Annie had a white scar just above her forehead, hidden by the way she parted her hair. It dated from a time when Sarah was about two and a half, a time when Sarah had hit her, possibly with a kind of intent to kill.

They had been in a toy store, shopping, the three of them—Annie, Graham, and Sarah. Sarah was picking up one thing after another, wanting them all, whining. They’d negotiated and finally bought a small stuffed mouse for her, brown with little black beads for eyes and short, stiff whiskers. They’d paid for it and were ready to go, but on the way to the door, Sarah spotted an antique doll’s house at child’s-eye level and reached in to grab something from one of its rooms. Annie, who was directly behind her, squatted down next to the little girl and spoke to her. “I want you to put that back, Sarah.” Annie saw that it was a stove from the doll’s-house kitchen, a little cast-iron stove, an almost exact replica of the kind of stove Annie’s mother had had in their kitchen in Chicago until late in Annie’s childhood.

Sarah looked steadily at her mother. Annie could watch the idea alter Sarah’s face, though she didn’t know what the idea was until Sarah raised her hand with the stove and brought it down quickly, as hard as she was able to, hitting Annie’s head.

Annie cried out, and almost simultaneously felt the warm blood start down her forehead.

In a swift motion, Graham, who had been standing behind Sarah, grabbed her hand, yanking her up slightly, up and backward. Sarah’s face registered her astonishment. Now Graham crouched next to her, his angry face close to hers as he said, in a voice full of controlled rage, “You don’t ever, ever hit Mumma!”

Sarah had wept then, so desperately, for so long, at what must have felt like an unexpected betrayal, a terrible loss—her father! who always, always loved her best!—that they both wound up holding her, trying to reassure her, Annie in particular speaking of her love for Sarah, of Graham’s love, explaining it all away: his anger, her blood—all of it nothing, of no importance.

But Sarah was inconsolable. She wept all the way home in the car, she wept as they laid her in her bed, she wept even as she finally fell asleep, shuddering, her eyelashes sticky with tears.

At the time, Annie thought it must have been like a death for Sarah—her first experience of real loss, and loss of the person she held dearest in life.

That grieving little girl was the second thing Annie thought of as she woke on Saturday to the cold coming in from the open window, to the sound of the heavy rain.

The first being Graham.

Sarah arrived in a cab. Annie was still in her kimono and pajama bottoms when she heard her at the front door and came around from the kitchen.

She opened her arms to embrace her daughter, but Sarah shied back. “Ah! No, no! Don’t, Mom. I’m soaking. Look.” She’d set her suitcase down just inside the door, and now she held her arms out, away from her body, presenting herself. Her jacket was darkened with rain, her hair wet, bedraggled, just from the walk up the driveway. She looked tired too, and drawn, but who wouldn’t after taking the red-eye? Annie leaned forward and kissed her cheek carefully, then put her hand on her daughter’s chilly, wet face. Sarah closed her eyes for a moment and leaned her head against her mother’s warm hand.

After a moment Annie stepped back and said, “Do you want coffee? Or maybe a hot shower first?”

“Coffee. God, yes. And a towel. But I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” she said, as Annie started toward the stairs.

When she came down, she’d taken her coat off and she had a towel draped on her shoulders, like a cape. Her hair was roughed around her face.

They sat together at the table, each with a fresh cup of coffee. The rain was streaking down the big windows. It was as dark as evening outside. Annie had turned on the lamp that sat on the kitchen counter, and it felt warm and cavelike in this part of the room.

They talked about inconsequential things at first—Sarah’s flight, frighteningly bumpy as it landed in the wind and the rain. How good the coffee was. The glamour of the new coffee machine. About Lucas, when he would arrive. About how little Annie had slept.

They set their cups in almost perfect synchrony into their saucers. Sarah looked for a minute at the gray, gray view outside the windows. Gray, and then the deep green of the wet shrubbery.

Her voice was different when she asked, “Where is Daddy now?”

The big question. Annie suddenly felt the full weight of everything. She was unable to answer for a moment.

