Annie had been relieved when Sarah arrived, but she was relieved too when she left. She was glad not to have to talk. Not to have to do much of anything. There was a sudden sense of freedom in the empty house. She had food, she had wine—mostly Graham’s cheap stuff in the pantry, but still, wine, and more than enough.

For a few days, then, she stayed by herself. She didn’t cry, in part because she felt that if she started, she might never stop. Later she was unable to account for the time to herself, other than that she supposed that what she mostly did was sit. Either Edith or Frieda called every day—perhaps they’d discussed it, she thought, and were taking turns. She talked to Sarah twice. The landline rang, but she didn’t answer it, didn’t even check the messages. They would call the office, she thought, and hear from someone else that Graham had died.

She did sit at Graham’s desk to sort through the papers on it. She made a pile of things she thought ought to go to the bookstore, but then left them lying there. Danielle called several times on her cell, to tell her that six of the photographs had sold, but Annie didn’t return the calls. The condolence cards, identifiable mostly by their size—smaller than a letter—piled up in the front hall.

After three days of this, she called Edith and asked her to dinner the next night, warning her that she would take no responsibility for the meal—she planned just to heat up one of the casseroles still stacked one on top of the other in the refrigerator, and they could nibble on the cookies or brownies or muffins sitting in tins on the counters, most handed to Sarah at the front door or left anonymously on the table on the porch in those first days.

Fine, Edith said. She’d be happy just to see Annie.

Annie had met Edith after her husband, Mike Hodges, had published Annie’s photo book Emergency, and certainly Annie had liked Edith well enough then, Mike’s nice wife; but when he moved out to live with the man he’d fallen in love with, her real friendship with Edith began.

One of the things they talked about was Mike, of course, about the complicating reality that Edith was still in love with him, and he, in another way, with her. He came to celebrate all the holidays with her and the children; they spoke to each other almost daily on the telephone.

Annie had at first been so angry on Edith’s behalf that she couldn’t understand this. “After all,” she said to her new friend, “he was unfaithful to you. Many, many times, in fact, he was unfaithful to you.”

“Annie, he was gay. He was struggling with that.”

“Why should that excuse it? Who cares if it was a man? He was fucking another person—he was wooing another person—and he was your husband.”

“But think how hard he must have been trying—working really—all those years, to be married to me.” Edith’s face was anguished with the thought of it. “The wrong person entirely,” she said. “The wrong gender, even. It breaks my heart.”

Annie had persisted for a while, even as she understood how judgmental, how small, she sounded. (“So Protestant!” Edith said to her once, and laughed.) But over the weeks and months, she came to accept Edith’s position, and finally, to admire her for it, for her generosity. As they began to know each other well in the aftermath of Edith’s marriage, Annie slowly understood that this generosity, this kindness, was part of what drew her to the other woman.

That, and her physical loveliness—she was at the time possibly the most beautiful person Annie had ever met. She was tall and slender. Her hair then was an unusual bronze color, and she wore it pinned up in a ballerina’s bun. Her face had exactly that kind of beauty—a classic, sculpted ballerina’s beauty, remote and lovely until she smiled, a smile that even in her sorrow conveyed a kind of pleasure in life.

It seemed she was conscious of this, of her beauty. She always dressed elegantly, if simply—tailored slacks on her long, long legs. Silk shirts. Bright lipstick. But she said all that was to please her patients—she was a pediatrician. It mattered to children, she’d said, how you looked. “Remember how much you loved pretty ladies when you were a child?” she asked Annie. “‘Pitty ladies,’” she said in a little-girl voice, and then laughed. “It’s only when you grow up that you learn you can love what’s ugly, too.”

Annie had been unable not to smile—this, from a woman whose husband had been as gorgeous as she was, so that when they came into a crowded room together in the old days, there was an almost collective intake of breath, a kind of group sigh.

Edith called out as she opened the front door, and Annie came around from the kitchen and walked into her embrace. After a long moment, Edith stepped back, holding Annie’s shoulders, looking hard at her. “Have you slept at all?” she asked.

