Intervention

22

10:40 A.M., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2008

NEW YORK CITY

Only a little more than ten minutes after the conversation with James, Alex Jaszek, the anthropologist, arrived. During the brief interim Shawn and Sana continued to whisper epithets back and forth. Despite their earlier joy over their discovery, they had begun arguing about the evening’s plans until Sana, in disgust, had disappeared into the laboratory to check out the equipment.

Alex looked young for a seasoned Ph.D., with a skimpy beard on his youthful face. He was built like the quintessential high-school football player, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore khaki pants and an old-fashioned flannel shirt.

“Is this the way the bones looked when you got the top off?” Alex asked, peering into the ossuary.

“Pretty much,” Jack said. He was looking in as well. “The three scrolls were inside as well. Shawn carefully lifted them out. The thigh bone might have moved a tiny bit when he did so, but we took plenty of photos.”

“It looks like quite a complete skeleton.”

“That was our guess as well,” Shawn said.

“You could have lifted the bones out,” Alex said. “The position is not going to tell us anything, since this was, as I’m sure you know, a reburial. When ossuaries were in use, the body was first left to decompose, then the bones were gathered up and put into the ossuary in no particular order. So let’s go ahead and lift them out one by one and arrange them on the table in their general anatomical position.”

Sana emerged and joined them around the table, and Jack made introductions. Sana made a big show of shaking Alex’s hand while expressing unctuous gratitude that he’d sacrificed part of his Saturday to lend them his extraordinary expertise.

Jack could sense that Sana’s over-the-top performance was to irritate Shawn, which seemed to be working. So, while Sana was helping Alex in the gowning room, Jack leaned over and quietly asked, “Are we still on for tonight, or should we reschedule?”

“You bet your sweet ass we’re still on,” Shawn snapped. “I don’t know what’s come over her sometimes. Whatever it is better stop.”

Sensibly, Jack refrained from further commenting but rather plucked a bone from the ossuary and tried to figure out what it was.

After returning from the gowning room Sana carried on for another five minutes with Alex, who was obviously charmed by her attention. But seeing that Jack and Shawn were having some trouble with determining where the bones belonged anatomically, she and Alex pitched in to help. Then, after several minutes, Alex took over completely since he had begun to comment on each bone as he took it from the ossuary and added it to the expanding skeleton. After a half-hour it was done.

For Sana the most interesting were the skull and lower jaw, because there were some teeth in their original sockets. On the other hand, Shawn was most interested in the bones of the pelvis. While handling each fragment, Alex had commented casually that the woman had had children, most likely multiple children.

“This is a remarkably intact skeleton,” Alex said, examining it in its totality and adjusting the position of a few of the individual bones. “Notice that even the tiny finger bones from both hands are all here. That is remarkable indeed. In all the ossuary cases I’ve had the pleasure of investigating, this has never happened. I’ve never seen all the finger bones together. Whoever did this was remarkably respectful of the deceased.”

“You said it’s a woman,” Shawn pointed out excitedly. “Are you certain this skeleton is that of a woman?”

“Absolutely! Look at the delicate brow ridges,” he said, pointing toward the skull, “and notice the delicate arm bones and long bones of the legs. And if I put the pubic bones together” — Alex lifted the bones and held them together as they would have been in life — “look how wide the pubic arch is! It’s definitely female. No question!”

“Especially since you said she’d had multiple children,” Shawn said, with a self-satisfied giggle.

“That’s an issue I can’t be dogmatic about,” Alex said.

Shawn’s smile faded a degree. “Why not?”

“These are really prominent preauricular sulci,” Jack said, picking up an ilium and showing it to Alex. “I’ve never seen bigger.”

“What are sulci?” Shawn asked.

Jack pointed to grooved areas on the edge of the bone. “The sulci appear after childbirth. These are some of the deepest I’ve ever seen. I’d say she had had close to ten children.”

Alex raised a finger and shook it in disagreement. “The depth of the sulci on the ilia and the dots on the pubic bones at the pubic symphyses are not completely proportional to the number of children a woman has given birth to.”

“But they usually are,” Jack pointed out.

“All right,” Alex said. “They usually are, I’ll admit that.”

“So, this woman’s sulci and dots strongly suggest she had had multiple children. It doesn’t prove it, just strongly suggests it. Would you agree to that?”

