Antonia longed to escape, but this weekend especially, all hands had to be on deck. And anyhow, where could she go for peace of mind and heart? Was it the Buddha whose father had kept him closed up in the palace, so he wouldn’t experience or be exposed to anything negative? Then the day came when his chariot driver took him for a ride outside the palace walls, and the young prince saw a sick man—or was it an old man? Whatever it was, the prince was profoundly shaken. Yes, even safe and sound in Kyoto, there was always that cuckoo cry.

During one of her walks that weekend, her cell phone had pinged with a text message. She had planned to ignore any such attempts to reach her—twenty minutes of total disconnect, for God’s sake! But she had succumbed to the sly foot in the electronic door: I’m-just-going-to-quickly-check-and-see-who-it-is. Beth Trotter’s message flashed on the screen. Estela in labor! No worries. She’s doing fine. She asks about you all the time. Smiley face, heart, Dr. Trotter had signed off. Who would have guessed a couple of the emoticons Antonia so decried as lazy shorthand—the intense need to find the right words—would fell her own defenses? Antonia again felt that rush of the maternal.

At dinner that night, Antonia informed the others of the news. Izzy was eager for the details. Again, Antonia was struck by how quickly her sister could forget her own angst and enter into a stranger’s situation. This would stand her in good stead, this ability to put herself in perspective.

What’re you waiting for? Get going! Izzy commanded in her bossy voice. You can’t leave her alone at a time like this!

She’s not alone, Antonia countered, and the hospital has this translating device.

Izzy shook her head in a what-has-the-world-come-to? way that recalled their mother in bafflement over one or another of their Americanized behaviors. Since when is it okay to outsource basic human presence? Please? Izzy asked sarcastically.

What about leaving you? Antonia answered. Who is the most important one? Sometime during one of her future visits, Antonia would tell Izzy the Tolstoy story with the three questions. She might find it helpful, just knowing that even the world’s geniuses struggled with choices as they sought to live lives of purpose and meaning.

But you’re not leaving me alone. Izzy gestured with her head at her sisters, who sat by with thumbtack looks on their faces—pinning Antonia back in her place among them. I already have two bodyguards. I don’t need a third.

Thanks a lot, Mona pouted. In a flash, Antonia could see the ghost of Mona Past sweep across her baby sister’s features. We have a life, too, you know? she added, turning on Antonia. You’re not the only one with people who need you back home.

This is different, Izzy defended their sister. This girl doesn’t speak English. And her boyfriend threw her out. And she’s all of—what? Fifteen?

A slight exaggeration, which Antonia would normally have corrected, but she let it pass, hoping the error might mitigate her desertion if she decided to go.

Tilly and Mona glared at Antonia, their grievances momentarily bigger than their hearts. Their mouths twisted like their mother’s in disapproval. Not that Antonia and Izzy didn’t have their own self-interest in mind. Antonia was longing to get away, and Estela’s situation gave her the excuse she needed, while still claiming the moral high ground of helping someone else. And Izzy? Only later would Antonia suspect her sister of wanting to get Antonia out of the way. The sister of church bells, the dutiful, vigilant sister on the pullout couch who’d wake up if anyone tried to slip by on her way to the bathroom with a handbag full of pills, while the others slept on. Later, they discovered Izzy had also raided their suitcases for whatever medications they’d brought along. Ingredients for her deadly cocktail.

Sunday, after a tense brunch, Antonia said her good-byes. She had finally appeased Tilly and Mona by pointing out that in a few days both sisters would be gone, back home, and she, Antonia, would be the closest-by sister on call.

Okay, do what you have to do, they finally said, a grudging blessing on her departure. And Antonia had driven off, feeling oh so relieved to be free of the sisterhood. But as she put more and more miles between herself and them, she wondered: What was it she was so eager to get back to? An empty house, which, unless she changed her mind about Estela, would remain empty? A bleak world of self-protections: did she really want to live in it? Everyone barricaded against the suffering of others, hoarding their investment in their privatized versions of reality, giving their indifference the spin they needed in order to live exonerated, their therapist-office noise machines drowning out the cuckoo’s crying. What was the bird saying with its penetrating cries?

You must change your life, Rilke had written at the end of a poem her students always responded to.

So when do you change it? And how do you start? she pressed them.

On the drive home, Antonia found herself playing back the moment in bed with Izzy. What should she have said to her sister? Was Izzy ill or not? As crazy as the world was, Izzy’s flamboyant schemes sometimes seemed a soulful, if not sustainable, response. And in fact, Antonia felt some of the same inclinations, the wild energy, the dark moods, but she had found a place to put them: in her writing, in her students, in Sam. Each of those safeguards had fallen away. All she had left now were habits of self-discipline and control. What if she let go? Would she end up joining Izzy at Liberty House?

What’s the worst that can happen? Antonia had asked Izzy during their bedded tête-à-tête, hoping to put the present situation into perspective. Now, for the first time since losing Sam, Antonia allowed herself to look that dragon in the eye. What if she threw herself into the deep end of her life? She felt a young woman’s excitement at the thought of letting the universe take her where it will. But the temptation lasted only a minute before the reversal set in, and she found herself murmuring a lay form of St. Augustine’s famous prayer, Lord make me chaste, but not yet.

Make me into the larger version of myself, Antonia prayed, but let’s wait. Let’s wait till tomorrow. Ma?ana, ma?ana, the punch line of all those ethnic jokes about lazy Latins that people used to openly tell that Antonia never thought were funny.

Tomorrow comes. A mild Monday morning in early May is just beginning to dawn. Antonia is awakened from a deep sleep by the alarming sound of barking dogs.

She fumbles for her cell phone on the bedside table. A hysterical Mona is wailing at the other end. Oh my God! Oh Antonia, you’re not going to believe this!

Antonia is now fully awake, sitting up in bed, looking out the window in one of those slow-motion moments right before the world is about to change forever into the pre-and post-of this particular moment: a soft, spring, watercolor light is being brushed across the sky, putting out the stars. The pines on the southern border of the property are swaying: the wind must be coming from the north. The trees on the far hills have leafed out, a bright emerald green, surrounded by the darker, more serene green of evergreens. The earth is still here, she keeps reminding herself as Mona sobs out the news that now there are only three left in the sisterhood.

Calm down now, calm down, Antonia keeps saying to the hysterical Mona on the other end of the phone. Surely, Mona is overreacting. What she is saying can’t be true. Her sisters can so easily slip into hyperbole. Just like Mami. Mangoes falling near the mother tree.

Antonia’s calm infuriates Mona. Oh my God! I can’t believe you! She wants me to calm down, she hears Mona reporting to whoever is with her, probably Tilly. Mona has correctly repeated the content but not the terror that lies below the chilled surface of Antonia’s words.

Come on, Mo-mo, you know what I mean. Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Antonia concedes. Do not contradict the mad or the enraged—the buried instruction again resurfaces. Just tell me, okay? What happened?

I told Kim to make Izzy hand over all her meds, not to give her a prescription and let her self-administer. Nobody ever listens to me! Mona weeps. She took everything she had, plus everything she could find. My painkillers, sleeping pills. Empty bottles all over the place.

When was this? Antonia asks. She has enough wit not to voice the obvious question: Where were you all while this was going on? But Mona must hear the church bells ringing in Antonia’s tone of voice. She is instantly on the defensive. How were we supposed to hear her? She snuck into the bathroom while we were sleeping. By the time we woke up, she was totally passed out on the floor.

This will not do. Put Tilly on, Antonia says in a tight voice. She wants a better, second opinion on Mona’s bad news.

But Tilly is even less coherent than Mona: animal howls and whimpers of unbearable pain.