“Remember when you shaved your head?” She said this as if it had happened years ago. “You looked so terrible.”

“I think Mary kind of liked it.”

She closed her eyes. “I hate to break it to you, but she was humoring you, sweetie.”

Sleep dropped on her like a blade. One minute they would be talking, the next she would be falling away. He watched her sleep for hours. Then, without warning, she would be awake again, seamlessly picking up the broken thread of conversation as if she had excused herself only a moment to tie a shoe or answer the telephone. “Noah will do better if they let him nap after lunch,” she said, or “I don’t care if they cost sixty dollars, Sam needs new sneakers,” or “The thing about Jack is, he’s absolutely brilliant. He’s living proof of the sociopathic effects of brilliance.”

Finally she said, “O’Neil? I’ll want one person here.”

It was on a day very near the end that Jack arrived at the hospital, carrying under his arm a large envelope that O’Neil knew, without looking, contained the papers Beth had described. The boys were downstairs in the lounge, playing pinball. Kay was sleeping, and before Jack could say anything, O’Neil pulled him into the hall.

“What’s in the envelope?”

Jack did not meet his gaze. “I don’t see that this is your business, O’Neil. You’ve been a great help to all of us. But this is a private family matter.”

“Stop this, Jack. Think about what you’re asking her to do.”

His brother-in-law sighed with nervous irritation. “Okay, since you seem to know what it’s all about. Let me ask you something. What would you do if you were me? Since you don’t know, I’ll tell you. Exactly the same thing.”

“I don’t want to be you, Jack. I just don’t want you to do something everyone will feel sorry about later on.”

“For Godsakes, O’Neil! It’s just a formality, a few papers to sign!” He made a face of exasperation and lowered his voice. “You and I both know she’s never leaving here. It’s awful to say it, but those are the facts. I have to think about what’s best for the boys. I have to make plans. She’ll understand that.”

Would she? O’Neil looked toward the room, where Kay was sleeping. Perhaps she would. But it didn’t matter. She would never have to.

“Let’s just go someplace to talk about it,” O’Neil said. “She’s sleeping now, anyway. Just hear me out. Listen to what I have to say, and then you can do whatever you want to do.”

Jack folded his arms over his chest. “You’re not talking me out of it,” he warned.

“Trust me,” O’Neil said. “That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

He walked with Jack to the parking lot, letting his brother-in-law get three steps ahead of him. Jack would wonder where he was taking him, which was exactly what O’Neil intended, and when Jack turned to look for him, O’Neil took two steps and hit him, hard, just below the left eye. O’Neil had never hit anyone before, and the sensation was not at all what he would have expected if he’d thought about it, which he hadn’t. His hand sailed through Jack’s face easily, without a trace of pain, and seemed to pop him right off his feet. As Jack went down, a second surge of adrenaline passed through O’Neil’s body, and his fist clenched again, ready for more.

“Jesus Christ, O’Neil!”

O’Neil relaxed his fist and went to where Jack was sitting, his back braced against the tire of a minivan. One hand covered the spot near his eye where O’Neil had made contact. O’Neil crouched beside him.

“You fucking asshole!” Jack’s sneakers kicked at the pavement. “Get away from me!”

“Oh, stop it,” O’Neil said. “Let’s see that eye.”

A nurse in the ER gave O’Neil a plastic bottle of alcohol and a bandage for Jack’s cut, and some tape for O’Neil’s knuckles, which were split and bleeding after all. Back in the parking lot O’Neil sat Jack on the bumper of the minivan and swabbed his eye clean with a Q-Tip.

“Aw, hell, O’Neil, I probably deserved that. I told my lawyer it was a dumb idea.”

“Dumb is the least of it, if you’ll pardon my saying so.” A purposeful calm had filled him, a feeling beyond exhaustion or anger or fear; he wasn’t threatening, merely stating the facts. He pasted a bandage to Jack’s clean cut.

“There, good as new. Now, give me those papers or I’ll hit you again.”

With a sigh of defeat Jack removed the now-crinkled envelope from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to him. O’Neil opened it to look the contents over. As he’d expected, the document was an agreement giving Jack full custody of the boys. There was more to it-four pages of mumbo-jumbo he was too tired to wade through-but that was the gist. Jack had already signed it, and on the last page, at the bottom, beside his signature, was a place for Kay to write her name, marked with a red arrow. O’Neil saw that Jack’s signature was dated two weeks before. So at least he had waited before deciding to go ahead with it.

“I won’t fight you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” O’Neil folded the agreement and put it in the pocket of his coat. What would he do with it? Burn it? Shove it in a Dumpster somewhere? “If you’d asked me, that’s what I would have told you. They’re your children, and they need you. But I don’t want you to tell Kay anything about this. She’s never going to know you even thought it. Agreed?”

Jack frowned hopelessly. “Why should I believe you? You just assaulted me, for Chrissakes.”

“Yes, but that’s all done,” O’Neil said.

At the hospital entrance Jack stopped. “Let me ask you one last thing. Do you even have the faintest idea why I did it?”

“Actually, no.”

“Fucking Saint O’Neil,” Jack said, shaking his head. “So perfect he doesn’t even know it.”

O’Neil left Jack with the children and went up to Kay’s room. “Breaking news. I just punched your husband.”

“Did you kill him?” Kay smiled weakly. “You look so happy.”

He showed her his bandaged knuckles. “Just minor damage. Would you like me to?” A joke: but he would do it if she asked.

Kay shook her head. “Maybe later.” She sighed deeply, haltingly. Two sentences, and already she was exhausted. “Right now I’d like to see my children, please.”

He brought the boys to her and waited outside with Jack. It was noon when they emerged: Noah and Simon looking confused and uncertain, Sam holding his face bravely so they wouldn’t know what was happening. Be strong, Kay had whispered to him. Help your brothers. O’Neil left Jack with Kay and took the boys to the cafeteria and tried to feed them, and an hour later Jack came down. O’Neil saw him first, as he passed through the door and stood a moment, drying his glasses and then his face with a handkerchief. Then he strode briskly to the table.

“Okay, boys,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

When O’Neil returned to the room, Kay was sleeping. The morphine button was in her hand, her thumb resting on it. Without opening her eyes she pushed the button. O’Neil watched as the morphine moved through her, like rings on a pond, easing her into a state far deeper than sleep and yet of little use. For years it had been just the two of them. Now, for the first time since Kay had gotten sick, he felt her exhaustion as if it were his own. He knew what she wanted, and wanted it too; he wanted her suffering to end more than he wanted her not to die.

“I’m not leaving,” he told her.

The nurse brought him dinner; he left the room only to go to the bathroom, and once to call Mary from a pay phone. It was happening, he told her. He couldn’t talk for long. Later that evening Kay awoke, moaning. “God, honey,” she said. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Could she see him? Did she know where she was? Her voice was etched with pain; her words seemed to hang in the air, not sounds alone but things with form and substance. “God, honey, God.” Then she was silent.

He spent the night in a chair by her bed, and the night after, and just as he promised, was there in the room when she died the next morning.