“Yes, Jack, I would. But I’d also say it might be wrong. Do you people have any idea of the identity of this person and how many children she actually had? Is there a name or a date on the ossuary? What about the scrolls? Do they mention children?”

For a second, no one moved. It was silent except for a refrigerator compressor in the background. Sensing a suddenly strained atmosphere, Alex added, “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not at all,” Shawn said hastily. “We’re not sure of this skeleton’s identity, but there is a date on the ossuary’s cover. It’s AD 62, but we don’t know if that’s the date of her death or the date of her reburial. We’re hoping the scrolls may shed some light on her identity, but we have not yet unrolled them and obviously have not read them.”

“What about the woman’s age?” Sana asked. “Can you tell that?”

“Not with much precision,” Alex said. “Unfortunately, bones are not like tree branches, where you can count the rings. In fact, throughout the individual’s life the bone is being constantly replaced, which is why we can accurately carbon-date. You might want to think of going that route with these bones to check on the date on the ossuary. The necessary sample size is extremely small with the newer techniques.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Shawn said.

“If you had to guess her age, what would you say?” Sana asked.

“I’d say over fifty to be safe. If I wanted to go out on a limb, I’d say eighty. My sense is this is an old individual, based on the amount of arthritis in the finger bones and feet. What would you say, Jack?”

“I think you are right on the money. The only other thing I note is some mild evidence of tuberculosis on a couple of vertebrae, but otherwise she was in very good shape.”

“Remarkably so,” Alex agreed.

“I’m psyched,” Sana said. “The water seal must have functioned perfectly. I wasn’t completely optimistic about finding DNA, but I am now. With those teeth still in their sockets, and as dry as these bones are, there has to be some intact mitochondrial DNA.”

“Don’t jinx yourself,” Shawn warned.

“Why do you want to find DNA?” Alex asked. “Do you have anything in particular in mind?”

Sana just shrugged. “I think it will be interesting and a challenge. It might be fun to see where she was from, genealogically speaking. The ossuary was found in Rome, but that doesn’t mean she was from Rome, or even Italy. In the first century AD, there was a lot of migration because of the Pax Romana. And it will be an interesting addition to the international mitochondrial database, having a first-century woman.”

“How are you going to do it?” Alex asked. “What procedure are you going to follow?”

“First I’ll try a tooth as a source,” Sana said. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use bone marrow. Either way, it’s not a complicated process. It will involve a thorough cleaning of the outside of the tooth to remove any DNA contamination. Then I’ll cut into the crown of the tooth, pull out the dried pulp material from the pulp cavity, suspend it with detergent to break open the cells, treat it with proteases to eliminate the proteins, then extract the DNA. Once I have the DNA in solution, I’ll amplify it with a PCR, then quantify it, then sequence it. It’s as simple as that.”

“What’s your time frame?” Alex asked. “I’d be interested in a follow-up, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Sana glanced at Shawn, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. “It depends to a degree on that first rate-limiting step. Whether there is intact mitochondrial DNA available. If there is, I should have it in a few days or up to a week. Some of the steps function best when they are allowed to percolate overnight.”

“Well,” Alex said, getting up from his chair and giving Sana’s back a pat, “I want to thank you all for including me. It’s been a terrific morning.” His eyes happened to catch the three ancient scrolls as he started toward the gowning room to take off the protective gear. He stopped and looked back at Shawn. “I’ve been so engrossed with this skeleton, I forgot to ask about the scrolls. What’s the plan with them?”

“To read them,” Shawn said, with a touch of jealousy at the man’s apparent informality with his wife. “But first I have to unroll them, which is going to be a task. They are, excuse the pun, drier than a bone, and quite fragile.”

“Are they made of papyrus?” Alex asked. He bent over and looked at each closely. He didn’t dare touch them.

“They are papyrus, yes,” Shawn said.

“Will they be easy to unroll?”

“I wish,” Shawn said. “It is going to be a painstaking process that has to be done millimeter by millimeter. They could disintegrate into thousands of tiny pieces, and on top of that, we have to be careful.”

Everyone laughed, even Shawn.

“What a pleasant fellow,” Sana said after Alex left, then to herself she added, “in comparison to my husband.”

“Oh, you noticed,” Shawn said mockingly out loud, then to himself added, “I know exactly what you are doing, and I am going to ignore it — I’m not going to get jealous. It’s not worth getting riled up, and I won’t give you the satisfaction.”

