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portal between life and death, she cared about nothing and no one else. The issues that had plagued her marriage, the stagnation and even the periods of apathy and distraction, were better left unexamined. Everything beyond the four walls of this hospital room was beside the point. All that mattered now was that James live. For this tender mercy, she would do or give anything.

4
    The shrillness of the phone woke Margaret instantly, and Roger was by her side in the bed, struggling up from sleep at first and then immediately awake.
    “Hello?” Margaret realized just how coiled she was, how braced for the call in the middle of the night since they had all been blind-sided less than a week earlier.
    “Margaret.” It was Pete’s voice, hushed and defeated.
    “Pete, we’re here. What’s happened? Is he awake?”
    “He’s … James …” His voice choked suddenly, crying, unable to speak.
    “Pete?” Roger was listening now, his head up near hers by the receiver, temple to temple.
    More silence. Pete struggled to form words.
    “James is … gone. He … died,” he said simply and then the strangled sounds of a person in anguish. Margaret was stunned. Her mind scuttled to make sense of the individual words he’d uttered. Gone . Dead . How was that possible? They’d just been there that day.
    Roger rolled back on the bed with a groan. He covered his face with his hands and let out one long breath, and then she felt the bed moving. He was crying hard, shaking the mattress.
    “Oh, Pete. No. How is she? Where’s Maura?” she said softly. Silence on the line. “We’ll come over now.”
    Pete made another sound, incomprehensible to her, and they both hung up. She should have told him she’d call Stu and Erin, save him from that, but she didn’t want to call him back now. Margaret moved to comfort Roger wordlessly and then rose to dress. They could tend to their own grief later. Right now her family needed her, needed them both.
    Three days later it was the faces of the other boys at the funeral, the children from James’s elementary school, that pierced Margaret’s heart. They sat fidgeting in the dark mahogany pews, raising and lowering the kneelers, uncomfortable in small blazers and pressed collared shirts, as if they were perfect young replicas of their someday-older selves. Their lives would move forward, sports teams and report cards, orthodontists’ appointments and growth spurts, first girlfriends and broken hearts. James would be forever nine to all of them. It seemed impossible, incomprehensible, as she sat here, looking between the sea of children and the enlarged photographs of James arranged on the altar, that her grandson would never grow another day older.
    Margaret sat quietly as the pews filled behind her and closed her eyes to absorb the calming atmosphere of the church. She marveled at how quickly all of this had happened, like those flash floods in California that cascaded down a dry creek bed and suddenly swept cars and houses and whole families up in the current.
    She opened her eyes and gazed upward at the vaulted ceilings, vaguely reassured by the familiar wood beams and the giant gold filigreed cross, which hung from the ceiling at the front of the church, suspended by almost undetectable wires. They had been coming to St. Thomas the Apostle since before her children were born, although she could never have fathomed that they would one day be here for a grandchild’s funeral, such an inconceivably unnatural order of life, Margaret thought. She closed her eyes again, shutting out the noises of people settling themselves. The familiarity of this place, the rituals that had taken place here throughout the years—the baptisms, communions, and weddings—were a small comfort to her.
    It was a hot, bright day outside, but the partial stone interior of the sanctuary was cool and removed from the world outside. Thick white candles flickered on long iron stands, and there was a profusion of