Christian held on to Box’s hand for an extra beat. “I assume you’ve heard that Miranda has gone off to New York.”

“Yes,” Box said. “She’s left us both, it seems.”

Christian Bartelby let go of Box’s hand and ran a hand through his hair. He was wearing a navy T-shirt under a navy blazer and a pair of khakis and loafers with no socks. Box wondered if Christian Bartelby was going into the restaurant to meet a date. Was everyone moving on but him?

“And your wife?” Christian Bartelby said. “How is she?”

“Ah,” Box said. “She has left me as well.”

“Left you?” Dr. Bartelby said.

“It seems so,” Box said, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any more, so he saluted the good doctor and sidled away.

Every few days, a call came from Agnes, “checking in.”

“Daddy?” she said. “Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Eating?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What are you eating?”

“Out, mostly. The usual places. Freddy at the Russell House is sick of me.” Box cleared his throat. “How is your mother?”

“She…lost her job,” Agnes said.

“What?” Box said.

“Vaughan Oglethorpe and the board asked for her resignation.”

“For what reason?” Box said. “Certainly not over the business with Hughes. That’s hardly legal. Her personal life is private and separate.”

There was a long pause. “She missed a lot of work this summer, Daddy,” Agnes said. “It was all documented. And Elizabeth Jennings sits on that board, and Mom felt like maybe it was a personal vendetta.”

Now it was Box’s turn to be quiet. She missed a lot of work this summer. Because she was with Clendenin, because Box was around and Agnes was home and thus Dabney had to conduct her rendezvouses during the workday.

Oh, Dabney, what have you done? Your life is falling apart. It didn’t have to be this way. Was he worth it? Was he?

And still, Box felt indignation on Dabney’s behalf. Vaughan Oglethorpe was a pompous, self-important ass, and Elizabeth Jennings was petty and jealous. They had done an unconscionable thing in asking Dabney to resign. It didn’t matter how much time Dabney had missed. Box and everyone else in the world knew that Dabney could run the Chamber of Commerce in her sleep, or from an outpost on the surface of Mars.

Leave my wife alone! he thought.

“Is she there?” Box asked impulsively. Dabney had called every day with updates about the healing of Agnes’s head wound, but he hadn’t answered once, because even her voice on the message made him too upset for words. But it seemed impossible to him that Dabney would have been fired from the Chamber (the very phrase was inconceivable), and she hadn’t called him to tell him. But that, he supposed, was what their new arrangement meant. Separated.

“Um…” Agnes said. “No, she’s not home.”

Not home, he thought. Of course not.

Dabney

There was only one more secret she was keeping, and it was time for that to come out as well.

Clen took the news silently, as Dabney had known he would. She waited until after they made love because their lovemaking was precious to her and she wasn’t sure how much more of it there would be. It would be one of the things she missed the most—Clen thrusting into her, his hungry mouth on her breasts, his animal moans of joy and gratitude. He was so tender that he brought her to tears every time.

She lay spent and sweating, with her head on his chest. It was astonishing the way he could encircle her with one arm, how he could make her feel safer and more protected than any man with two. She thought back to when she had believed that her symptoms—the ache in her gut, the constant exhaustion, the breathlessness, the lack of appetite—were the result of the impossible position she had put herself in. Loving two men at once.

She would give up everything—her home, her morning coffee, the sunrise and sunset, the field of flowers at Bartlett Farm, the bluebird sky, the crimson moors in fall, the bump and rumble of the Impala’s tires over the cobblestones; she would give up good books and champagne and ribbon sandwiches and lobster dipped in melted butter and the rainbow fleet sailing around Brant Point Lighthouse and her dirty tennis serve and her pearls and her penny loafers and she would give up the chance of ever holding her grandchild. She would give it all up to Death, but please, she thought, please do not take away Clendenin.

“I’m sick,” she said. The dusk was gathering, but Dabney still heard birds and bumblebees outside the screened windows of Clen’s cottage. “I have pancreatic cancer, it’s terminal, a matter of months. A few more good months.”

Clen squeezed her until she thought she would break. It genuinely hurt; her organs, already so compromised, were being crushed like soft, overripe fruit. And yet it felt good. She knew what he was doing, what he was thinking; he wanted her so close that she became him. Come live inside me, we will be one, I will keep you safe, and you will not have to die alone.

Telling Agnes, of course, was even worse. It was one thing to leave a husband or a lover behind, and another thing entirely to leave a child.

Dabney told Agnes over breakfast—French toast with fresh peaches, crispy bacon, and home fries with herbs cut from the garden. It didn’t matter how beautiful the food was; as soon as Dabney opened her mouth, neither of them would be able to eat a bite. And yet it was Dabney’s nature to feed people. She couldn’t stop now.