The Leftovers

DIRTBAGS

TOM WAS JITTERY IN THE terminal. He would have preferred to keep hitchhiking, sticking to the back roads, camping in the woods, saving their money for emergencies. They’d made it all the way from San Francisco to Denver like that, but Christine had gotten tired of it. She never told him so straight out, but he could see that she thought it was beneath her, having to stick out her thumb and pretend to be grateful to people who had no idea what an honor it was to play even a bit part in her story, people who acted like they were the ones doing the favor, picking up a couple of scruffy, barefoot kids in the middle of nowhere and taking them a little farther down the road.

It was two days before Thanksgiving — Tom had forgotten all about the holiday, which used to be one of his favorites — and the waiting area was choked with travelers and luggage, not to mention a problematic number of cops and soldiers. Christine spotted an empty seat — it was a single in the middle of a row — and rushed to grab it. Trying to control his irritation, Tom lumbered after her, weighed down by his overstuffed backpack, reminding himself that her needs came first.

Shrugging off the ungainly pack — it contained her stuff as well as his own, plus the tent and sleeping bag — he sat down at her feet like a loyal dog positioning himself at an angle to avoid eye contact with the pack of soldiers sitting directly across the way, all of them dressed in desert fatigues and combat boots. Two were napping and one was texting, but the fourth — a skinny, redheaded dude with rabbity, pink-rimmed eyes — was studying Christine with an intensity that made him nervous.

This was exactly what he’d been worried about. She was so cute that you couldn’t not check her out, not even when she was dressed in these filthy hippie rags and a hand-knitted stocking cap, with a big blue-and-orange bullseye painted in the middle of her forehead. More than a month had passed since Mr. Gilchrest’s arrest, and the story had pretty much faded away, but he figured it was just a matter of time before some busybody noticed Christine and connected her with the fugitive brides.

The soldier’s gaze shifted to Tom. He tried to ignore it, but the guy apparently had all the time in the world and nothing to do but stare. Eventually, Tom had no choice but to turn and meet his eyes.

“Yo, Pigpen,” the soldier said. The stitching on his shirt pocket identified him as HENNING. “That your girlfriend?”

“Just a friend,” Tom replied, a bit grudgingly.

“What’s her name?”

“Jennifer.”

“Where you heading?”

“Omaha.”

“Hey, me too.” Henning seemed pleased by the coincidence. “Got a two-week leave. Gonna spend Thanksgiving with the family.”

Tom gave a minimal nod, trying to let the guy know he wasn’t in the mood for a big get-to-know-you chat, but Henning didn’t take the hint.

“So what brings you to Nebraska?”

“Just passing through.”

“Where you coming from?”

“Phoenix,” he lied.

“Hot as a bitch down there, huh?”

Tom looked away, trying to signal that the conversation was over. Henning pretended not to notice.

“So what is it with you guys and showers? You allergic to water or something?”

Oh, God, Tom thought. Not this again. When they’d decided to disguise themselves as Barefoot People, he figured they’d get teased a lot about drugs and free love, but he had no idea how much time he was going to have to devote to the subject of personal hygiene.

“We value cleanliness,” Tom told him. “We’re just not obsessed with it.”

“I can see that.” Henning glanced at Tom’s grimy feet as if they were Exhibit A. “I’m curious. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without a shower?”

If Tom had any interest in being honest, he would have said seven days, which was the extent of his current streak. In the interest of verisimilitude, he and Christine had stopped showering three days before leaving San Francisco, and during their time on the road they’d only had access to public restrooms.

“None of your business.”

“All right, fine.” Henning seemed to be enjoying himself. “Just answer me this. When was the last time you changed your underwear?”

The soldier next to Henning, a bald black guy who’d been texting like his life depended on it, looked up from his phone and chortled. Tom remained silent. There was no dignified way to answer a question about your underwear.

“Come on, Pigpen. Just give me a ballpark figure. Extra points if it’s less than a week.”

“Maybe he’s a commando,” the black guy speculated.

“Purity comes from within,” Tom explained, echoing one of the Barefoot People’s favorite slogans. “What’s on the outside is irrelevant.”

“Not to me,” Henning shot back. “I’m the one that has to sit on the bus with you for twelve hours.”

Tom didn’t say so, but he knew the guy had a point. For the past couple of days, he’d been uncomfortably aware of the funk he and Christine were giving off in close quarters. Every driver who picked them up immediately cracked the windows, no matter how cold or rainy it was. Verisimilitude was no longer an issue.

“I’m sorry if we offend you,” he said, a bit stiffly.

“Don’t get mad, Pigpen. I’m just fucking with you.”

Before Tom could reply, Christine kicked him softly in the back. He ignored the summons, wanting to keep her out of the conversation. But then she kicked him again, hard enough that he had no choice but to turn around.

“I’m starving,” she said, jutting her chin in the direction of the Food Court. “Could you get me a slice of pizza?”

HENNING WASN’T the only one who resented their presence on the overnight bus. The driver didn’t look too happy as he took their tickets; several passengers muttered disparaging comments as they made their way down the aisle toward the empty seats in back.

It was almost enough to make Tom feel sorry for the Barefoot People. Until he’d started impersonating one, he had no idea how unpopular they were with the general public, at least once you got out of San Francisco. But whenever he found himself wishing that he and Christine had chosen a more respectable cover — something that would have allowed them to blend in a little better and not attract so much free-floating hostility — he reminded himself that the weaknesses of this particular disguise were also its strengths. The more conspicuous you were, the easier it was for people to take you at face value — they just wrote you off as a couple of harmless dirtbags and left it at that.

Christine slid into the window seat in the very last row, unpleasantly close to the restroom. She seemed puzzled when Tom sat down across the aisle.

“What’s the matter?” She patted the empty seat beside her. “Aren’t you gonna keep me company?”

