Everyone from the store had come. The younger of Annie’s two brothers had flown up from Philadelphia, and she introduced him around. From time to time she saw him in intense conversations, once, for a long while, with Lucas, who’d always liked him.

Karen was there, fully dressed, mirabile dictu, and with shoes on her feet, even if they were some kind of sneaker, blue with shimmery streaks. Annie had asked Sarah to keep an eye on her, which must have included her going over there ahead of time for a wardrobe check; and Annie saw Sarah or Lucas or Frieda standing next to her every now and then through the evening, one or another of them talking with her, guiding her this way or that with a hand at her elbow.

At some point Annie looked across the room and saw the old woman standing in front of the open refrigerator like someone assessing its contents for leftovers, and she started to go over to try to distract her. But one of the students appeared next to her then, and gently guided her to the table, where she seemed instantly occupied with the food.

“How Graham would have loved this!” someone said, and Annie agreed.

“I can imagine him here, the life of the party, as usual.” Yes, she said.

“This is so wonderful. The only thing missing is Graham.”

Oh, I know, Annie said. So true, she answered. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as all the earlier commiseration had been. It made her glad that she’d asked for the delay, the extra months to prepare herself for this night.

And gradually it turned into the party Graham had wanted anyway—really, just a party. She stepped out of the house later in the evening, looking back up at the soft flickering candlelight in the windows, and listening for a moment to the din, satisfied with it, and also saddened by it. Graham would have loved it.

They ran out of wine, and she had asked one of the student helpers to get out a case of the cheaper white that Graham had always kept on hand in the pantry refrigerator. (“If we’re that drunk, we’d just be wasting the good stuff.”) She had already begun to say goodbye to the early departures. Karen had disappeared, and Sarah was moving around more freely, more energetically, perhaps as a result. The student helpers were everywhere too, replenishing the serving dishes, pouring wine, picking up the dishes and glasses left here and there.

Annie went outside again, to cool off this time. There were perhaps ten people on the back patio by now, and Annie lingered out there, talking to Remi Caldwell from next door about e-books, a pleasant, predictable discussion. He was all for them, Annie against—on Graham’s behalf as well as her own. Several people came to say goodbye to her during this conversation, which meant the discussion meandered as they jumped in briefly—e-books, yes. But also Amazon, self-publishing—the familiar gamut, the familiar positions. They also touched on the housing crisis, the impossibility of McCain’s choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. Obama’s chances. Felicity Rogers said that if he won, she would never stop being terrified that he’d be assassinated, that it was almost enough to make her hope he wouldn’t win. The discussion turned to 1968, the terrible wave of assassinations and the Democratic convention in Chicago.

When Annie came back inside, needing to use the bathroom, she saw that there were fewer people in here than outside, maybe only seven or eight of them left, mostly sitting down now in the living room, lost in earnest discussion, probably of the kind she’d just been having. Or maybe just deeply absorbing gossip. Lucas and Jeanne were among them. Annie had noticed earlier that Jeanne was one of the few people who looked as though they’d thought about anything like mourning apparel—in her case, a black silk suit that made her more formidably beautiful than ever. Now she was sitting with her bare feet tucked under her on the sofa. She waved to Annie.

Annie went through the kitchen area, where the student help was cleaning up—bagging trash, washing dishes—and tried the handle on the lavatory in the back hallway.

Locked. Someone called out something from within, she couldn’t hear what because of the kitchen clatter, but she decided not to wait in any case. She went up the back stairs, through the bedroom, to the bathroom on the second floor.

She’d stood up well, Annie thought, lifting her face to the mirror as she washed her hands. She’d had a sense of this evening as her own version of a tribute to Graham, the eulogy in the form of food and wine, in the form of the kind of party he had always loved. Now she was glad that it seemed to have worked, and that in many ways—in many of the old ways—even she had had a good time. She knew that the silence after everyone left, the solitude—especially after Sarah went back to San Francisco—that would be hard. But perhaps she’d sleep tonight. She was tired enough. She dried her hands and ran a comb through her hair. She put on fresh lipstick and came out of the bathroom, out into the hallway by the front stairs.

