Robert Morgan didn't reply, and I shifted my weight to my other hip. I stil wasn't used to the house in its new incarnation. Without Bobbie, the rooms felt positively funereal. I yearned to flip on some lights and start cooking, fil ing the kitchen with good smel s and the happy sound of pots bubbling, but there was no need. The doctor had helped himself to a plate of cold beef, crackers, cheese, and celery.

I stared at the desiccated stalks on the doctor's plate and thought again of the garden Marcus had planted, imagining how lush it would look when it was ripe and how good the tomatoes and peppers would taste straight off the vines. I imagined him feeding me sweet peas, pul ed from their shel s one by one. I thought about the rest of the farm, too-how there weren't any horses left now, but maybe come spring I could raise a graceful foal I would train to gentleness. Nothing like the buckle-kneed animals I used to care for, though. I wanted a little elegance for a change. I flattened my hands on the table and looked the doctor in the eyes. Amelia was dead right, I decided. Perhaps it real y was time for me to open the door to my own future. There was nothing keeping me here anymore but the ugly lure of comeuppance. It was time to leave. But informing the doctor was a different matter.

I thought about it and decided it was best to do it sideways. b.u.t.ting your brains up against the doctor's iron wil was never a good idea. Better first to parrot what he wanted to hear. I took a breath and repeated, "Wel , I did it. I took Bobbie's things away like you wanted." I didn't mention what I'd done with them, and Robert Morgan didn't ask, so I continued, throwing out more and more words as if I were fil ing up a pot for stew. "They're gone now al right. His room's empty. But, you know, he's stil right here in town."

Robert Morgan scowled, and I backed off, guessing he wasn't ready to entertain the possibility of reconciling yet. Time to get on with my own concerns, then. "Speaking of moving on, I've been thinking. You won't real y be needing me anymore, and this afternoon, Amelia offered to take me back at the farm. Not"-I raised a finger-"that I couldn't stil come in once a week or so to cook up some dinners for you, or tidy up. That kind of thing.

And, of course, I'l need to come back for my medicine." I folded my finger back into my hand, wishing I could just make a clean break and leave the way Bobbie had but knowing that was impossible. I sat back and waited for the storm I was sure was coming, but it never arrived.

Resigned silence widened around us in arcs like pond ripples. Through the gloom, I noticed that the dark smears under the doctor's eyes had grown more purple, the cracks in his lips deeper. He appeared as worn out as an old front porch, and this suddenly alarmed me. Maybe using Tabby's recipes on him hadn't been a good idea, I reflected. It hadn't made me feel any better. It was a good thing I'd stopped. I leaned forward and put out a conciliatory hand across the table. "I'm sorry," I said. "Please try to understand."

"I always thought you'd go before me," he whispered.

I squinted at him. "I know. It's time for me to leave."

"No, that's not what I meant." He shook his head.

"What are you talking about?" I pul ed my hand back.

He closed his eyes. "I final y got around to seeing the doctor, and he final y got his tests back. I have acute myeloid leukemia."

There was a beat of silence. Even I could tel that sounded bad, but I asked the obvious question anyway. "What is that?"

"A type of cancer. My white blood cel s are multiplying too quickly. They're choking out the red ones." I hadn't realized you could divide blood into opposing colors, but I supposed if anyone could turn something as elemental as his own blood into something that seethed and fought, it would be Robert Morgan. It seemed that after al these years, he was final y finding out what the rest of the human race already knew-that he was a man at serious odds with himself.

I let out my breath in a long, slow stream.

I let out my breath in a long, slow stream.

"How long have you got?"

"Weeks. Maybe months. It's highly individual." He avoided my gaze. "There's real y nothing anyone can do. Nothing I want them to."

I thought about Priscil a Sparrow's last visit and seriously doubted that. When the sick got sick enough, I'd learned, there's nothing they wouldn't let you do for them. But the doctor was going to find that out for himself sooner rather than later, it seemed. And when he did, I wanted to be around to witness it. My future would have to wait- again.

Chapter Twenty-five.

