“I do. But I didn’t think I could bear it, if something had happened. I just didn’t want to . . . to be the one in charge, I suppose.”

And that was true. But it was also true that she had been in charge of Karen, increasingly so as the months went on. To the degree she could, she monitored the old woman’s appearance. She always checked in with her before she went to the grocery store. She picked up things that Karen would be able to fix easily for herself—canned soups, bread, eggs. Sometimes prepared food from Formaggio—a roast chicken or pasta salad. And at least once a week, she had the old woman over for dinner, though Karen ate very little on these occasions. Mostly she just wanted to talk—to discuss with Annie her confused version of the world. The people who came and looked through her windows at night. Who stole her money and her books. The houses on the street that had burned up. And once, tearfully, she broke the news to Annie that Graham—she called him “that fat man you live with”—had died. “I didn’t want to tell you,” she said to Annie. “But then I talked to your mother, and she said I should.” She pulled a crumpled Kleenex from a pocket in her skirt and blew her nose. “I couldn’t be sorrier,” she said.

“It’s all right,” Annie had said. “I’m almost used to it.”

Now she went on with her story of the morning of Karen’s death. “There was a niece, though, I remembered that—somewhere on the North Shore. So after the ambulance took her away—”

“She was already dead, then?” Lucas asked.

“She was. They wouldn’t say much to me, of course—I’m sure they saw me as just the nosy neighbor who let them in. But they did tell me that. And that they were taking her to the hospital. To Mount Auburn. I said I’d try to find someone—some relative or something. So anyway, I looked up the niece—I knew it was Ipswich or Gloucester, one of those towns—and she had the same last name, thank goodness. So I told her Karen had died, and where to call.”

She and Graham had wondered about this niece every now and then. Was she real? Or maybe just a figment of Karen’s imagination? They suspected the latter, having been witnesses to the long solitary life next door, the cat and his two predecessors seemingly the only companions the old lady ever had. So Annie had been a bit startled when she found this niece so easily.

“She seemed . . . put out, I’d have to say.” (“Christ!” the woman had said. “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”) “But she turned up later that day. She came to get the key from me so she could get in. I think she’d already been to the hospital. I was glad, I suppose, to shed my responsibility for her. For Karen, I mean. Horrible as that is to say.”

They were all silent for a moment.

“It seemed the niece just wanted out too, really. The whole thing seemed beyond sad to me. Though she did come back over to ask if I’d take the cat in for a few days. She needed some time to straighten things out, was what she said.”

“So now you’re stuck with him?”

“Not stuck, really. Because it turns out she’d left him to us. Karen had. In her will. To Graham and me. At some point he apparently agreed to it. I knew nothing about it.”

When Annie had told her the story, Sarah had imagined it, Karen asking, her father reassuring her. Of course! Of course! Sam’s like a brother to me. Or maybe, It’s easy enough to say yes to you, Karen, because you’re never going to die anyway.

“But you are stuck, still,” she said to her mother now.

Another silence. After a moment, Annie said, “Well, she left quite a bit of money, too.”

Sarah hadn’t heard this before.

“She left you money?” Edith said.

“Well, not to me, exactly.” She seemed embarrassed. “But to me, yeah. To take care of him. Sam.” She made a funny, guilty face, and nodded several times. “The cat.”

“To take care of the cat?” Lucas echoed.

Annie nodded. “Yeah,” she said.

“How much money?” Sarah said. “If I may ask.”

She turned to Sarah. “A ridiculous amount.”

“How much?”

She smiled, ruefully. “Fifty thousand dollars.”

Those at the table seemed to move as one, though in different directions, some leaning forward to look at Annie, others pulling back, surprised.

“My god, Mother! You didn’t tell me that part of the story.”

“Well, it’s the embarrassing part, really. Isn’t it?”

“It is a whole lot of Meow Mix,” Don said.

“I know.” She laughed and lifted her hands, helpless. “And he’s fifteen years old. He won’t live long enough to eat a tenth of it. Less than that. But she really loved him.” Her face sobered for a moment, and then she shrugged. “So suddenly I’m a rich widow with a cat. A cliché.”

