find yourself responding not as you would but as your loved one would—

Antonia almost goes off the road when she hears this one.

Her former bad-cop self would have resisted getting involved with Estela’s predicament. It isn’t exactly that Antonia is hard-nosed; it’s more that people get under her skin too easily—part of the problem. And right now, in her life, Antonia is operating so close to the bone, she has no surplus to throw upon needy waters.

But here she is already planning to call Estela this evening to check in. How are things going with Mario? How did the visit with la doctora go? It’s almost hormonal—like a mother with her newborn—this pull toward this stranger. If she’s not careful, Antonia’s breasts will soon start flowing with milk—the milk of human kindness it would have to be! Her old-biddy titties have closed up shop. That, too, has crossed her mind. Will there be sex after Sam?

And what if there is no “after Sam”? If he’s living inside her now? Much closer than she had imagined, like that warning on the side-view mirror reads: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Again, the seemingly ordinary phrase or random detail that offers life shape and meaning. Hold through the silence, the customer-service recording instructs her. A perfect meditation instruction! Take in my give, Mami would say when they made the beds together and one side of the sheet was longer than the other. If only Antonia had taken that hint as a way to deal with her overbearing mother. Or the lovely recalculating from her nonjudgmental GPS when Antonia takes a wrong turn, no impatience, no berating her for making a mistake. In the textbook Antonia used to use with her students, there was a whole paragraph devoted to these instances in a story: narrative bumps the writer puts in so the reader has to slow down and pay attention.

But Antonia’s problem is that she pays too much attention. She’s always slowing down. Reading prose as if it were poetry.

You read each word? Sam was astonished. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to speed read?

What would be the point? she had challenged him back. Sometimes when he said such things, Antonia wondered if Sam and she were even of the same species. And now his spirit DNA is circulating in her system.

Closer than he appears to be, a form of immortality.

SAM! Antonia shouts his name, trying to flush him out. SAA-AM!

She swerves, pulling the wheel back just in time to avoid going over the side of the mountain.

The Airbnb just outside Athol is a sweet cuckoo-clock-type cottage with a cobblestone path leading up to the front door. Instead of a little bird, a pair of barking dogs come bounding out to greet Antonia as she gets out of the car, almost knocking her over. Mona follows, swooping down the front steps, arms out, her face a tragic mask. Oh sister, oh sister! She collapses into Antonia’s arms. Another woman hangs back at a respectful distance. This must be the beautiful Maritza, or so Izzy always described her friend. A beauty, really? Broad hips and thick thighs. Her hair a boosted brown, the gray showing at the roots, her eyebrows still dark and struggling to grow in where they were once severely plucked, back in the day before Frida Kahlo or some actress playing Frida Kahlo popularized the thick brows. But maybe Maritza was a beauty once upon a time, turning the heads of men and women, with whom she was always having dramatic affairs that ended badly. Antonia recalls some story of a kidnapping, or was it a stabbing—a lover turned deadly? The beautiful Maritza, a modern-day Helen of Troy. If so, Maritza, too, has gotten older and broader. The time after the happily ever after of fairy tales. They all live there now.

Two more women step out of the cottage. A slender blonde, who seems to be a dog person, too, judging by how she crouches down to pet and baby-talk Maritza’s pair, and a second older woman, soft and huggable, like a stuffed animal. Somebody’s grandmother, with a messy bun on top of her head and funky fire-engine-red glasses speckled with tiny black stars.

Who are all these people? Antonia whispers in her sister’s ear.

Izzy’s posse, Mona explains, calling them over to meet her big sister. Just saying “big sister” brings on tears. The title already transferred to the next in line.

The blonde woman introduces herself: Nancy, the Realtor. She seems unsure whether to shake hands or hug—a dilemma Antonia promptly solves by sticking out her hand. She doesn’t need one more dubious friend. Nancy is tiresome with her commiserations. She is so, so sorry! Anything she can do to help, she says, handing out her cards like tissues at a funeral. I honestly had no idea. Your sister just seemed like a free spirit, super nice, generous to a fault.

All this retrospective praise is making Antonia nervous. Has her sister’s body been found?

No, no, no, nothing like that, Nancy reassures her. Her aquamarine eyes glitter with moisture—but the color makes her sympathy seem phony. Nancy says she understands how worried everyone is feeling. She, too, has sisters.

The other woman is the investigator that Kempowski contracted to do some local gumshoeing, Dorothy, call her Dot. Antonia would never have guessed the elderly woman was a private investigator. But Kempowski claims Dot is the best there is in surveillance. Everyone talks to Grandma. She has been interviewing Nancy in the back sunporch. They were just finishing up. Dot will swing by Nancy’s office later to pick up a copy of some signed paperwork and Izzy’s cell. Nancy will hold on to Izzy’s deposit for now, to be totally refunded if—

Dot and Nancy exchange a glance. No need to go there now.

Nancy leaves, tooting her horn in a way that feels too perky given the circumstances. Antonia and Mona link arms. It’s the closest Antonia has felt to her baby sister in a while. They keep butting heads over how to respond to the Izzy situation.

Ay, sister, sister. Mona leans her head on Antonia’s shoulder. What’s that line in that poem of yours? Something about how we make the spirit out of what we own / no angel lives abroad but in the bone.

That is an oldie all right! Antonia laughs. I wrote that, like, in college. I don’t even have a copy of it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve quoted that poem to my patients.

Mona quoting poetry, Antonia’s poetry no less! Did it help? Antonia wonders out loud.

I haven’t a clue, Mona snorts, a rare moment of self-doubt. I mean, I think my patients felt accompanied—and that’s sometimes the best we can do for each other.

If that’s all we’re asked to do for each other, is Antonia off the hook by writing her poems? Or is that just outsourcing her compassion? Conveniently removing herself from the havoc that the troubled cause in the lives of others.

Mario, Estela, Izzy . . . What does she owe them? It’s no longer an abstract dinner-party or classroom question. Besides, it’s not for others to answer for her. No angel lives abroad but in the bone. The height of self-care: the divinized self. Go easy, Antonia says in her GPS voice. Recalculating . . .