A body can bear anything for a few months, which is the only explanation I can give for the uneasy and unexpected peace the doctor and I managed to forge in the final weeks of his life. On the surface, it was as if nothing between us had changed. He spent hours in his office, sorting files and cleaning out a years' worth of prescriptions and medicines, and I busied myself in the house. Even without Bobbie, I had plenty to keep me occupied, and though Robert Morgan's natural pace might have been winding down, he seemed determined not to act like it. He stil stuck his shoes out in the hal way for a spit polish, and demanded knife-sharp creases ironed into his trousers, and wanted extra starch on al his shirts. He chastised me when the water at the bottom of the flower vase in the foyer got cloudy, reprimanded me for accidental y buying salted b.u.t.ter, and found the new brand of hand soap I'd switched to less than satisfying.

"I just don't like the smel of it," he snapped when I asked him what was wrong with it, snapped when I asked him what was wrong with it, and then he watched as I dumped al the new bars in the trash and replaced them with the old cakes.

I suppose that if there was anything different between us during this time, it emanated from me instead of him. I wasn't exactly done hating him, but I couldn't muster up quite the same amount of ire as before. It would have been too much like taking a swing at a scarecrow when what I was real y after were the crows.

After he told me about his il ness, I'd crept back up to my room, my stomach lurching, where Tabby's quilt draped my bed, the orbs of its blossoms pointing at me like dozens of accusing eyes. What if I'm the one who caused his illness? I wondered. Fighting off a wave of nausea, I tugged and pul ed at the quilt until I'd made a bal of it, and then I carried it downstairs and restored it to its original place on the wal in the parlor. There would be no more mixtures, I vowed. No more steeping herbs for hours-not even for myself. No more blending foul-smel ing pastes. I was done with Tabby's spel s. From here on out, al the doctor would be getting out of me was sweet charity.

But no matter how solicitous I was, no matter how many times I refil ed his hot-water bottle or changed his sheets, no matter how many times I emptied the basin of vomit next to his bed, the question of Robert Morgan's sickness wouldn't leave my mind. It rubbed and irritated me like a grain of sand stuck in my shoe, until I final y couldn't take it anymore and flat-out asked him.

"Why do you think you got sick?" I put a cup of tea-just a cup of tea, plain and simple-on his bedside table and folded my hands, awaiting an accusation or, at the very least, some kind of suspicion.

But Robert Morgan just blinked, sorrowful as an owl. He had lost more weight than I thought he had on him in the first place, and his cheekbones had gone from stark to skeletal. I turned my eyes away. "I thought I explained it," he answered. "It's a disorder of the white blood cel s."

"No. I know that. I mean, why do you think you have it? Did something cause it? Like something you ate, maybe?"

The doctor peered up at me. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." I shifted.

"No, Truly. It's not because of something I ate. It's not because of Bobbie leaving. It's just because some of the cel s in my body have decided to reproduce too quickly. That's it. If I knew more than that, I wouldn't be sitting in this chair right now. I'd be sitting in front of the n.o.bel Prize committee."

"But, that can't be it," I replied. "There has to be more to it than that. There has to be some kind of reason."

The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid there isn't. The body is just the body. It has its own structure, its own laws. It's a thing unto itself. When it breaks down, that's it."

I breathed out and glanced out the window at the blue, blank sky. "Is that what you think?

We simply are the way we are?" I remembered him speaking those words so long ago, the first time he ever examined me. "What about me? Wil I ever change?"

He waved his hand vaguely. "You- you're a thing of exception, Truly. I don't know what to tel you." The doctor closed his eyes and took a sip of tea. Outside, wind rustled the leaves. "Sickness doesn't mean anything," he final y said. "It's either something you can fix or it's not. Al I've ever tried to do is to give people a way to live with it."

I pictured Marcus's garden, planted in a slow spiral that would leaf and bud into sustenance.

"What do you think happens when we die?" I asked.

"Do you think we go back to the earth?"

The doctor frowned. "You mean ashes to ashes, dust to dust?"

"I guess."

"Biological y speaking, yes. I'm not sure about anything else."

