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rather splendid, designing and building sofas and loveseats, chairs and mantels and buffets and tables which, being unique and individual and very expensive, put his work in demand among those who could choose to afford it. “Snob appeal,” he laughed, although he was serious about the work itself.
    As with Nora’s paintings, his market was not in this town. Here, people evidently do not care for her work, and could not afford his.
    All three women jump when the phone rings—if death waits for no man, not even a relatively young one like Philip Lawrence, neither do its demands. When Sophie, who answers, hands the receiver to Nora, she says, “It’s the hospital,” and for an instant every heart shifts. Could they have been wrong, might Philip, with some clever medical handiwork, have come alive? Just for a second, an eyelash of time, theyeach hear fast heavy feet on the stairs, they hear Philip’s voice. He would head first for the coffee pot. Then he would look at them in their various poses and say, “What’s up for the day, then? Not much, I guess, if you’re all still hanging around.” He wouldn’t mean this unkindly. It would just be a remark. Among the many things already missing is the deep, anchoring tone of the male voice adding heft and timbre to the higher-pitched choir.
    “Hello?” Nora asks cautiously—what if, what if?
    It’s a young-sounding voice, a man’s, an employee, he says, of the hospital’s morgue. So that’s that.
    “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he says, and maybe he is. “But there’s a question with regard to your arrangements.”
    “Arrangements?”
    “I mean who to release the body to when the time comes. We’ve already determined it was too late for organ donation, but it’ll probably be ready by mid-afternoon or so, unless there’s something unforeseen, which I need to advise you is always possible. So do you know yet where it’ll be going?”
    What is he, a student, a trainee? “I see,” Nora says.
It
, says this voice. Not
Philip Lawrence
, or
Mr. Lawrence
, or even
your husband
, but
it.
“Well, I’m afraid we’re not quite as efficient as you people. Would you be able to hold on to him a little longer if necessary, or is there a risk of losing his place in your fridge?”
    Most unpleasant; the townspeople, guilty or otherwise, do bring out the worst in her. The young man’s voice drops to a matching unfriendliness. “Not at all. At your convenience. It’s merely a courtesy to advise when the autopsy should be completed and the body available for release.”
    Autopsy. Nora puts down the phone. There will be no fast heavy feet on the stairs. Her head wants to rest its new great weight on the table. “It must have been a heart attack, don’tyou think?” Sophie says. “Or a stroke, I suppose. It’s strange. He seemed so healthy, didn’t he? Robust.”
    Indeed. Nora regards Sophie, contemplating the possible extent of Philip’s health and robustness. “Where there is smoke,” she asks, “is there fire?”
    “What?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Okay, so listen, I should start calling around. It sounds as if we need to get moving.” She’s right, of course, but what a bully Sophie can be. Too much time, maybe, spent striding among the desolate, picking and choosing, doling out and withholding, every life on the edge, not excluding her own. She is useful on many grounds, not least when it comes to cutting through crap, but still, Nora sometimes thinks,
Poor refugees. On top of massacres, starvation, deprivation—Sophie.

Three
    A side from her bedroom—they each have their own bedroom—Sophie’s only private space in this house is her little office, a room off the front hall that would originally have been a coat-and-hat-and-boots room for earlier, more sociable occupants and their guests. Now it contains desk, chair, phone, computer, shelves, filing cabinet.
    Everything in it has a sharp connection to Phil. Among other things he refinished this old