Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, the priest said, and let perpetual light shine upon him. Then it was Kit who was shaken with sudden disabling tears, wishing it were so and at the same time knowing that if they asked God to shine a light upon him in his box in the earth, it could only be their own light that was meant—hers and her father’s and mother’s—because there wasn’t any other, and that light wasn’t perpetual and it wasn’t eternal. Marion had grown calmer by then, maybe the capsule she’d taken working at last (she’d given Kit one too), and she held her head high and didn’t cry when the young soldiers, one white and one black, placed the folded flag in her lap like his baby soul wrapped up.

She lay facedown on her bed a long time, as she had the day when he went to join the army. Downstairs Marion and George gave cake and coffee to the soldiers and to the priest and the few relatives who had been able to come so far. An awakened winter fly buzzed and buzzed between the sash and the storm window. Kit knew with certainty that it was she who had caused Ben’s death, by the intensity of her attention to him, by clawing at him to keep him with her on the roads from Libi to Mary and Rayn to Sorc where nothing changed and everything was possible. Until at last he broke free, broke her hold. Broke free, broke her hold: that was the ninth wave again arising, and she felt anew what had happened, inconceivably, irreversibly, and wept again.

Her child too: by conceiving it in her anger at Ben, by offering it a promise of life that she couldn’t keep, she had done harm that could never be made right. If there really was a light to shine upon us, she would never see it now. She was going to see Ben in dreams and he was going to ask her why she had done those things, why she hadn’t known how to not want them, why she hadn’t just let him alone.

She pressed her head into the pillow, her teeth clenched shut on her sobs. She knew now why people can’t leave the graves where those they love are buried, why they want to lie down there and grip the grass, hug the stone: it wasn’t out of any stupid extravagance of grief but just a need to stop this hemorrhaging, to press something into you to stanch the wound. If she could she would go lie down there like an abandoned dog till she died.

Well she could die. She was smarter than she had been; she knew now how tough her body was and how it would fight back. But it wasn’t all she knew.

After a time the pill she had taken, cycling through her brain and soul, ran out or let go; for a while she slept and didn’t dream. When she woke the world was vacant. She left her room, but at the top of the stairs she sat down, dizzy or unable to continue. Marion, come from the kitchen in her apron, saw her there.

“Your father has taken those two boys to the bus station.”

Kit nodded.

“I wonder if you could help me.”

“Sure. What.”

But her mother said nothing further, only looked up at her, and Kit got up and made her way to the bottom of the half-flight of stairs. Her mother’s smile was more terrible than her grief. She took Kit’s shoulders in her hands, to reassure her, or to steady herself.

“I am just so glad,” she said, “that I found you that day. That I came back and found you that day in the bathroom. I am just so glad.”

In her mother’s embrace Kit felt all the tears that were to come, drawn from a reservoir deeper than she could have imagined. Oh Ben. She couldn’t die: she had no right to. She had been a bad daughter and she supposed (in the odor of her mother’s perfume and the sound of her weeping) that she would probably never really be a good one. But she couldn’t die. Not dying was the only thing she could do for her mother, and she would have to do it.

She didn’t need to go right back, George told her that. Surely they’d understand at school if she wanted to stay for a day or two, or even longer. Marion could use the help. But she went back when Monday came, refusing George’s offer of a ride and taking the big smelly bus that stopped at every cornfield crossroads. The weather had changed utterly, and along the rivers the willows were yellow-green. Swollen buds made the trees seem cloudy or vague in the sunlight, as though they were in the process of vanishing, or appearing newly, which they were. Daffodils were even coming out; this part of the state was proud of its daffodils, which were featured on travel posters and city medallions; all along the road there would appear sudden glowing fields of them, nodding together like orchestras, trumpeting silently. It was a long trip.

In the house on East North Street, Jackie wrapped her in his quilt to stop her shivering, gave her boiled coffee and jelly doughnuts, and listened. Max too, in the doorway, and Saul.

“He was stationed in the Philippines, it turns out,” she said, clutching her drawn-up knees. “I don’t remember him saying he was there. But anyway this thing happened with the ammunition, this accident…”

“I don’t think so,” Saul said.

“What?”

“Didn’t you say he spent time in Vietnam?”

“Well a while ago. I mean I guess he got moved around.” She knew suddenly that she had better not talk about it anymore. She sipped her bitter brew.

“Well, because,” Saul said, uncomfortable but unwilling to stop, “what we’re hearing is that American Special Forces are engaging with the Viet Cong, that’s the South Vietnamese insurgents, and even with the North Vietnamese army.”

“What do you mean, engaging with?” Max asked.

“I mean fighting them. Having, well, not battles, but. And some Americans are getting killed.” He looked at Kit and not at Max. “Then they ship the bodies back to the Philippines and tell everybody it was an accident.”

Kit stared at him. “How can you say that?” she whispered, amazed. “How can you say a thing like that?”

“Well that’s what we’re hearing. And this fits. And if it’s so, I think people should know.”

“My God,” Kit said. “You’re saying my brother was killed in a battle.”

“No no,” Saul said, seeming at last to perceive his roommates’ looks and Kit’s horror for what they were. “Not necessarily. I’m just saying, well, it fits.” He lowered his eyes. “You might be able to find out. You might ask some questions.”

Kit struggled free of the quilt, kicking it aside, getting to her feet, wanting out with furious urgency.

“It’s important,” Saul said behind her. “It is.”

No place to go. She sat down on the edge of the couch and embraced herself. Something unbearably sharp hurt her heart: How could they, how could they, she thought, not knowing what she meant by it, whether she meant Saul’s cruelty to say that to her, or Ben’s lie to her, that he wouldn’t shoot anybody, or those soldiers who came with his body, who were his friends, who knew.

“Kit,” Jackie said, and sat beside her.

Ben hadn’t slipped into death, as anyone could, no he had fought his way there, into that blackness and nonexistence; pressed on in, armed. Oh please let it not be so. Let him not have lied to her, the very last thing. If they had lied, if he had, they took even her grief from her, and left her nothing.

Two days of classes had gone by, and Kit was required to bring absence excuses, signed by her proctor, to each teacher whose class she had missed. Instead she stuffed them in her purse and forgot them. One she did think she had to hand in, but rather than to class she brought it to the liberal arts tower, thinking she would put it in his mailbox as she had her poem at the beginning of the semester. When she passed by his office, though, he was standing in the doorway, apparently just leaving. Seeing her, he opened the door wider for her and showed her in.

“I wasn’t in class last week,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Again asleep?”

“No. Not asleep.” She pulled from her pocket the green form and gave it to him. He unfolded and read it, sitting down at his desk. The room could have been anyone’s: there was no sign that he alone occupied it.