“I figured we could spread out. Be easier to get some rest.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I guess you don’t love me anymore.”

“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I met someone else. On the Internet.”

“Is she pretty?”

“All I know is, she’s clean Russian girl, looking for rich American stud.”

“Good thing it’s not the other way around.”

“Very funny.”

They’d been teasing each other like this for the past couple of weeks, pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend, hoping to joke away some of the sexual tension that always seemed to be hanging in the air, but only making it thicker in the process. It had been distracting enough back at the house, but it had become excruciating now that they were on the road, twenty-four-hour-a-day companions, eating together, sleeping side by side in the little pup tent. He’d heard Christine snoring and seen her squatting in the woods, and had held her hair away from her face when she threw up in the morning, but all that familiarity hadn’t managed to breed even the smallest sliver of contempt. He still got flustered every time she brushed up against him, and knew it would be pure insomniac torture, sitting right next to her for twelve hours, his eyes wide open, her knee just inches from his own.

Despite a multitude of opportunities, Tom still hadn’t made any moves on her — hadn’t tried to kiss her in the tent, or even hold her hand — and he didn’t intend to. She was sixteen years old and four months pregnant — her belly had just begun to bulge — and the last thing she needed to deal with were sexual advances from her traveling companion, the guy who was supposed to be watching out for her. His mission was simple: All he had to do was deliver her safely to Boston, where some sympathetic friends of Mr. Gilchrest had offered to take her in and provide her with food and shelter and medical care until the baby arrived, the one who was supposed to save the world.

Tom didn’t believe all this nonsense about the Miracle Child, of course. He didn’t even understand what it would mean to save the world. Would the people who’d disappeared come back? Or would things just get better for the ones left behind, less sadness and worry all around, a brighter future ahead? The prophecy was maddeningly vague, which led to all sorts of groundless rumors and wild speculation, none of which he took seriously, for the simple reason that his faith in Mr. Gilchrest was pretty much shot to hell. He was only helping Christine because he liked her, and because this seemed like a good time to get out of San Francisco and on to the next chapter in his life, whatever that was going to be.

Even so, just for fun, he sometimes allowed himself to entertain the remote possibility that it could all be true. Maybe Mr. Gilchrest really was a holy man, despite all his flaws, and the baby really was some kind of savior. Maybe everything really did depend on Christine, and therefore, on him. Maybe Tom Garvey would be remembered thousands of years from now as the guy who’d helped her when she needed it most, and had always acted like a gentleman, even when he didn’t have to.

That’s me, he thought with grim satisfaction. The guy who kept his hands to himself.

IT WAS early evening by the time they got moving, too late to enjoy the Rocky Mountain scenery. The bus was new and clean, with plush reclining seats, onboard movies, and free wireless, though neither Tom nor Christine had any use for that. The bathroom didn’t even smell that bad, at least not yet.

He tried watching the movie—Bolt, a cartoon about a dog who mistakenly believes he has superpowers — but it was hopeless. He’d lost his taste for pop culture after the Sudden Departure and hadn’t been able to get it back. It all seemed so hectic and phony now, so desperate to keep you looking over there so you didn’t notice the bad news right in front of your face. He didn’t even follow sports anymore, had no idea who’d won the World Series. All the teams were patched together anyway, the holes in their rosters plugged by minor leaguers and old guys who’d come out of retirement. All he really missed was music. It would have been nice to have his metallic green iPod along for the ride, but that was long gone, lost or stolen in Columbus, or possibly Ann Arbor.

At least Christine seemed to be enjoying herself. She was giggling at the tiny screen in front of her, sitting with her dirty feet on the seat cushion and her knees hugged tightly to her breasts, which she claimed were a lot bigger than they used to be, though Tom couldn’t really see much of a difference. From this angle, with her little bump hidden beneath a baggy sweater and a ratty fleece jacket, she just looked like a kid, someone who should have been worrying about homework and soccer practice, not sore nipples and whether she was getting enough folic acid. He must’ve stared a little too long, because she turned suddenly, as if he’d spoken her name.

“What?” she asked, a little defensively. The bullseye on her forehead was a bit faded; she’d have to touch it up when they got to Omaha.

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just spacing out.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, go back to your movie.”

“It’s pretty funny,” she told him, her eyes crinkling with pleasure. “That little dog’s a trip.”

THERE WAS a run on the bathroom when the movie ended. The line moved efficiently at first, but it came to a standstill after an older guy with a cane and a grimly determined expression ducked inside and stayed put. The people behind him grew visibly annoyed as the minutes ticked by, sighing with increasing frequency, instructing their colleagues up front to knock and see if he was alive in there, or at least find out if War and Peace was all it was cracked up to be.

As luck would have it, Henning happened to be second in line during the traffic jam. Tom kept his head down, pretending to be engrossed in the freebie paper he’d picked up at the terminal, but he could feel the soldier’s insistent gaze boring into the center of his bullseye.

“Pigpen!” he cried when Tom finally looked up. He sounded pretty drunk. “My long-lost buddy.”

“Hey.”

“Yo, Grampa!” Henning barked, addressing the closed door of the restroom. “Time’s up!” He turned back to Tom with an aggrieved expression. “What the fuck’s he doing in there?”

“Can’t rush Mother Nature,” Tom reminded him. This seemed like something a Barefoot Person would say.

“Fuck that,” Henning replied, drawing an agitated nod of agreement from the middle-aged woman in front of him. “I’m gonna count to ten. If he’s not outta there, I’m gonna kick the door down.”

Just then the toilet flushed, sending a visible wave of relief down the aisle. This was followed by an extended, oddly suspenseful interlude of silence, at the end of which the toilet flushed a second time. When the door finally opened, the now-famous occupant stepped out and surveyed his public. He mopped his sweaty brow with a paper towel and made a humble appeal for forgiveness.

