“I have bad news,” she says. “Here.” She offers him his glasses and points to the headline on the iPad.

Jake accepts the glasses and takes the iPad; Ursula watches his eyes scan the screen. He sucks in his breath and recoils. He drops the iPad, falls back into his pillows. “Oh God.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Ursula says. “At first, I thought it was Cooper, our Cooper, who died.”

“It’s Senior,” he whispers. “And Kitty.”

“Were you…close to them?” It embarrasses Ursula that she doesn’t know the answer to this. “I mean, obviously I know they’re Coop’s parents and we’ve been to all those weddings. But did you have a relationship with them beyond that?”

Jake shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Ursula,” he says. “Can you please give me a minute?”

He’s in shock, he needs to process this; Ursula gets that. Unfortunately, she has a Judiciary Committee hearing at nine so she needs to skedaddle. She goes the extra mile by bringing Jake his coffee while he’s in the shower.

“I’ll be home around seven, seven thirty,” she says. “Maybe in time for us to go to Jaleo tonight?”

Jake says, “Not tonight.”

“Oh,” Ursula says. “Okay.” She knows she shouldn’t feel rebuffed, but she does. “I love you.”

Jake doesn’t respond. Ursula can see him through the steam of the shower just standing there, letting the water pummel the back of his head. “I love you, Jacob.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you. Thanks.”

For reasons that Ursula cannot fathom, Jake doesn’t want to go to the Blessings’ funeral.

“Cooper is your friend,” Ursula says. “You go away with him every year. You’ve known him forever. You’ve stood up at three of his four weddings. You knew his parents. Why do you not want to go pay your respects?”

“It’s going to be a circus,” Jake says. “There will be hundreds of people there. You, Ursula, are a major distraction. I don’t want to create a…sideshow.”

“A sideshow?”

“People will hound you, they’ll ask to take your picture, they will whisper. You attract attention in line at Starbucks. I don’t think it’s fair to inflict ourselves on the Blessings in their time of mourning.”

“So you would go if it weren’t for me,” Ursula says. “You go, then, go alone.”

“I don’t think I can,” Jake says. “It would be tough, emotionally, but also I’m supposed to be in Atlanta on Tuesday. Overnight. I’m meeting with the guy from the CDC. That meeting took me three months to get.”

“Right,” Ursula says. “But this is your best friend’s parents. And it’s not like just one parent who was sick for a long time. This is both at once, suddenly. This is tragic. This demands your attention.”

“I’ll call Coop today and set something up for week after next,” Jake says. “Once the crowds have thinned. You remember what it was like when your dad passed, Sully.” Sully; Jake hasn’t used that nickname in decades, not since they were in high school. He’s trying to butter her up. But why? “You wouldn’t have noticed if one person was missing.”

“Still…” Ursula says. Something about this feels off.

“It will mean more to Coop when it’s one-on-one,” Jake says. “I know I’m right about this.”

Ursula disagrees—so much so that, after Jake leaves for Atlanta, she clears her schedule the afternoon of the funeral and drives to Baltimore.

The parking lot of Roland Park Presbyterian is packed. There are signs directing people to park down the block; church vans will shuttle them to the funeral. When Ursula climbs into one of the vans, she wonders if maybe Jake was right. The other eleven passengers stop talking and gape at her. One surprised-looking older gentleman says, “Senator de Gournsey?”

She gives him a somber smile. Says nothing.

There’s a line to get inside the church. Ursula is impressed by the turnout. All these people, the accumulation of two lives—their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors, the mailman, probably, and the woman from the dry cleaner’s, fellow country-club members, their children’s teachers and coaches, the dog groomer. Ursula works twenty hours a day to ensure that American citizens are free and able to create this kind of community. But she’s jealous too. If Ursula died and her mourners were limited to those who felt genuine love and affection for her, the crowd would be three: Jake, Bess, and her mother.

Funerals are sobering for more than one reason. Everyone must ask: What will people say about me?

Ursula searches for someone, anyone, she recognizes. She attended three of Cooper’s weddings—there was one other, an elopement to the Caribbean somewhere—so surely she will find a familiar face. Cooper’s friend Frazier Dooley, the coffee mogul (Ursula remembers him because Jake pointed him out on the cover of Forbes), is there with his—girlfriend? wife?—who looks less like the punk-rock queen Ursula remembers and more like a proper trophy wife with sculpted arms and a Stella McCartney bag. Money will iron the kinks out of anyone, Ursula thinks somewhat sadly. Standing with them is a kid about Bess’s age, looking handsome but uncomfortable in his suit, blond forelock falling into his face. He must be Frazier’s son.

Marriage material for Bess! Ursula thinks, to cheer herself up. She already jokes about Bess marrying money, which Jake finds offensive.

She waits in line to pay her respects because part of the point of coming—the entire point—is so Cooper knows that Ursula cared enough to show up. It’s only Cooper and his sister receiving people. Ursula studies the sister; she can’t come up with the woman’s name. Maddie is what presents in Ursula’s mind, though she knows that’s not right. And what’s worse is the mortifying memory that seeing Not-Maddie elicits. The bathroom of the country club, Ursula in the throes of morning sickness when she was first pregnant with Bess, back when she thought—no, was convinced—that Bess was Anders’s child. And hadn’t Ursula nearly confessed this to Not-Maddie?

Mallory—that’s her name!

Ursula had come very close to confessing that hideous idea to Mallory Blessing, a complete stranger. She had stopped herself just in time because somewhere in her mind’s eye, she saw the trajectory of Mallory confiding in her brother and Cooper then feeling he needed to share the news with Jake.

There’s a hand on Ursula’s back. She turns to see an attractive woman in head-to-toe black Eileen Fisher with a stylish asymmetrical haircut and a chunky statement necklace.

“Senator de Gournsey?” she says. “I’m Leland Gladstone.”

The woman’s voice is brimming with easy self-confidence; she announces her name as though Ursula might recognize it. Does Ursula know Leland Gladstone? The name sounds vaguely familiar. Is she a newscaster? A columnist? Ursula can’t think any further because now it’s her turn to pay her respects.

Cooper sees her and his eyes widen; he checks behind her. “Jake’s not here, is he?” His voice sounds nearly hostile.