“All right, people!” Jack said suddenly, clapping his hands loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s get to work! Let’s crank out what has to be done so you two can get under way. I’m going nuts about whether you’re going to make a positive identification of these bones. But let me warn you, if you continue to quarrel with each other, I’m out of here, and I’m off your dinner list, and if I’m off, then I believe James is off, meaning party over!”

For a moment Shawn and Sana glared at each other. After several minutes, Sana put her head back and laughed. “God, what a couple of children we are.”

“Speak for yourself!” Shawn snapped. He didn’t like the new Sana.

“I am. I think we are beginning to become too similar, like a dog and its master.”

Now it was Shawn’s turn to laugh. “So, which one is the dog?”

“That’s easy to tell, the way you’ve been barking lately,” Sana teased, still smiling. She turned to Jack. “He knows better than to invite people to dinner without discussing it with me first. If we’ve talked about it once, we’ve talked about it a dozen times.”

“You always have to have the last word,” Shawn snapped.

Jack stepped between the husband and wife and motioned as if he was calling for a time-out in a basketball game. “Stop!” he said. “Stop taunting each other. You guys are pathetic! Loosen up and let’s get to work.”

“I’m going to Home Depot,” Shawn said abruptly. “Jack, can you lend me a hand?”

“I might need a pair of pliers,” Sana said. “Let me see if one of the eye teeth comes out with ease.” She picked up the skull and pulled on the right eye tooth, which was in remarkably good shape. The tooth came out easily with a slight popping sound. “That was easy. Nope! I don’t need any pliers.”

“What do you need from Home Depot?” Jack asked.

“A bunch of plate-glass sheets,” Shawn said. “And a small sonic humidifier that I can jury-rig to direct a tiny puff of water vapor where I want it to go. I already have several pair of tongs like those used by philatelists in my backpack. Unrolling these scrolls is not going to be easy. The papyrus will flake, so I’ll need to protect it immediately under glass. For all I know, as I said to Alex, the papyri may all come apart in pieces and have to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t know what to expect, to be completely truthful.”

“While you boys go to the Home Depot, I’m going to go into the laboratory and get going with my end of the project,” Sana said, brandishing the eye tooth. “The quicker I get it into a sonicator with the detergent, the quicker I can saw off the crown to get at the pulp.”

“What about tonight?” Jack asked. “Are you two going to behave? Is the dinner party still on or what?”

“Of course it is still on,” Sana said. “I hope our testiness with each other doesn’t make you feel too uncomfortable or unwelcome. We’ll promise to be good. I just don’t like it when Shawn doesn’t discuss the idea with me before he invites people over. It’s not that I don’t enjoy having people over, I do. I actually like to cook and rarely get the chance, so I’m going to enjoy tonight. In fact, as soon as I get my pulp extraction into the incubator to dry overnight, I’m out of here to shop and have some fun preparing what I hope you two and James will enjoy. It will be fun, provided Shawn and James behave.”

“Okay. You’ve put my mind at ease,” Jack said. “But, as far as my coming is concerned, I do need to check in with my wife to see if she minds. We have a new baby, and she’s doing the lion’s share of caregiving.”

“A new baby, how nice,” Sana said, without the excitement most young women would have expressed. Nor did she invite mother and baby. “Surely she won’t begrudge you an evening with your old college buddies.”

“It’s more complicated than you might think,” Jack explained, not wanting to be more specific.

“Well, we’ll understand if you can’t come,” Shawn said. “But we do hope you can. What we’ve found in the ossuary is incredible, and I’m going to enjoy riding His Excellency James.”

“Please don’t overdo it,” Jack said. “He’s really upset about this whole thing and its potential repercussions.”

“He should be,” Shawn said.

“I wouldn’t be so blithe,” Jack warned. “James is married to the Church. If nothing else, he is fearsomely loyal.”

Their mission to Home Depot accomplished, with what seemed like a ton of glass panes in a taxi’s trunk, Jack again tried to encourage Shawn to go easy on James that evening, reminding him that he had a long way to go before he could prove he’d discovered the bones of the Virgin Mary.

“I haven’t proven it,” Shawn agreed, “but it is coming whisker-close, wouldn’t you say, old boy?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Jack replied.