“Had a little problem.” He rubbed his stomach, a bit tentatively, as if things still weren’t quite right. “Nothin’ I could do.”

Tom caught a whiff of misery as the old guy limped off and his replacement stepped into the restroom, uttering a soft cry of protest as she shut the door.

“So what’s going on back here?” Henning asked, a lot more cheerful now that the logjam had been broken. “You guys partying?”

“Just hanging out,” Tom told him. “Trying to get some rest.”

“Yeah, right.” Henning nodded, like he was in on the joke, and patted one of his back pockets. “I got some Jim Beam. I’m happy to share.”

“We’re not really into alcohol.”

“I get it.” Henning pinched his thumb and forefinger together and brought them to his lips. “You like the herb, huh?”

Tom gave a judicious nod. The Barefoot People definitely liked the herb.

“I got some of that, too,” Henning reported. “There’s a rest stop in a few hours if you want to join me.”

Before Tom could answer, the toilet flushed.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Henning muttered.

Stepping out of the bathroom, the middle-aged woman smiled queasily at Henning.

“It’s all yours,” she told him.

On his way in, Henning took another toke on his imaginary joint.

“Catch you later, Pigpen.”

LULLED BY the hum of the big tires, Tom drifted off to sleep somewhere outside of Ogallala. He was awakened a while later — he had no idea how long he’d been napping — by the sound of voices and a muddled sense of alarm. The bus was dark except for the glow of a few scattered reading lights and laptop screens, and it took him a few seconds to get his bearings. He turned instinctively to check on Christine, but the soldier was in the way. He was sitting right next to her, a pint of whiskey in his hand, talking in a low, confidential tone.

“Hey!” Tom’s voice came out louder than he meant it to, earning him several annoyed glances and a couple of shushes from his fellow passengers. “What are you—?”

“Pigpen.” Henning spoke softly. There was a sweet expression on his face. “Did we wake you?”

“Jennifer?” Tom leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of Christine. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, but Tom thought he detected a note of reproach in her voice, which he knew he deserved. He was supposed to be her bodyguard, and here he was, sleeping on the job. God only knew how long she’d been trapped like this, fending off the advances of a drunken soldier.

“Go back to sleep.” Henning reached across the aisle and patted him on the shoulder with what felt like parental reassurance. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Tom rubbed his eyes and tried to think. He didn’t want to antagonize Henning or cause any sort of disturbance. The one thing they didn’t need was to draw any unnecessary attention to themselves.

“Listen,” he said, in the friendliest, most reasonable tone he could muster. “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but it’s really late, and we haven’t had a lot of sleep in the past few days. It would be really cool if you just went back to your seat and let us get some rest.”

“No, no,” Henning protested. “It’s not like that. We’re just having a conversation.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Tom explained. “I’m asking you nicely.”

“Please,” Henning said. “I just need somebody to talk to. I’m going through some bad shit right now.”

He sounded sincere, and Tom started to wonder if maybe he’d overreacted. But he just didn’t like the whole situation, the stranger pressed up against Christine, occupying the seat that Tom had so stupidly surrendered.

“It’s okay,” Christine told him. “I don’t mind if Mark stays.”

“Mark, huh?”

Henning nodded. “That’s my name.”

“All right. Whatever.” Tom sighed, acknowledging his defeat. “If it’s okay with her, I guess it’s okay with me.”

Henning extended the bottle like a peace offering. What the hell, Tom thought. He took a small sip, wincing as the liquor ignited in his throat.

“There you go,” Henning said. “It’s a long way to Omaha. Might as well enjoy ourselves.”

“Mark was telling me about the war,” Christine explained.

“The war?” Tom shuddered as a bourbon aftershock traveled through his body. All at once he felt clearheaded, wide awake. “Which one?”

“Yemen,” he said. “Fucking hellhole.”

CHRISTINE DOZED off, but Tom and Henning kept talking softly, trading the bottle back and forth across the aisle.

“I ship out in ten days.” Henning sounded like he didn’t quite believe it. “Twelve-month deployment.”

He said he came from a military family. His father served; so had two uncles and an aunt. Henning and his older brother, Adam, had made a pact to enlist right after October 14th. He came from a small rural town full of Bible-believing Christians, and back then just about everyone he knew believed that the End Times were upon them. They were expecting a major war to break out in the Middle East, the battle foretold in the Book of Revelation. The opponent would be nothing less than the army of the Antichrist, the honey-tongued leader who would unite the forces of evil under a single banner and invade the Holy Land.

So far, though, none of that had happened. The world was full of corrupt and despicable tyrants, but in the past three years, none of them had emerged as a plausible Antichrist, and no one had invaded Israel. Instead of one big new war, there was just the usual bunch of crappy little ones. Afghanistan was mostly over, but Somalia was still a mess, and Yemen was getting worse. A few months ago, the President had announced a big troop escalation.

“I talked to a guy who just got back,” Henning told him. “He said it’s like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and I.E.D.’s.”

“Damn.” Tom took another hit of bourbon. He was starting to feel pretty loose. “You scared?”

“Fuck, yeah.” Henning tugged on his earlobe like he was trying to yank it off. “I’m nineteen years old. I don’t wanna wake up in Germany with one of my legs cut off.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Did to my brother.” Henning spoke matter-of-factly, his voice flat and distant. “Fucking car bomb.”

“Oh, man. That sucks.”

“I’m gonna see him tomorrow. First time since it happened.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Okay, I guess. They got him in a wheelchair, but he’s gonna get a new leg pretty soon. One of those high-tech ones.”

“Those are pretty cool.”

