Mr. Caruthers hesitates. “I hate to say this, but maybe she just figures she’s had enough. She’s done all she can and it’s time to go.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

Mollie gives my fingers a last swipe with her tongue and settles at Mr. Caruthers’s feet, leaning against his legs. From some distant room comes the bark of a forlorn dog in its cage. The receptionist looks up at us, then swiftly back to whatever’s lying on her desk.

“You sound like you have a real affection for animals, miss,” says Mr. Caruthers. “You must’ve had a pet or two, when you were little.”

“Me? No, I’m afraid not. Well, I brought home strays all the time, but my mother wouldn’t let me keep them.”

“Why not?”

I reach to straighten Mollie’s ear, which has flopped over the top of her head. “According to Mama, taking care of me was trouble enough.”

Lindquist emerges alone from the examining room about fifteen minutes later, pale and dry-eyed.

“Well?” I ask.

She glances to Mr. Caruthers and back to me. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”

We step outside, in the shade of a squat palm. She is all business. “I’m afraid there’s no hope. It’s heart failure. Dr. Alba wanted to put her down right away, but I’d like the children to say good-bye first.”

“I can drive back and fetch them for you.”

“Would you? Olle’s flying right now, and I wouldn’t let Kaiko inside my car to park it, even with the cast off.”

I attempt a smile. “You’re sure you trust me behind the wheel?”

“Oh, Janey. That’s the least of my worries, believe me. I’ll just wait here with Sandy.” She shades her eyes and glances to the door. “Make her as comfortable as I can. God knows she deserves that much from me.”

Lindquist telephones ahead, so the children are waiting in the front office at school, satchels neat and hair askew. As I bustle them into the back of the car, I realize I haven’t the faintest idea what to say to them. Tadpoles are mysterious creatures to me. Innocent one second, worldly the next, so you never know what kind of tone to assume. Surely they are familiar with the concept of death, though? I start the engine and glance in the mirror at their taut little faces.

“Everybody ready?” I say cheerfully. They nod.

I let out the clutch, and we spurt from the driveway. Lindquist was right; I’m a crack driver, if I say so myself. I have an instinct for automobiles, the way some people have an instinct for horses; I guess it’s in my blood or something, the same element as in Lindquist’s blood. The kids don’t move as I turn this way and that, until we’re roaring down the main highway, ocean to the left of us. We motor through Kilauea, where I glance in the direction of the post office, though of course there’s no time to stop. We’ve traveled eight or nine miles before I open my mouth to address the small fry huddled in the back. Open it wide, since the engine makes a real racket at that speed.

“I want you both to be very brave for your mother. You know how much she loves that cat.”

They nod.

Doris says, “Is she dead already?”

“Not yet. But it’s time, you know. Every living thing has its time on this earth, and its time to . . . well, you know. Heaven and all that.”

“I know.” Doris looks away.

I glance at Wesley in the mirror. He looks as if he’s holding back a regular Niagara of tears. “Wesley? You all right?”

“Yes, Janey.”

“I know it’s hard to lose something you love, but—”

Wesley bursts into sobs.

“Now you’ve done it,” says Doris. “Can’t you just leave us be? We already know all that!”

I shrink back into my skin and focus the rest of my attention on the road. I don’t even look back in the mirror. What do I know about tadpoles, after all? I can hardly remember being one myself.

I stop the car at the veterinary hospital and open the door meekly for the ankle-biters to hop out. I usher them into the waiting room, where Lindquist sits on the bench. Sandy forms a mound of calico fluff on her lap. Next to her sits Mr. Caruthers, and at his feet lies Mollie, head on paws, who rises and wags her tail as the children approach.

“How’s the beagle?” I ask.

“Oh, she’s fine. A little indigestion, that’s all. I just thought that Mollie and me, we’d maybe stay for a bit and keep everybody company.” He gives me this sort of half-ashamed smile, not unlike Mollie’s own expression. “She’s good with kids, you know. When they’re sad.”