And was stopped.

Stopped by a noise from the front room, Graham’s study.

It was weeping, she recognized after a few seconds of mystification: that irregular, shuddering intake of breath that accompanies silent weeping.

Sarah, she thought instantly. Annie hadn’t seen her in a while downstairs. Of course, Annie had been outside, in back. But she didn’t think Sarah had been in the living room either.

It must be Sarah, then, come to sit by herself in Graham’s study. Annie had come in here several times herself in the last weeks, come in to mourn for Graham, come in and thought, what was she ever to do with this room? It was his. If he was anywhere, he was here.

And of course, he was nowhere, so it was from here he was most absent.

She went to the doorway, thinking she would hold her daughter, comfort her, feeling a rush of love for Sarah that it seemed their closeness after Graham’s death had intensified.

The light was on in the hall behind her; it let her see into the room. There was a figure in Graham’s chair, resting her head on her arms, which were set on his desk. The party noise swelled downstairs, laughter, a woman’s sharp cry of delight.

“Sarah?” she said, though she knew in the second before she spoke that it wasn’t Sarah. This figure was smaller and too feminine—too female.

The woman sat up quickly and turned toward the open doorway, her face lifted to Annie, ravaged by grief, sorrow, and then quickly something else. Guilt. Apology.

It was Rosemary. Rosemary Gregory.

Annie had a moment of confusion, and then of sudden clarity. Followed immediately by a powerful sense of her own stupidity, her own unwillingness to have looked, to have seen.

Rosemary. Of course, it was Rosemary.

21

“Did you know? About Graham’s . . . lover?”

She’d waited until nine in the morning to call Frieda and ask if she could come over there, to Frieda’s place. She didn’t want to see Edith, Edith who was too kind, too good. She wanted Frieda. She wanted someone else Graham had betrayed. She wanted someone who would be angry with her. For her.

Frieda’s face changed. She didn’t speak for a moment. She took her glasses off and polished them—carefully, it seemed—with the hem of her shirt, a faded polo. She put them back on. Then she said, very softly, “Yes. I did.”

“How?” Annie couldn’t disguise her shock. “How did you know?”

“He told me.”

“He told you!” Annie laughed, a sharp, ugly bark. She felt doubly betrayed. Graham, and now Frieda too.

Frieda, who had known and not said anything. Who had held on to this knowledge, this secret with Graham. Somehow, especially after the toast last night, after their embrace, this seemed unbearable, this . . . betrayal.

“God!” Annie said. “I just can’t stand this.”

Frieda nodded. She seemed ashamed somehow, Annie thought. Embarrassed.

Well, she ought to.

(“Perhaps you should wash up,” she’d said stiffly to Rosemary. “I think the bathroom is free.”

A stupid, stupid thing to say, when what she meant was that Rosemary should get out, get the fuck out of Graham’s room.

“Oh,” Rosemary had said. Her breathing was audible and ragged. “Sure,” she said, in a small, congested voice, getting up, not looking at Annie as she stumbled past her toward the bathroom.

Annie had quickly shut the door to Graham’s room; and then stood there stupidly in the hall with her hand still on the doorknob. Stood there, as unsure of what to do next as she was when Graham’s ashes had arrived. Thinking about this later, she had smiled bitterly. Both moments marking the end of something, of course.)

“But how did you find out?” Frieda asked her now.

“What difference does that make?”

“It doesn’t. It doesn’t, of course. I . . .” Frieda lifted her shoulders.

“I just know it,” Annie said. “She was . . . she was in Graham’s room, at the end of the party. When I went upstairs. She was crying.” Annie closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them, she looked at Frieda, who was frowning back at her. Her mouth was slightly open. She looked puzzled. Her glasses seemed just as smudged as before she’d polished them.