But I was. Al of a sudden, without doubt, I knew that everything and everyone on earth was one and the same. I thought about Priscil a Sparrow, and what I'd done for her, and how one day I might need the same favor myself. And though Robert Morgan and I had radical y different casings, we were stil stuck together by Bobbie and my sister, and there wasn't a d.a.m.n thing we could do about it. But stil , for al that, we weren't exactly alike, the doctor and I. He was wasting away while I'd gotten a double helping of what the universe was serving, and it hadn't kil ed me yet.

me yet.

Instead, it was teaching me to live.

Amelia didn't share my newfound grace. "He's got a house ful of medicine, let him dose himself," she said when I told her I wasn't moving to the farm and why. "He's a mean so-and-so, and always has been.

Let him get what's coming."

Her venom shocked me. "That's not very Christian," I responded, and Amelia snorted.

"Tel me what the Lord has ever done for us."

I stared at her. She was spring cleaning, and she'd been acting strange al morning, like a snake about to shed its skin. Now that the doctor was confined, and there was no one around to hear her but me, she often hummed while she worked and sometimes even had conversations, like now.

Irritated with my lack of an answer, she wiped a layer of dust from one of the kitchen shelves and began swabbing the floor.

"You can't real y be suggesting that I leave him here al alone to die? Besides, did it ever occur to you that I might have other reasons for staying?"

Amelia shrugged. "What goes around comes around." She paused in her mopping. "You don't know the half of it with the doctor," she said, "and, trust me, you don't want to, either."

I opened and closed my mouth. "You don't know the half of it, either," I final y said. I stil hadn't told her about my condition. She thought al my pil s were a vitamin program.

Amelia looked up at me. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." I wanted to come right out and tel Amelia about my il ness, but something stopped m e . I'll tell her later, I vowed, after she's done cleaning, when we're having our coffee. Today, I was particularly eager for Amelia to be finished with work so I could ask her for news about Bobbie.

Ten times a day I imagined myself walking across town to the cemetery to visit him, but there was the issue of Marcus. The doctor had made it clear what would happen if I let Marcus back in my life, and I didn't want to make trouble for him. Also, I wasn't sure where we stood with each other. Were we friends? Back to old acquaintances? Or were there stil some unopened buds left on our branches? He'll come to you, a voice inside my head urged. Just wait. I randomly wondered if Tabby had sewn any love charms into the quilt but quickly squashed the idea.

Amelia waited a beat to see if I'd give in and pour out what was sitting heavy on my heart, but I didn't, so she shook herself, offended as a rooster.

She wrung out her mop and leaned it in the corner.

"That's that," she said. "I'm going out to tackle the office." I watched her march across the porch to the clinic and throw open its windows. Al afternoon she scrubbed and polished, but by the end of the day, her breath was coming in shal ow scoops and her heart was skipping beats. She final y returned to the kitchen to switch disinfectants.

"What's the matter?" I asked, alarmed at how flushed her cheeks were.

"This stuff's no good," she said, dumping the cleaning fluid and grabbing a jar of vinegar from the pantry. "I think I'm al ergic."

Next, she tried tying a bandanna over her nose and mouth, but after only an hour, she tore it off, her heart hammering, frantic as a landed fish. She vacuumed and dusted the blinds, scrubbed at the upholstery in the desk chair, and took apart the light fixtures, but none of that appeared to help. Then she dusted the doctor's books. I peered through the kitchen windows, watching as she stood frozen halfway up the stepladder, her pink feather duster gripped in one hand, a single book clenched in the other. I saw her lips move and her finger trace a line across the cover, then she shook her head, clamped her lips, and stuck the book back on the shelf.

Moving careful y-she'd inherited her father's dodgy back-she pushed al the books back into their original places and maneuvered herself backward off the ladder. She didn't bother to fold up the ladder, however, and she didn't position that last book very wel , and I remember thinking that was out of character. The book remained stuck out on the shelf, its spine cracked from rough handling. I considered pointing it out to her, but I was too eager for news about Bobbie, so I let it go.

for news about Bobbie, so I let it go.

"Tel me how he is," I urged when we were final y settled in our usual places in the kitchen and I was pouring her out a cup of strong black coffee. "Tel me if he's happy."

Amelia seemed less waspish now that she was finished with her ch.o.r.es, and I was glad.