“Maybe he’ll be one of those bionic sprinters. I saw an article about this one guy, he’s actually faster now than he used to be.” Henning swallowed the last few drops of bourbon, then shoved the empty bottle into the seat pocket in front of him. “It’s gonna be weird seeing him like that. My big brother.”

Henning leaned back and closed his eyes. Tom thought he was drifting off to sleep, but then he gave a soft grunt, as if something interesting had just occurred to him.

“You got it right, Pigpen. Just go wherever you want, do whatever you want. Nobody ordering you around or trying to blow your head off.” He looked at Tom. “That’s the deal, right? You just wander around, looking for the party?”

“It’s our duty to enjoy ourselves,” Tom explained. He was pretty familiar with the theology; a lot of the teachers he’d been training in San Francisco had gone through a Barefoot phase before becoming Holy Wayners. “We believe that pleasure is the creator’s gift, and that we glorify the creator whenever we have a good time. The only sin is misery. For us, that’s Rule Number One.”

Henning grinned. “That’s my kinda religion.”

“It sounds simple, but it’s not as easy as you think. It’s like the human race has been programmed for misery.”

“I hear that,” Henning said, with surprising conviction. “How long you been doing it?”

“About a year.” Tom and Christine had been honing their cover stories in preparation for exactly this sort of interrogation, and he was glad they had — he was a little too drunk to be improvising. “I was in college, but it all felt so pointless. Like, the world’s coming to an end, and I’m getting a degree in Accounting. What good’s that gonna do me?”

Henning tapped his forehead. “What’s with the circle thing?”

“It’s a bullseye. A target. So the Creator will recognize us.”

Henning glanced at Christine. She was breathing softly, her head resting against the window, her features delicate in repose, as if they’d been sketched on her face rather than sculpted.

“How come hers is a different color? Does it mean something?”

“It’s a personal choice, like a signature. I do maroon and gold ’cause those were my high school colors.”

“I could do green and beige,” Henning said. “Kind of a camo thing.”

“Nice.” Tom nodded his approval. “I haven’t seen that before.”

Henning leaned across the aisle, like he wanted to share a secret.

“So is it true?”

“What?”

“You guys are into orgies and shit?”

From what Tom had heard, the Barefoot People held these big solstice gatherings out in the desert, where everybody ate mushrooms and dropped acid and danced and fucked. It didn’t sound all that great to him, just a big, sloppy frat party.

“We don’t call them orgies,” he explained. “It’s more like a spiritual retreat. You know, like a bonding ritual.”

“I’m down with that. I wouldn’t mind bonding with a few cute hippie girls.”

“Really?” Tom couldn’t resist. “Even if they hadn’t changed their underwear for a week?”

“What the hell?” Henning said with a grin. “Purity comes from within, right?”

CHRISTINE NUDGED him awake as they pulled into the terminal in Omaha. Tom’s head felt big and unsupportable, way too heavy for his neck.

“Oh, God.” He shut his eyes against the onslaught of daylight through the tinted windows. “Don’t tell me it’s morning.”

“Poor baby.” She patted him gently on the forearm. They were sitting next to each other, Tom in the seat where Henning had been.

“Ugh.” He swirled his tongue around the inside of his mouth. There was a vile taste in there — stale bourbon, pot smoke, bus exhaust, sadness. “Just shoot me and get it over with.”

“No way. It’s more fun to watch you suffer.”

Henning was gone. They’d hugged him goodbye around four in the morning, at a travel plaza in the dead center of the middle of nowhere.

“I hope he’s okay,” she said, as if reading his mind.

“Me, too.”

He was on his way to San Francisco, hitchhiking westward with a piece of paper in his wallet, on which Tom had written the address of Elmore’s Café and instructions to “Ask for Gerald.” There was no Gerald, as far as Tom knew, but it didn’t matter. The Barefoot People would take him in, with or without an introduction. Everybody was welcome, even — especially — a soldier who’d decided that he wanted no part of the killing and dying.

“It’s kind of amazing,” Christine remarked, as they stood with the other passengers on the concrete apron, waiting to retrieve their luggage. “You converted him to a religion you don’t even believe in yourself.”

“I didn’t convert him. He converted himself.”

The driver was in a bad mood, tossing suitcases and canvas bags onto the ground behind him, paying no attention to where they landed. The crowd retreated a few steps, giving him room.

“You can’t really blame him,” Christine said. “He’ll have more fun in San Francisco.”

Their backpack landed with a thud. Tom bent down to get it, but must have straightened up a little too quickly. His legs went rubbery and he wobbled in place for a second or two, waiting for the dizziness to pass. He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead, one clammy drop at a time.

“Oh man,” he said. “Today is gonna suck.”

“Welcome to my life,” she told him. “Maybe we can throw up together.”

A redheaded family was standing inside the terminal, anxiously scanning the arriving passengers. There were four of them: a skinny father and a plump mother — they were around the same age as Tom’s own parents — a sullen teenage girl, and a haggard, one-legged guy in a wheelchair. Adam, Tom thought. He was smiling wryly, holding up a piece of paper, like an airport chauffeur.

MARK HENNING, it said.

The Hennings barely noticed Tom and Christine. They were too busy checking every new face that came through the door, waiting patiently for the right one to appear, the only face that mattered.

SNOWFLAKES AND CANDY CANES

KEVIN GOT TO TOWN HALL around eight that morning, an hour earlier than usual, hoping to squeeze in a little work before heading to the high school for a meeting with Jill’s guidance counselor. Fulfilling a campaign pledge, he’d opted for a hands-on style of governing, making himself available to meet with constituents on a first-come, first-served basis for an hour every day. This was partly a matter of good politics, and partly a coping strategy. Kevin was a social animal: He liked having somewhere to go in the morning, a reason to shave and shower and put on decent clothes. He liked feeling busy and important, certain that his sphere of influence extended beyond the boundaries of his own backyard.