“Naps, mostly,” Annie said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know you are. That’s why I wanted you here.”

They opened the wine that Edith had brought, they talked as Annie heated up the meal, a kind of curried lamb stew. They talked about Sarah and Lucas. About what Annie had been doing. “Almost nothing,” she said, and Edith said, “That sounds about right.”

While they ate, they critiqued the stew unkindly—Edith was a good cook too. Even so, they consumed a good deal of it, and opened a second bottle of wine when they’d finished the first. As Annie poured a glass for her, Edith said, “I feel he should be here, you know, pronouncing on something or other.” She had said something like this several times during the meal.

“I do too,” Annie said.

“Opining, I guess you’d say,” Edith said.

“He did love to opine,” Annie said. They sat quietly for a few moments.

From outside, they heard a dog somewhere nearby barking loudly. Someone yelled, “Shut up, Bertie!” and the dog barked again.

“That worked well,” Edith said.

Annie smiled at her. After a moment, she said, “Mostly they were just passing notions, though.”

“What were?”

“His opinings. His opinions. Half the time he’d change his mind the next day. He’d take the opposing view.” She tried to make her voice deep, Graham-like. “‘You know what? I’ve rethought.’”

Edith smiled. “Yes. A hard man to pin down.”

“A fancy dancer,” Annie said. She had a sudden memory of him, dancing. Fancy indeed, and so incongruously light on his feet. They had sometimes danced together, just the two of them, in the evenings. Occasionally Annie stood on those graceful feet so he could move her around as though she were a child, he the grown-up.

“I remember when he was on about the Iraq War,” Edith said. “Well”—she made a face, she rolled her eyes—“one of the many times he was on about that. But the idea was, ‘Why did we have to kill a hundred thousand Iraqis just to get Saddam Hussein out of there. Whatever happened to the wet job?’ Remember?”

“Oh yes,” Annie said, and laughed.

“‘Ah, the good old wet job,’” Edith intoned, wanting to keep her friend happy a few moments longer. She’d succeeded, Edith—she’d made Annie laugh. Her mobile face showed her pleasure in that.

“Yeah,” Annie said, “but then he couldn’t stand the drone program.”

“Too dry maybe,” Edith said. “Not quite wet enough.”

After a minute, Annie said, “As much as anything, I think he just liked saying it—‘the wet job.’”

Edith smiled. “It does roll nicely off the tongue.”

The room was dusky by now. Outside, the backyard was deep in shadow, but the sky above the neighbors’ houses was a clear deep blue, and the higher leaves of the trees seemed to shimmer in the last of the sunlight’s lingering touch on them.

“Do you remember his argument about fiction?” Annie asked. “About narrative? Another big theory.”

“I don’t. Probably I wasn’t at that party.”

“Just, that we read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel . . . consoled, I think he said, by that notion. Consoled to think that life isn’t just one damned thing after another. That it has sequence and consequence.” She smiled at Edith. “I think it was more or less the idea that fictional narrative made life seem to matter, that it pushed away the meaninglessness of death.”

Death. She’d said the word, and Edith’s face was suddenly serious. After a long silence, she said gently, “And otherwise it doesn’t matter? Life doesn’t matter?”

Annie was stopped by the question for a few seconds. Then she said, “Well, look at his life. It was. And it was, and it was. And now”—she shrugged—“it isn’t. Pfft. There’s nothing left.” Annie was startled by how angry she sounded. She tried to lighten her tone. “Some narrative,” she said. After a moment or two, she got up and fetched some matches. She lit the candles on the table.

Edith was quiet, watching her. Then she said, “That’s not true, Annie.”

“What?” Annie sat down again.

“That there’s nothing. Nothing left. There’s lots left.” She sounded almost fierce.

“Like what?”

“Well, all our memories of him.”

Annie didn’t want to fight with Edith, who was only being Edith, her good friend. “Okay,” she said. Her voice sounded tired.

“That’s not enough?” Edith asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about Sarah, then? What about Lucas? What about the bookstore?”