“Let’s put it this way. If I were to take this story as we know it today, combining Saturninus’s letter with the fact that the ossuary was right where he said he’d put it, and it hadn’t been touched for almost two thousand years — what if I were to take the story, the letter, and the ossuary to Vegas and ask the bookmakers if I had the Virgin Mary in the box. What kind of odds do you think they’d give me?”

“Stop it!” Jack snapped. “This is all ridiculous supposition.”

“So that’s how it is!” Shawn said suddenly. “You’re on James’s side, just like you always were in college. Some things never change.”

“I’m not on anybody’s side. I’m on my side, right in the middle, always trying to keep the peace between you two hard-asses.”

“James was the hard-ass, not me.”

“Excuse me. You’re right. You were the airhead.”

“And you were the asshole. I remember it well,” Shawn said. “And as the asshole, you were almost always on hard-ass’s side, just as I’m beginning to think you’ll be tonight. I’m warning you that tonight I’m looking for a bit of payback. During all our debates over the years, we’d always get to a point where James would throw down his trump card: faith! How can you debate that? Well, tonight we’ll revisit a couple of those debates, only this time I have facts on my side. It’s going to be entertaining. I can promise you that.”

Suddenly the two old friends sitting in the back of the taxi stared at each other and smiled. Then they laughed.

“Can you believe us?” Shawn questioned.

Jack shook his head. “We’re acting like teenagers.”

“Kids is more like it,” Shawn corrected. “But I’m just blowing off steam. Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on Jamie boy tonight.”

Their taxi pulled up to the OCME DNA building, and Jack ran in to ask the guards for a cart to meet them at the receiving dock. Arriving about the same time, Jack and Shawn unloaded the glass and stacked it on the cart. Jack patted the top of the last stack, somewhat out of breath. “Glass might not look like much when you are looking through it, but I can tell you it’s damn heavy stuff.” Shawn nodded as he ran the back of a hand across a sweaty brow.

“Can I trust that you’ll be able to get this unloaded upstairs?” Jack asked, with his hand still resting on the glass.

“No problem,” Shawn said confidently. “I’ll have Ms. Flirtatious Independence upstairs lend a hand.”

“I wouldn’t take offense at Alex,” Jack said. “He’s just one of those very friendly, outgoing people. He likes everyone, and everyone likes Alex.”

“I don’t have any beef with Alex. My problem is that Sana has been slip-sliding to I don’t know exactly where. You know what I’m saying? Take her hair as we discussed. It was gorgeous long, and I told her not to cut it, so she cuts it. I ask her to do small things around the house, like iron my shirts; she tells me she works as hard as I do. I tell her I shovel the snow and take out the trash. You know what she said then?”

“I have no idea,” Jack said, hoping his tone conveyed that he didn’t know or care.

“She says she wants to trade. I do the ironing; she does the trash and the shoveling. Can you imagine?”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jack said vaguely, refusing to be drawn into a discussion of marital difficulties. “What is your address again?” he asked, to change the subject.

“Forty Morton Street. Do you remember how to get there?”

“Vaguely,” Jack admitted. He took out a small pad and wrote down the address. “Okay. Unless my wife has other plans, I’ll be there at seven. And what about tomorrow? Are you guys planning to work? If you are and you don’t mind, I’d like to stop in and see how things are going.”

“I’ll let you know what’s up. Sana might like to sleep in. As for me, I’m too psyched, so I’ll be here. Just as soon as I can I’ve got to know what Simon Magus has to say and see if he can redeem himself. I’ve always wondered if he’d just been a whipping boy. The first-century Church had been in such a disarray it needed someone to blame and there was poor Simon Magus and his wish to be a more effective healer, and of course his pals the Gnostics.”

“You sure you can handle all this glass?” Jack asked again, as he backed away. He was eager to get home to see if he could clear the deck for the evening event, hoping just maybe to convince Laurie to take some time to get out of the house. He knew it was a long shot, but he was going to try just the same.

“Sana and I will handle it fine,” Shawn said with a wave. “See you tonight.”

“I hope,” Jack said, giving a thumbs-up sign. Feeling progressively nervous and rather guilty since it was now a little after noon, Jack jogged back to the main OCME building at 30th Street and First Avenue. Resisting heading up to his office, he merely grabbed his Trek, waved to security, and headed uptown.