He’d learned this the hard way after selling Patriot Liquor Megastores, a sweet deal that left him financially independent at the age of forty-five. Early retirement had been the dream at the center of his marriage, a goal he and Laurie had been moving toward for as long as he could remember. They never said it out loud, but they aspired to be one of those couples you saw on the cover of Money Magazine—vigorous middle-aged people riding a tandem bike or standing on the deck of their sailboat, cheerful refugees from the daily grind who’d managed, through a combination of luck and hard work and careful planning, to get a chunk of the good life while they were still young enough to enjoy it.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. The world had changed too much and so had Laurie. While he was busy managing the sale of the business — it was a stressful, protracted transaction — she was drifting away from the life they’d known, mentally preparing herself for an entirely different future, one that didn’t include a tandem bike or a sailboat, or even a husband, for that matter. Their shared dream had become Kevin’s exclusive property, and useless to him as a result.

It took him a while to figure this out. All he really knew at the time was that retirement didn’t agree with him, and that it was possible to feel like an unwelcome guest in your own home. Instead of doing all the exciting things he’d dreamed about — training for an over-forty triathlon, learning to fly-fish, reigniting the passion in his marriage — he mostly just moped around, an aimless man in baggy sweatpants who couldn’t understand why his wife was ignoring him. He put on weight, micromanaged the grocery shopping, and developed an unhealthy interest in his son’s old video games, especially John Madden Football, which could consume whole afternoons if you weren’t careful. He grew a beard, but there was too much gray in it, so he shaved it off. That was what passed for a big event in the life of a retired man.

Running for office turned out to be the perfect antidote for what ailed him. It got him out of the house and into contact with lots of other people without being anywhere near as demanding as a real job. As Mayor of a smallish town, he rarely worked more than three or four hours a day — a good part of which was spent wandering around the municipal complex, chatting with various clerks and department heads — but that little bit of structure made all the difference in his daily routine. Everything else fell into place around it — afternoons were for errands and exercise, evenings for relaxing; later on, there was always the Carpe Diem.

ON THE way up to his office, he popped into police headquarters for his daily briefing and caught Chief Rogers eating a massive blueberry muffin, a clear violation of his heart-healthy diet.

“Oh.” The Chief cupped his hand over the broken dome of his muffin, as if to protect its modesty. “Little early, isn’t it?” “Sorry.” Kevin retreated a step. “I can come back later.”

“That’s all right.” The Chief waved him in. “It’s no big deal. You want some coffee?” Kevin filled a foam cup from a silver push-button thermos, stirred in a packet of creamer, then took a seat.

“Alice would kill me.” The Chief nodded with guilty pride in the direction of his muffin. He was a sad-eyed, flabby man who’d had two heart attacks and a triple bypass before the age of sixty. “But I already gave up booze and sex. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give up breakfast.” “It’s your call. We just don’t wanna see you back in the hospital.”

The Chief sighed. “Let me tell you something. If I die tomorrow, I’m gonna regret a lot of things, but this muffin won’t be one of them.” “I wouldn’t worry about that. You’ll probably outlast all of us.”

The Chief didn’t seem to think this was a very likely scenario.

“Do me a favor, okay? If you come in here some morning and find me keeled over on my desk, just wipe the crumbs off my face before the ambulance comes.” “Sure,” Kevin said. “You want me to comb your hair, too?”

“It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.” Kevin nodded, letting his silence mark the transition to official business. If you weren’t careful, small talk with Ed Rogers could last all morning.

“Any trouble last night?”

“Not much. One DUI, one domestic, a pack of stray dogs on Willow Road. The usual crap.” “What was the domestic?”

“Roy Grandy threatened his wife again. He spent the night in the holding cell.” “Figures.” Kevin shook his head. Grandy’s wife had gotten an order of protection over the summer, but she’d allowed it to lapse. “What are you gonna do?” “Not much. By the time we got there, the wife was claiming it was all a big misunderstanding. We’re gonna have to turn him loose.” “Anything new on the Falzone thing?”

“Nah.” The Chief looked exasperated. “Same old story. Nobody knows anything.” “Well, let’s keep digging.”

“It’s blood from a stone, Kevin. You can’t get information from people who won’t talk. They’re gonna have to realize this is a two-way street. If they want us to protect them, they’re gonna have to play ball.” “I know. I’m just worried about my wife. In case there’s some kinda nut out there.” “I hear you.” The Chief’s somber expression turned sly. “Though I gotta tell you, if my wife took a vow of silence, I’d support her a hundred and ten percent.”

THREE WEEKS had passed since the body of a murdered Watcher had been found near the Monument to the Departed in Greenway Park. Since then, aside from conducting routine ballistics tests and identifying the victim — he was Jason Falzone, twenty-three, a former barista from Stonewood Heights — the police had made very little progress with the investigation. A door-to-door canvas of the neighborhood bordering the park had failed to locate a single witness who’d seen or heard anything suspicious. It wasn’t all that surprising: Falzone had been killed after midnight, in a deserted area several hundred yards from the nearest house. Only one shot had been fired from close range, a single bullet in the back of the head.

The investigators had also been stymied in their efforts to locate the victim’s partner, or interview anyone within the G.R. itself, which refused, on principle, to cooperate with the police or any other government agency. After a contentious negotiation, Patti Levin, the Mapleton Chapter’s Director and spokesperson, had agreed “as a courtesy” to respond in writing to a series of questions, but the information she provided led absolutely nowhere. The detectives were especially skeptical about her insistence that Falzone was alone on the night of the murder, since it was common knowledge that the Watchers traveled in pairs.

We don’t always have an even number of personnel on duty, she wrote. Simple math dictates that some of our people will have to work independently.

