"What?" Cassie turned to look at her. Edith was heavy. It wasn't easy for her to get out of that Mercedes, roomy as it was. She moved one enormous chevroned leg out the door, then another. Cassie had to haul her to a standing position. Upright, she examined her niece again.

"Cassie, are you sure you're all right? You look so thin."

"You never told me you didn't like Mitch."

"Oh well, you know. People don't say these things. They don't want to hurt your feelings. But he was a difficult man," Edith said vaguely.

Cassie blew air through her nose. Edith's opinion of her husband came as a surprise to her. She thought everybody liked Mitch. This was getting to be the longest day of her life. Slowly they made their way through the lot and into the hospital. There was the same bustle in the lobby on Monday at midday as there had been all weekend. They moved down the glass hallway into the head trauma wing. Cassie tried not to look at the people around her, all suffering losses.

When they got to the intensive care unit, everything seemed the same. The nurses at the station. Other staff with their blue pajamalike uniforms. In Mitch's cubicle of a room, his body was in the same position on the bed. His eyes were still at half-mast. Today, however, there was a little tremor in his hand. Cassie watched it with horror. The hand seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

Edith moved her great bulk toward the bed. Her chubby face held an expression of astonishment, as if she'd been ambushed by an unexpected feeling of sorrow over the mortality of a man she claimed she'd never liked.

"Mitch, honey. It's Edith," she said in her loudest, bossiest voice. "You remember Edith, don't you? Charlotte's sister. Cassandra's aunt. I've come to see you in the hospital. You look good, Mitch. Really good. How are you feeling, honey? A little better?"

Stupid question.

She gave him a big bright smile. "We're all praying for you, honey."

That would get him. Mitch hated God. Didn't believe in the power of prayer. The big woman's smile faded just a little as she stood there eyeing all those tubes going in and out of him. Her face was one big pucker of wonderment until she noticed Mitch's twitching hand that seemed to be trying so hard to say something. This got her going again.

"You'll be on your feet in no time," she said softly and with real conviction.

This wasn't the goodbye that Cassie had envisioned on the way over. On the other side of the bed, she held her breath, for Mitch seemed to be coming out of it. He looked drained, but definitely alive. Maybe that noisy machine pumping air into his lungs was actually charging him up again like a car battery, and soon he would roar into life again. A disheartening thought.

Cassie tried to muster some sympathy for him, to remember the bright moments, the good times of their twenty-six years together. As before, she was stuck in the later years, after he'd left her for another woman without her even knowing it. All the joy she could remember was being the mommy of Teddy and Marsha when they'd been babies, bathing them and changing them and cooking their favorite foods, teaching them those ABCs and making life fun. She remembered their hugging on the big bed, cuddling like puppies. Those long-gone days brought tears to her eyes.

She watched in horror as Aunt Edith picked up Mitch's puffy hand. "Give me a little squeeze," Edith instructed him. "We're all rooting for you, Buddy."

Not Cassie. She was imagining the lights flashing. Code, code.

"Look, honey, he's coming back," Edith said.

No, that was not possible. Cassie didn't want him back. She planned to turn off that respirator and make him history. Don't squeeze, she prayed. No swimming back to the surface now, you bastard.

Long, suspenseful moments passed as Edith experimented with Mitch's hand, curling his fingers around one of hers just like Cassie had done only yesterday.

"Can you hear me, Buddy? Give me a squeeze," Edith coaxed.

Suddenly the finger that had been moving around on the sheet stopped. The hand in her grasp lay there limp as a fish fillet. Aunt Edith extricated herself, and Cassie exhaled with a little hiccup of thanks.

"He was always a stubborn man," Edith remarked. "Can he hear us or not, honey?"

"We don't know," Cassie said.

"I had a friend once. Rosalind Witte, remember her? She lives in Florida now. Roz's husband, Paul, had a stroke. She pushed him around in a wheelchair for ten years before he finally passed on. Couldn't say a word." Edith clicked her tongue.

"She kept a pencil tied to his wrist. Every little while, she'd put that pencil in his hand and he'd make some squiggles. She told everybody he was writing his memoirs." Edith pointed to Mitch's finger suddenly making circles on the sheet again. "I don't envy you," she whispered.

SHAKEN BY EDITH'S OMINOUS REACTION to Mitch's condition, Cassie paced the hall o utside the lounge, where she had spent so many hours over the weekend. In the cluttered room, the TV was playing loudly to an audience of some ten people, who all seemed to belong to a distraught family Cassie hadn't seen before. Every minute something else reminded Cassie of her mother's death. She didn't want to sit in the lounge, in case a code was called and another family lost someone they loved. She waited impatiently for Mark in the hall, and he arrived, as promised, only minutes after noon. Time had slowed to a crawl.

"Mark." She felt safe as soon as she saw him.

"Hi, sweetheart." He kissed her cheek and peered at her intently right in front of everybody, thumb and index finger turning her chin from side to side as if he hadn't examined her face just this way only yesterday.

"Not a bad job at all," he confirmed again, shaking his bald head, since they were old friends and she hadn't trusted him enough to make the referral.

"Let's go somewhere. I can't talk in there," she said about the lounge.

"No, no, of course not. I thought we'd have a quick lunch somewhere close by." Today he was wearing a different sports jacket and different aftershave. His cheeks were smooth and moisturized. His color was excellent.

"Lunch?" A warning bell went off.

"Yes, looks like you need some sustenance." Mark Cohen was a study in contrasts. There was nothing handsome about him. In middle age, his flesh was filling in all around him. His face was round. He was shorter than she was. His nose was a blob on his face.

But to Cassie, the well-dressed teddy bear also had the suave and comforting air of a professional. His gentle and sympathetic hand on her arm, his expression of short-term deep concern for her pain combined with absolute acceptance of the inevitability of death. His wry expression, indeed his whole demeanor, seemed to say: "I've seen it all a hundred times. This, too, shall pass." This message of competence and empathy felt like the very last thing left over from the age of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

"How are you holding up?" asked the only man Cassie knew who could understand and help her.

"Oh God. You wouldn't believe what's happening. Mark, I don't even know how to tell you this." She wished she could lower her head onto his chubby chest and rest it there for a year or two and let him take care of everything. His navy blazer was the very best, just like the kind Mitch wore, with gold buttons and a pink shirt under it. The shirt had a dazzling white collar, and cuffs that were held together with gold golf ball cuff links. Mitch happened to have the same ones.

Cassie couldn't help being impressed by the close attention to sartorial detail and personal care that some men took of themselves. In Mark, it reminded her of the kidney infection he'd cured twelve years ago, and the way he'd handled her breast lump scare several years later. Mitch had left town the day of her biopsy, but Mark had remained staunchly by her side.