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Stephanie had put them on him herself with shaking hands before they took him away.
    She stood in the front hall, after they walked in, and looked at Jean as though she were lost, and didn’t know what to do. But she knew. She had to call her kids. She went out to the kitchen, and sat down on a high stool next to the phone. She normally knew their numbers by heart, but suddenly couldn’t remember them.
    She called Charlotte in Rome first. It was two in the morning for her, and she didn’t want to call her any later, but Charlotte needed to know so she could come home the next day. There was shocked silence at the other end of the phone when Stephanie told her, a long pause, and then a long sharp scream. Jean could hear it from across the room. Stephanie sobbed as she talked to her and tried to comfort her, hating the fact that she had to tell her such terrible news over the phone without having her arms around her. She told her daughter to get the first plane home, and use her credit card for the ticket. Stephanie had given her a high enough limit on the card that she could always buy a ticket home if she needed to. She had just never expected it to be for something like this.
    “Let me know what flight you’re on,” she told Charlotte, who was her youngest, at twenty. She was much too young to lose her father. Stephanie had been in her forties when she lost her parents, which had seemed too young too. But at twenty, it was brutal. And Bill was only fifty-two. Who could have expected this to happen? And he had been in such good health, or so it seemed. As she had told Brad, his annual physical the week before had turned up nothing.
    Charlotte was still crying piteously when they hung up, and Stephanie tried to catch her breath as she continued crying too. Jean handed her a glass of water.
    “How is she?” Jean asked, looking worried.
    “Awful,” Stephanie answered simply, and pressed Michael’s number. He answered on the first ring. It was Saturday night, and he was home, cooking dinner for some friends, with his girlfriend. It was already eight-thirty at night in Atlanta, he said they were barbecuing, and his mother could hear music in the background. She told him the news as gently and directly as she could, and his voice was shaking when he asked her, “How are you, Mom? Are you okay?”
    She couldn’t speak for a minute, then said, “How soon can you come home?” She could hear that he was crying when she asked him, and then he said something muffled to someone standing next to him.
    “I’ll catch the red-eye tonight,” he said, trying to sound strong and manly for her. “Have you told the girls yet?”
    “I just called Charlotte. I wanted to tell her before it got any later, so she can catch a flight in the morning.”
    “Poor kid,” but poor him too. Poor all of them, Stephanie was thinking. Bill hadn’t been an ideal father, but he was the only one they had. And they were too young to lose him. And whatever his failings, he was someone they could rely on. Now all they had was her. The thought of it made her shudder. Everything rested on her now. It was awesome and terrifying being the only parent, no matter how competent she was. This was much worse than during their separation.
    “I’ll call Louise in a minute,” she said wanly. “You don’t have to come home tonight, Mike. You can come home tomorrow, I’ll be okay.”
    “No, I want to,” he said, still sounding tearful. He was twenty-five years old, and suddenly the only man in the family. “I’ll see you in the morning, Mom,” he said. He had to get off the phone if he was going to make the flight.
    And then she called her middle child, and older daughter, Louise, in New York. She sounded confused when her mother told her.
    “What?” She was sure that she had heard wrong. What her mother had just said sounded insane to her. Stephanie told her again, and this time she began crying and couldn’t stop. It was a long time before she