Offended by what they saw as stonewalling, not to mention Levin’s condescending tone, some members of the investigation team had raised the possibility of using more aggressive measures — subpoenas, search warrants, etc. — but Kevin had convinced them to hold off. One of his priorities as Mayor was to dial down the tension between the town and the Guilty Remnant; you didn’t do that by sending a group of heavily armed officers into the compound on a vague mission to round up potential witnesses, not after what had happened the last time.

As the days went by without an arrest, Kevin expected the police to come under fire from frightened residents — murders were exceedingly rare in Mapleton, and unsolved, apparently random ones were unheard-of — but the outcry never materialized. Not only that — if the letters to the local paper were any indication, a fair number of citizens believed that Jason Falzone had gotten more or less what he deserved. I’m not trying to justify what happened, one writer declared, but troublemakers who deliberately and repeatedly make nuisances of themselves shouldn’t be surprised if they provoke a reaction. Other commentators were more blunt: It’s long past time to expel the G.R. from Mapleton. If the police won’t do it, someone else will. Even the victim’s parents took a measured view of his death: We mourn the loss of our beloved son. But the truth is, Jason had become a fanatic. Before he vanished from our lives, he spoke frequently of his wish to die as a martyr. It appears that wish has been granted.

So that was where they were: a brutal, execution-style murder, no witnesses, no one clamoring for justice — not the victim’s family, not the G.R., and not the good people of Mapleton. Just a dead kid in the park, one more sign that the world had lost its mind.

DAISY’S DINER was one of those retro places with lots of stainless steel and maroon Naugahyde. It had been lovingly renovated about twenty years ago and was now getting old all over again — the banquettes patched with duct tape, the coffee mugs chipped, the once-dazzling checkerboard floor dull and scuffed.

Bing Crosby’s version of “The Little Drummer Boy” was playing on the sound system. Rubbing a clear spot into the fogged-up window, Kevin gazed with satisfaction on the holiday scene outside — oversized snowflakes and candy canes suspended from wire stretched across Main Street, real evergreen wreaths on the lampposts, the business district bustling with cars and pedestrians.

“It’s looking good this year,” he said. “All we need’s a little snow.” Jill grunted noncommittally as she bit into her veggie burger. He felt a little guilty about letting her skip class to eat lunch with him, but they needed to talk, and it was hard to do that at home, with Aimee always hovering around. Besides, at this point in the semester, the damage was already done.

The conference with the guidance counselor had not gone well, to put it mildly. In some vague way, Kevin had known that Jill’s grades were slipping, but he’d misjudged the gravity of the situation. A former straight-A student with stellar SAT scores, his daughter was failing Math and Chemistry and might eke out Cs at best in A.P. English and World History — two of her best subjects — if she aced her finals and handed in a number of overdue assignments before Christmas break, eventualities that were seeming more remote by the day.

“I’m at a loss,” the counselor told him. She was an earnest young woman with long, straight hair and rimless octagonal glasses. “It’s a complete academic meltdown.” Jill had just sat there, poker-faced, her expression wavering between polite boredom and mild amusement, as if they were talking about someone else, a girl she barely knew. Kevin came in for some pretty harsh criticism himself. Ms. Margolis couldn’t understand his blasé attitude, the fact that he hadn’t spoken to any of Jill’s teachers or responded to the many e-mails informing him of his daughter’s unsatisfactory progress.

“What e-mails?” he said. “I didn’t get any e-mails.”

It turned out that the messages were still going to Laurie’s account, so he’d never actually seen them, but the mix-up just proved the counselor’s larger point, which was that Jill wasn’t getting enough supervision and support at home. Kevin didn’t argue with that; he knew he’d dropped the ball. Ever since Tom had started kindergarten, Laurie had been the parent in charge of education. She supervised the homework, signed the report cards and permission slips, and met the new teachers on back-to-school night. All Kevin had to do for all those years was try to look interested when she told him what was going on; he obviously hadn’t come to terms with the fact that all this responsibility now belonged to him.

“I realize there’s been some … upheaval at home,” Ms. Margolis said. “Clearly, Jill’s having some adjustment issues.” She concluded the meeting by scrawling a big X through the college wish list that she and Jill had drawn up at the beginning of the school year. Williams, Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr — they were all out of the question now. It was late in the process, but what they needed to do in the upcoming weeks was shift their focus to less selective institutions, schools that might be a little more forgiving of a semester’s worth of terrible grades from an otherwise excellent student. It was unfortunate, she said, but that was where they found themselves, so they might as well face reality.

I’ll play my drum for him, pa rum pum pum pum …

“So what do you think?” Kevin asked, eyeing his daughter across the narrow Formica table.

“About what?” She stared right back, her face patient and unreadable.

“You know. College, next year, the rest of your life…”

Her mouth puckered with distaste. “Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.”

She dipped a french fry into a little pot of ketchup, then popped it into her mouth.

“I’m not sure. I don’t even know if I want to go to college.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “Tommy went to college. Look what happened to him.”

“You’re not Tommy.”

She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. A faint flush had crept into her cheeks.

“It’s not just that,” she told him. “It’s just … we’re the only ones left. If I go you’ll be all alone.” “Don’t worry about me. You just do what you need to do. I’ll be fine.” He tried to smile, but only got halfway there. “Besides, last time I checked there were three of us living in the house.” “Aimee’s not part of the family. She’s just a guest.”

Kevin reached for his glass — it was empty except for the ice — and brought his mouth to the straw, vacuuming up a few stray droplets of moisture. She was right, of course. They were the only ones left.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Do you want me to go away to school?” “I want you to do whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad. You’re a big help.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

She brought her hand to the top of her head, pinching absent-mindedly at her stubble. It had grown noticeably thicker and darker in the past few weeks, much less severe without the pale scalp shining through.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’d rather just stay home next year, if that’s okay with you.” “Of course it’s okay.”