Sarah reached across and covered Annie’s hands with hers. Annie’s hands were warm, Sarah’s cool. Annie turned hers up to hold Sarah’s for a moment.

“You mean his body,” Annie said.

Sarah nodded.

“Actually, I’m not sure,” Annie said at last. “He wanted to be cremated, so that’s what will happen. But I don’t think it’s happened yet—they have to wait a certain number of hours, I forget how long. I suppose it’s some kind of legal thing.”

Sarah’s voice was almost inaudible when she said, “Oh.” She sat back in her chair, drawing her hands away from Annie’s.

Annie’s face changed. “Did you want to see him?” she cried. “Oh Sarah, I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of it. I’m so sorry.” And then she did think about it, everything that had happened around Graham’s body, around what had seemed the necessity of its being taken away from her. And of course from Sarah, too.

And Lucas? Would Lucas have wanted to see him? She said, “I’m not . . . I don’t think it would have been possible, really.”

“Oh,” Sarah said. Then, “I don’t think I really did anyway. Want to see him.” She was frowning, thoughtful. “It probably would have been . . . I don’t know really.” She shrugged. “Strange, I suppose.”

“It was strange,” Annie said. The memory of those moments when she was with Graham’s body without feeling his presence came back to her, dulled her again. She struggled to think of a way to speak of it. She said, “I felt so much that he wasn’t there, that the body . . .” She lifted her hands. “It almost didn’t matter to me.”

Sarah nodded, frowning—her open, plain face so full of sympathy that Annie felt herself tearing up again. Wrong, she thought. Wrong. You should be comforting her.

But then the tears started, she felt herself giving over to them, and Sarah pushed her chair back and came around the table.

This was the way it held through that day—Annie, often abruptly tearful, Sarah, steady and maternal. Annie was surprised, surprised by herself and a little ashamed; but surprised more by Sarah, who seemed changed. Changed by Graham’s death, of course. But perhaps slowly changed too in ways Annie hadn’t really taken in before, in spite of seeing her as recently as Christmas. It must have been much longer than that since she’d really looked at her daughter. She watched her now as she moved around, as she got more coffee, as she carried the dishes to the sink. She was the same, but different. Even her body seemed different. She was still big, but now she looked athletic, strong, rather than slow and heavy.

She could stay only through midday Monday, she said, so she wanted to do what she could to help. She began to take charge of things that Annie hadn’t even thought of doing—calling Graham’s living siblings, and then Annie’s. Starting to write an obituary to send to The Globe, she said, and the Cambridge Chronicle. Answering the door on and off through the morning, as a few of Graham and Annie’s friends began to appear on the porch with casseroles or fruit baskets or wine and more bunches of flowers. Annie stayed back in the kitchen, where she couldn’t see who was at the door. She could hear her daughter, her rich, velvety voice always the dominant one, sounding gracious and poised. It occurred to her that Sarah had learned this way of being among others, probably from her work at the radio station.

At one point Annie recognized Felicity Rogers’s voice on the porch, heard her say to Sarah, “Don’t you think it’s better that he died before your mother? I mean, honestly.”

If she’d been the one at the door, she would just have stared back at Felicity, dumbfounded. But now she heard Sarah say, in a perfectly friendly tone, “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

“Oh! Well, I mean, just, he would have been so lost without her, whereas she’s so much more . . . self-sufficient, I suppose.”

“Of course: Mom. Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”

“Thank you for managing that one,” Annie said when Sarah came back to the kitchen, carrying Felicity’s offering, a wrapped box of what might have been chocolates.

“Oh, sure.”

“You handled it so much better than I would have,” Annie said.

“I’m a smoothie by now, handling people is so much of what I do.” Sarah sat down.

Annie said, “What a funny phrase—‘handling people.’”

“I suppose.” Sarah shrugged. “It is what I do, though.”

After a moment, Annie said, “I’m just awful at it, myself.”

The rain had stopped by now, the sky was lighter, and Sarah suggested they sit outside.