Once on his bike, he felt better knowing he’d be home in thirty minutes, where there would at least be a slight chance to assuage at bit of his guilt, provided he could get Laurie out of the house. Of course, if JJ was having a bad day, that probably wouldn’t happen, as Laurie would be reluctant to leave the poor child in Jack’s relatively incapable hands. Above and beyond the personal emotional issues, Jack admitted he was not a natural with sick children, as his rotation in pediatrics in third-year medical school had amply displayed.

Jack’s mental state progressively improved as the weather was near perfect with a crystal-clear sapphirine sky and a temperature that had risen to be mild for New York in December. There was also a festive feeling in the air, as the city was alive with early Christmas shoppers hoping to beat the crowds.

Jack’s route home took him past the Central Park Zoo, which was clogged with children and parents. Jack felt a sudden catch in his throat as he wondered if there would be a chance for him to enjoy such an outing with JJ. A little farther on, and coming abreast of a beautiful playground with a slide built of polished granite, Jack stopped for a minute to watch the children squealing, shrieking, and laughing. Their glee was infectious, and it almost brought a smile to Jack’s face, remembering his own exuberant childhood. But a moment later his thoughts were dominated by JJ’s neuroblastoma and the heavy question of which was going to triumph, the mystical power of JJ’s body to heal itself with the help of modern medicine if and when the medicine could be restarted, or the equally mysterious power of the DNA-driven neuroblastoma cells: a classic collision of right and wrong.

Experiencing another, more powerful catch in his throat, Jack jumped back on his bike and pedaled furiously to clear his mind. Luckily, because of the springlike weather, he quickly found himself enveloped in a mob of other bikers, runners, in-line skaters, roller skaters, and mere walkers such that thinking was difficult to avoid running into someone.

Jack exited the park at 106th Street. As he pedaled he could clearly see his house, which stood out sharply as the only one on the block that had been totally renovated. Then he caught a glimpse of something he wished he hadn’t: the sight of his neighbors warming up on the outdoor playground’s basketball court. Unable to resist, Jack jumped the curb and glided to a stop at the chain-link fence.

As soon as Jack had come to a halt, one of the players sauntered over to him. His name was Warren Wilson, and he was by far the best player. Over the course of Jack’s years in the city living in the neighborhood, he and Jack had become the best of friends.

“Hey, man, you coming out? I still got room for one.”

“I’d love to,” Jack said, “but Laurie’s been cooped up in the house with JJ, and I’ve got to go and relieve her. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I know. Catch you later, then.”

Struggling with his conscience, Jack watched Warren rejoin the group. Reluctantly, he turned his bike and headed across the street, hoisting it onto his shoulder to carry it up the front stone steps.

After unlocking the door, Jack poked his head in and listened. No crying. Carrying the bike inside, he placed it in its designated closet and started up the stairs.

As Jack climbed the stairs he began to hear some telltale sounds from the kitchen. By the time he arrived there he assumed he would find the baby in the playpen and Laurie at the sink, as he had the previous evening. “Hello, dearest!” he called out, seeing Laurie out of the corner of his eye as he stepped over to take a peek at JJ in the playpen. At that point he did a double take, because JJ was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s the boy?” Jack questioned with mild concern, since the situation was so unique.

“The little guy is sleeping,” Laurie announced with pleasure. “And since I had a reasonable night’s sleep last night, I thought I’d get a jump on dinner. It’s quite a luxury.”

Some luxury, Jack thought but didn’t express. He walked directly up to her, got his two hands around her waist from behind, and directed her forcibly out of the kitchen, down the short hall, and into the family room. He made her sit on one of the love seats, which was upholstered in a bright-yellow-and-light-green-checked fabric. Jack took the seat opposite.

“I need to talk,” Jack said in an authoritarian voice.

“Okay,” Laurie said, looking at Jack askance. The situation seemed mildly out of character, and she didn’t know whether or not to be concerned. She couldn’t read Jack’s emotions, although she could sense he was not entirely himself. “Is everything all right at the office?”

Jack hesitated a moment, not knowing where to start. He hadn’t given any thought to what he specifically wanted to say. Unfortunately for Laurie, every minute of silence on Jack’s part fanned her concerns about what he was struggling to bring up.

“I need to ask you something,” Jack said. “Something that makes me feel quite guilty.”