“Maybe I could commute to Bridgeton State. Take a few classes. Maybe get a part-time job.” “Sure,” he said. “That would work.”

They finished their food in silence, barely able to look at each other. Kevin knew that a less selfish parent would have been disappointed — Jill deserved way better than Bridgeton State, everybody’s college of last resort — but all he felt was a relief so intense it was almost embarrassing. It wasn’t until the waitress took their plates that he trusted himself enough to speak.

“So, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask what you want for Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Big holiday? Right around the corner?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Come on,” he said. “Help me out.”

“I don’t know. A sweater?”

“Color? Size? I could use a little guidance.”

“Small,” she told him, grimacing as if the information were painful to disclose. “Black, I guess.” “Great. What about Aimee?”

“Aimee?” Jill sounded surprised, even a bit annoyed. “You don’t have to get anything for Aimee.” “What’s she gonna do, sit there and watch us open presents?”

The waitress returned with the check. Kevin glanced at it, then reached for his wallet.

“Maybe some gloves,” Jill suggested. “She’s always borrowing mine.”

“Okay.” Kevin took out his credit card and set it on the table. “I’ll get her some gloves. Let me know if you think of anything else.” “What about Mom?” Jill said after a few seconds. “Should we get something for her?” Kevin almost laughed, but stopped himself when he saw the serious expression on his daughter’s face.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re probably not gonna see her.”

“She used to like earrings,” Jill murmured. “But I guess she can’t wear them anymore.”

THEY WERE standing at a pedestrian crosswalk right outside the diner when a woman rode by on an orange bike. She called out to Kevin as she zipped past, a terse greeting he couldn’t quite decipher.

“Hey.” He raised his hand in a delayed salute, addressing the space she no longer occupied. “How’s it going?” “Who’s that?” Jill’s eyes followed the cyclist as she headed down the street, rounding the bend toward Pleasant Street, flowing at the same speed as the car that hemmed her in.

“No one you know,” Kevin said, wondering why he didn’t want to say her name.

“That’s hard-core,” Jill observed. “Riding a bike in December.”

“She’s dressed for it,” he said, hoping it was true. “They have all that Gore-Tex and whatnot.” He spoke casually, waiting for the emotional disturbance to pass. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Nora Durst since the mixer, the night they’d danced together until the lights came on. He’d walked her to her car and said good night like a gentleman, shaking her hand, telling her how much he had enjoyed her company. Her sister was standing right there, a squat, impatient-looking woman, so it didn’t go any further than that.

“Call me sometime,” she told him. “I’m in the book.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

He’d meant it, too. Why wouldn’t he? She was smart and pretty and easy to talk to, and it wasn’t like he had a whole lot going on at the moment. But three weeks had passed and he still hadn’t made the call. He’d thought about it a lot, enough that he no longer had to look up her number in the Mapleton white pages. But dancing with her was one thing, and going on a date, actually getting to know her, getting close to whatever it was she had to live with — that was something else entirely.

She’s out of my league, he told himself, without really knowing what he meant by that, what league either one of them belonged to.

He drove Jill back to school, then went home and lifted weights in his basement, an ambitious dumbbell workout that got a nice pump going in his arms and chest. He cooked roast chicken and potatoes for the girls, read a chapter of American Lion after dinner, and then wandered over to the Carpe Diem, where the night passed without any surprises, just the familiar faces and pleasant banter of people who knew each other a little too well and would be doing the exact same thing tomorrow.

It wasn’t until he got into bed that his thoughts returned to Nora, the jolt he’d felt when she passed him on her bike. In the daylight, the moment had come and gone in a jumbled rush, but in the dark, in the hush of his bedroom, it slowed and sharpened. In this simplified version, Jill wasn’t with him; Main Street was empty. Not only that, Nora wasn’t wearing spandex or a helmet, just the same pretty dress she’d worn at the dance. Her hair was loose and flowing, her voice clear and firm as she floated by.

“Coward,” she said, and all he could do was nod.

THE BEST CHAIR IN THE WORLD

IN THE CAR, NORA DID her best to act like it was no big deal, like going to the mall at the height of the holiday season was just something you did — because you were an American, because Christmas was right around the corner, because you were part of an extended family whether you liked it or not, and needed to buy gifts for a certain number of your relatives. Karen followed her lead, keeping the conversation light and casual, not saying anything to call attention to the significance of the journey, to suggest that Nora was “being brave” or “taking a step forward” or “getting on with her life,” any of the patronizing phrases she’d come to despise.

“It’s hard to shop for teenage boys,” Karen said. “They won’t even tell me which video games they want, like I’m supposed to know the difference between Brainwave Assassin 2 and Brainwave Assassin Special Edition. Plus, I told them I wouldn’t get anything rated M — I don’t even like the T games, to be honest — so that really limits my options. And the boxes they come in are so small, it just looks … empty under the tree, not like when they were little and you had all these presents spilling out, taking up the whole living room. That really felt like Christmas.”

“Maybe books?” Nora said. “They like to read, right?”

“I guess.” Karen kept her eyes straight ahead, fixed on the glowing taillights of the Explorer in front of them. Traffic was heavy for seven-thirty in the evening, almost like rush hour; apparently, the herd had made a collective decision to do some shopping. “They like that fantasy crap, and all the titles sound the same. Last Christmas I got Jonathan one of those boxed set trilogies—The Werewolves of Necropolis, or something — and it turned out he already owned them. They were right there on his bookshelf. It was like that with everything. I don’t think the boys got anything that really made them happy.”

“Maybe you should surprise them. Don’t focus so much on the things you know they want. Introduce them to something new.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like surfboards or something. Gift certificates for rock climbing or scuba lessons, that kind of thing.”

“Hmmm.” Karen seemed intrigued. “That’s not such a bad idea.”