This was, relatively speaking, true. Sarah knew the details. Graham had left a life insurance policy for $200,000, and Peter had a buyer for the store—he didn’t want to hold on to it without Graham. He’d told Annie, and Annie had told Sarah, that he thought she’d get about $80,000, after taxes and everything else.

“But the funny thing is, I like him,” Annie said.

“Who?” Jeanne asked.

“The cat.”

“I thought you didn’t like cats,” Lucas said.

“Did I say that?”

“More than once.”

“Well, I suppose I did.” She looked pensive. “They’re all a little bit snotty, really. And Sam does have a certain . . . hauteur, I guess you’d say. But now that Karen isn’t there anymore, he’s more or less dropped that pose. With me, anyway. I think he realizes he can’t get away with taking that tone now. He’s actually quite affectionate.”

“I don’t like them,” Natalie said. “Cats. I just can’t like them.” She made a face, shaking her head. “Because of birds. Because I’m a birder.” She was holding her hand out toward Claire, so the baby could slowly pass her the little pieces of clementine peel she’d managed to get off. “And cats, who aren’t even native to this country, kill billions and billions of birds a year.”

“Billions? You’re sure?” Sarah asked. “That sounds like way too much. Not millions?”

Natalie shook her head. “Billions,” she said emphatically, angrily.

Claire looked at her, interested. “Biyuns,” she said quietly, as if to herself. Then, louder: “Beeyuns!”

“I would have felt the same way,” Annie said. “I did feel the same way, Lucas is right. But I think just taking care of something—someone—endears them to you.”

“Oh!” Natalie said. “Don! This explains you.” Several of them laughed, Don included. Claire looked around benignly, eagerly, her smiling mouth opened expectantly, as if someone might let her in on the joke. You could see the stubs of two lower teeth clearly.

“So where is he now?” Frieda asked again. “The cat.”

“Oh, I put him back over at Karen’s for the day. I wasn’t sure how he’d be around Claire. It seemed better not to risk it.”

Peter started on a story about an uncle of his, the big family fight that resulted from his leaving all of his money to a particular niece. The one who’d taken care of him as he aged, sure, but still . . .

They talked about wills, who had one, who didn’t. Lucas said all of this reminded him to get on it. “But it seems like such a concession to death.”

“Yeah, it does,” Peter said. “It is. But you just can’t keep saying ‘Who, me?’ forever.”

“I know. But I’m just not ready yet.”

“Ready to make a will, or to die?” Sarah asked.

“God, Sarah!” Peter said. “What about . . . tact?”

“The latter,” Lucas said to Sarah. “I have a few things I’d like to do first.”

“Ah, I’ve always wanted to see Paris before I die,” Don said, in his best W. C. Fields voice.

“What kinds of things?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know, really. Just . . . you want to leave something behind, don’t you? Something to be remembered by?”

“Annie and Nat have it all over the rest of us there,” Don said. “Pictures. Actual things. And then also the particular way of seeing the world they offer us.”

“Mine scattered widely over about two, or maybe three, living rooms in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Annie said.

“Oh, come on, Annie,” Natalie said.

“Well, but you do always compare yourself, don’t you?” Annie said. “Don’t you?” she asked Natalie.

“To whom?” This was Frieda.

“Well, in my case, to people who have a more . . . singular vision, I guess you’d say.” And suddenly the image of Sofie Kahn came to her—Sofie, the lake behind her, her head tilted back as she swayed slightly to the deep, thrilling sounds she was making. “I wish I did.” And then, because she’d sounded so wistful, even to herself, she changed her voice. “See, I don’t, if you really look at the whole oeuvre.” She exaggerated this word, to make it seem pretentious. “I’ve just . . . gone around, trying this and then trying that. Jumping around. But then you notice that someone else, Nan Goldin, say, or Bill Eggleston, or Diane Arbus—they have some one thing they’re doing, always. Something they must need you to see.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad to me—a wide-ranging talent,” Frieda said.