Laurie took in a sudden breath and felt her extremities go cold. “Wait!” she said with a touch of desperation, her mind reflexively drudging up the curious cell-phone-in-the-bathroom episode the night before. “If you are about to tell me you are having an affair, I don’t want to hear it. That’s something I cannot deal with! I’ve got about as much on my plate right now as I can handle, and sometimes I’m not even sure I’ve got what it takes to handle this much.” The words tumbled out in a rush of emotion as Laurie fought to avoid tears. Quickly, Jack leaped up to sit next to her. He put his arm around her shoulder.

“I am absolutely not having an affair,” Jack said, shocked at the suggestion. “What I wanted to ask you is whether you would mind if I went out to dinner tonight with two college friends. One you’ve met, Shawn Daughtry.”

“The archaeologist?” Laurie questioned with relief, as tears brimmed in her eyes. “The archaeologist with the fawning wife.”

“Exactly,” Jack said. Stunned by Laurie’s idea that he might be having an affair, his mind went to his promise to James. He’d sworn not to mention the possibility of finding the bones of the Virgin Mary, not about the existence of the ossuary itself. There’d been no concern about letting Alex Jaszek in on the existence of the relic. Jack wanted something significant to share with Laurie to totally eliminate her concern about his having an affair.

“Last night I told you that I was giving up on my crusade about alternative medicine, even though I’m in sorry need of a diversion. Well, as luck would have it, a diversion has literally dropped into my lap.”

“Wonderful,” Laurie said, still struggling to recover her composure. “I’m glad to hear it. What is it?”

Jack told the story about the ossuary from the beginning, and as he knew it would, it totally captivated and fascinated Laurie, even without the possible association with the Virgin Mary.

“I had no idea you even knew the archbishop of New York,” Laurie said, truly shocked.

“It was part of my old life which I’ve tried to forget,” Jack explained. “Actually I was surprised Shawn didn’t mention it when we had dinner with him and his wife.”

“I wonder,” Laurie said. “But no matter. I just find it astonishing, as is the whole story of the ossuary and the scrolls. I can’t wait to hear more.”

“I feel the same. As a diversion, I couldn’t have asked for anything more engaging. If I believed in a merciful God, I’d think it heaven-sent.” Jack smiled inwardly, realizing how true this really was.

“I apologize for even thinking about you having an affair,” Laurie murmured. “I’m not myself these days.”

“No need to apologize,” Jack said. “Neither of us are ourselves, me in particular.”

“Of course you can go to dinner tonight,” Laurie said, “with my blessing.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. “But it makes me feel more guilty than I already feel. Can you understand that?”

“I do.”

“And can you understand that I would prefer you were coming along,” Jack said, while suppressing the thought about wishing they’d not had the child, especially since it had required in vitro fertilization assistance.

“Of course I can understand, and under different circumstances I would love to come, if not just to meet the archbishop.”

“You’ll meet the archbishop,” Jack said. “Especially since he said he specifically is looking forward to meeting you.”

“Now, with the dinner issue out of the way, there’s one more point I want to make. It’s a beautiful day, and since JJ is asleep, why don’t you head outside for a while for some air?”

A broad smile spread across Laurie’s face. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m okay.”

“Oh, come on. You haven’t been out for days. The sun is out and it has warmed up considerably.”

“Where would I go?” Laurie questioned with a shrug.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jack encouraged. “Take a walk in the park, go Christmas shopping, visit your mother. Just enjoy some freedom.”

“JJ will know I’m gone the second I walk out the door. I’ll be worried sick.”

“You don’t have much confidence in me.”

“As a pediatrician? No, I don’t. Look, I feel lucky to be able to be home with JJ full-time. It would be a lot tougher if I had to go back to work and entrust his care to someone else. Think of it more like that. You are making it possible for me to do what I want to do, rather than me being stuck.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I do. It’s not easy right now, but we’ll be able to start treatment again soon. And the more effort I make, the more confident I am about the ultimate outcome.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He wished he shared her optimism. Giving her a squeeze, he got to his feet and walked to the window. Warren and the others were in the midst of their first game, running up and down the basketball court.

“I think I’ll head out for a little b-ball,” Jack said.

“Good idea, provided you don’t get hurt,” Laurie said. “I’d rather not have another patient in the house.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Jack said before heading upstairs to change.