The children crowd around Lindquist’s lap. I start to turn for the door, give them all a bit of privacy, but Sandy chooses to lift her head and blink at me. Her eyes are cloudy and sort of confused. Probably they’ve slipped her something to make her comfortable. We should all be so lucky. I step forward and reach between limbs to give the old furball a little scratch around the ears, the way she likes, and wish her Godspeed.

Then I head back outdoors and light a cigarette, which I smoke in long, deep drags, staring through the fronds of the palm to the blue sky above.

After our last walk through the streets of Paris, Velázquez delivered me to my room at the Scribe, but he kept his clothes on. He said I had had too much to drink, and would neither enjoy nor remember the occasion properly, and he wanted our last time in bed to be memorable, like it had been four days ago when I had driven out to the airfield to meet him. I asked if he would lie with me until I fell asleep. He hesitated and then agreed.

I remember I put on my nightclothes and swallowed some aspirin with water before I climbed into bed, as was my habit when I was drunk. Velázquez stayed dressed atop the covers, so he wouldn’t be tempted, he said. He put his arm around me, however, and I laid my head on his chest. I told him I was sorry about his fiancée, and he thanked me gravely.

“But it was selfish of me to tell you that story,” he said. “It’s a terrible, tragic story, and I should not have added to your burden.”

“Why did you tell me, then?” I asked.

“Because I want someone else to remember her, in case I am killed. I want someone else to know that she was alive, and how she died.”

“Don’t say stupid things like that. You won’t be killed.”

He reached for his cigarettes on the nightstand and lit one. He told me to go to sleep, and that’s the last thing I remember about Velázquez, his solemn voice commanding me to sleep, and the smell of his cigarette, those pungent Gauloises he used to smoke, the smell of good-bye.

I make straight for the cottage when we return to Coolibah. The yellow Ford is parked out front—Olle’s come home—and so is Leo’s moped, and I can’t face either of them, I really can’t. I am only just held together by a thread.

I run a bath and emerge an hour later, wrinkled and shivering, to wrap myself in the bathrobe that appeared on the hook one day, no explanation, a typical Lindquist maneuver. I badly want a drink, but to fetch a drink means returning to the main house and Olle’s library, and that is impossible in my present condition, so I light a cigarette instead. I lie on the bed like this, in my bathrobe, smoking in long, deep drags as I stare at the dark wooden beams of the ceiling, and I feel this terrible hole in the bed, where the cat used to sleep, and also a terrible hole in my chest, as if someone has reached inside and torn away some piece of flesh. The cavity grows and grows, splitting my ribs apart, until at last I spring from the bed, crush out the cigarette, and sit down in the chair before the desk, where my life’s work lies in neat stacks of manila folders, carefully labeled.

This is where Leo finds me some time later, when he knocks on the door. I bark, Come in, without looking up, and hear the creak of hinges.

“Irene sent me,” he says, apologetic. “She figured you might be hungry, since you didn’t come to dinner.”

Though I’m afraid of the likely state of my face, I turn anyway. Leo’s carrying a tray with a plate of food on it, a glass of water and also a glass of something else. I can tell from his expression that I’m not myself.

“Thanks. Just set it on the dresser.”

He stares at me another second or two before he steps to the dresser and nudges aside my hairbrush with his knuckles to make room for the tray. “You should eat.”

“I know I should. I’ll eat when I’m hungry.”

“The bourbon was my idea. Thought you could use a drink. Don’t tell Irene.”

“Is it a double?”

“What do you think?”

I scrape back the chair and fetch the bourbon from the tray. It’s a double, neat, as if he read my mind from all the way across the lawn. I thank him sincerely and return to the desk.

“What’re you working on?” he asks.

“This and that,” I tell him, and then I figure I owe him for the bourbon and add, “George Morrow. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to him. After he called off the search, I mean. There’s nothing in the newspapers. He’s turned into a recluse or something.”