Maybe it's just the pomp of the doctor's death she's dreading, I thought. Waiting around for someone to make up his mind and die, I knew, could wear the living out. Maybe she wishes we could just put him in a hole at the farm like her father.

Amelia slurped her coffee and gave me the skinny. "His friend Salvatore just got him a job at that men's bar in Hansen. I've read about that place in the paper. The church folks picket out front sometimes, and a couple of times now, the police have been cal ed in for a fight."

I raised my eyebrows. "What does Bobbie do there? He's not of age." I held my breath, hoping it wasn't anything il egal.

"He works in the back, I think. They serve food, I've heard, so he helps out in the kitchen. Turns out he's a prodigal whiz at the stove."

I exhaled. "What's he dressing as these days?" I thought back to my own early childhood of rough-hewn boy's clothes and how I stil preferred plain garments to fril s or fluff. Did we dress ourselves from the outside in, I wondered, or was it the other way around?

Amelia shrugged. "Boy, mostly, but Marcus says he's not giving up on that blue dress of his mother's."

I nodded. "He must miss Serena Jane fierce. Robert Morgan never let us mourn her right."

Amelia looked uneasy al of a sudden.

She shifted in her chair a few inches, opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it up tight again. At the mere mention of Marcus's name, it was as if vines were choking us both. "And how is Marcus?" I final y asked, my heart squeezing into a familiar fist in my chest. "Garden going good?"

Amelia avoided my gaze. "Real good.

We've already got bean vines halfway up the poles.

Why don't you come see sometime? He's out there most days of the week. He could tel you more about Bobbie. Besides, I know he misses you." When it came to Marcus, it seemed, Amelia never minded being wordy.

I tilted my chin down toward my chest.

"Maybe."

Amelia went funny again, as though she had a pound of lead she wanted to get off her tongue, but she stil didn't say anything. We see what we want to see in life, regardless of whether it's real y in front of us or not, and what I saw at that moment was how Amelia's braid hung over her shoulder like a bel pul , how her birdlike clavicles rose and fel with each breath she took, how tiny and precise her fingers were. In short, I saw everything I was not, and I was jealous. I looked down at my own rough arms and my thunderous legs, and I wished they were as pet.i.te and neat as Amelia's. Maybe then, I thought, Marcus would come to my door and plant a garden, no matter what the doctor says.

Then I thought about what might happen between Marcus and Amelia if I disappeared, and my heart grew even more pinched. I longed to go visit Marcus and see what could be between us, but then I checked myself. I was a ticking time bomb. How could I offer myself to a man who'd already had his fil of death?

Of course, this memory makes me sorrowful now, for if anyone ever knew the shape of me, it was Amelia-and not just the outer lines of me, either, but al my innards as wel . She was as necessary as the sun to me. She was the quiet heat that shimmered inside my shadow and made it live, and without her, I am a little darker. Amelia stood up and gathered her bags and buckets. "I have to go,"

she sniffed. "I need to get back and feed the chickens before dark. At least they're some company."

I rose with her. "Okay." I walked her to the door and watched her climb into August's old truck.

She started the engine and drove off, pul ing al the unspoken tension between us taut, then tauter stil , until, like a rubber band stretched too thin, it went flying.

Chapter Twenty-six.

The doctor warned me that he would grow sick quickly, but it was stil hard to believe when the exact morning arrived that he couldn't get out of bed. It was the middle of May-high spring-and the birds were chirping so loudly that I didn't hear the smal pewter bel the doctor was ringing, our prearranged signal for help. Soon, however, the metal ic sound became hard to ignore. I fol owed it down the corridor and found the doctor half-covered and blushing al the way out to his ears.

"Truly, I need help going to the toilet," he said with as much dignity as he could muster, which, given that it was Robert Morgan, was actual y quite a lot.

"Why don't you let me fetch Bobbie?" I asked as we shuffled down the hal way. "You must miss him. Wouldn't you rather your own flesh and blood do this?"

Robert Morgan grappled with the bathroom doork.n.o.b and looked sour. "He made his choice. He gave up everything this family holds dear, choice. He gave up everything this family holds dear, and now he's out of the circle." He turned around. "I can manage from here."

I blushed. "I'l wait outside."