Nora couldn’t tell if her sister was being sincere, but it didn’t really matter. It was a half hour to the mall, and they needed to talk about something. If nothing else, it was a chance for her to practice her small talk, to remember what it felt like to be a normal person having a harmless little chat, nothing too heavy or disturbing. It was a skill she’d need to develop if she was ever going to reenter the social world in a serious way — get through a job interview, say, or a dinner date with an interesting man.

“It’s — it’s pretty warm for this time of year,” she ventured.

“I know!” Karen’s reply was oddly emphatic, as if she’d been waiting all day for a chance to discuss the weather. “Yesterday afternoon I went out in just a sweater.”

“Wow. In December. That’s crazy.”

“It’s not gonna last.”

“No?”

“Cold front’s moving in tomorrow. I heard it on the radio.”

“That’s too bad.”

“What can you do?” Karen’s high spirits returned as abruptly as they’d vanished. “Be nice if it snowed for Christmas. We haven’t had a white one in a while.”

There was nothing to it, Nora thought. You just kept babbling, piling one inane remark on top of another. The trick was to sound like you were interested, even if you weren’t. You had to be careful about that.

“I talked to Mom this afternoon,” Karen said. “She might not make a turkey this year. She says maybe a big roast beef or possibly a leg of lamb. I reminded her that Chuck doesn’t like lamb, but you know how she is. Things go in one ear and out the other.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Though I have to say, I do kind of sympathize with her on the turkey question. I mean, we just had turkey for Thanksgiving and the leftovers lasted forever. It’s like, enough with the turkey already.”

Nora nodded, though she didn’t really care one way or the other — she wasn’t eating any meat these days, not even poultry or fish. It wasn’t so much an ethical objection as a conceptual shift, as though food and animals had ceased to be overlapping categories. Even so, she was relieved to hear that there might not be a turkey at Christmas dinner. Karen had made a big one for Thanksgiving, and the whole family had gathered around it for what felt like an excruciating length of time, rhapsodizing about its golden brown skin and moist interior. What a beautiful bird, they kept telling one another, which was a weird thing to say about a dead thing without a head. And then her cousin Jerry had made everyone pose for a group photograph, with the beautiful bird occupying the place of honor. At least nobody would do that with a roast beef.

“This is so great!” Karen said, as they waited at a red light on the mall access road. She squeezed Nora’s leg, just above the knee. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

The truth was, Nora could hardly believe it herself. It was all part of an experiment, the impulsive decision she’d made to stay home this year and face the holidays head-on, instead of running away to Florida or Mexico for a week, baking in the sun, pretending that there was no such thing as Christmas. All the same, she’d surprised herself by taking Karen up on her invitation to go to the mall, the epicenter of all the madness.

It was mostly Kevin Garvey’s fault, she was pretty sure of that. A month had passed since they’d danced at the mixer, and she still hadn’t figured out what to do about him. All she knew was that anything — even a trip to the mall with her sister — beat the prospect of another night of sitting at home like a teenager, waiting for him to call. It should’ve been obvious by now that it wasn’t going to happen, but some part of her brain wasn’t getting the message — she kept checking her e-mail every five minutes, carrying the phone everywhere she went, just in case he decided to get in touch while she was in the shower or the laundry room.

Sure, she could’ve picked up the phone or shot him a casual e-mail. He was the Mayor, after all; if she wanted, she could’ve just dropped in on him during his office hours, started complaining about parking meters or something. Back when she was young and single, she’d never had a problem taking the initiative, asking a guy out or at least smoothing the way for him to do the asking. But that wasn’t the point anymore. Kevin had said he would call her, and he seemed like a guy who could be trusted to keep his word. If he wasn’t that kind of guy, then the hell with him — he wouldn’t be any good to her anyway.

On some level, she understood that he’d danced with her out of pity. She was totally willing to admit that that was how it had started — a philanthropist and a charity case — but it had ended somewhere else entirely, her head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped tight around her, some kind of current running between their bodies, making her feel like a dead woman who’d been shocked back to life. And it wasn’t just her: She’d seen the look on his face when the lights came on, the tenderness and curiosity in his eyes, the way he kept holding her and shuffling his feet well after the music had stopped.

It was hard at first when he didn’t call — really hard — but a month is a long time, and she’d pretty much reconciled herself to the fact that it had all been a false alarm, at least until last week, when she’d passed him on her bike and everything got stirred up again. He was just standing there on Main Street with his punky-looking daughter at his side; all Nora had to do was squeeze the brakes, glide right up to them, and say, Hey, how’s it going? Then, at least, she would’ve been able to study his face, maybe get a clearer sense of what was going on. But she’d been a coward — she froze, forgot to hit the brakes, sped right past as if she were late for an appointment, as if she had someplace better to go than a house where the phone never rang and no one ever visited.

“Oh, look!” Karen said. They were cruising through the parking lot, trying to locate a space that wasn’t half a mile away from the entrance. She was pointing at a mother and daughter, the mom close to Nora’s age, the child maybe eight or nine, both of them wearing fuzzy reindeer antlers on their heads, the girl’s complete with blinking red lights. “Isn’t that adorable?”

TWO WHITE-CLAD Watchers were standing in front of the Macy’s entrance, along with a grizzled-looking guy ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. Out of politeness, Nora accepted a leaflet from one of the G.R. guys—Have you forgotten already? the cover inquired — then dropped it in a trash can conveniently situated just inside the door.

She felt a mini panic attack coming on as they passed the fragrance counter, a small animal’s sense of imminent danger. It was partly a reaction to the stench of a dozen different perfumes spritzed into the air by heavily made-up young women who seemed to think they were performing a public service, and partly a more general feeling of sensory overload brought on by the sudden onslaught of bright lights, bouncy music, and eager consumers. The blank-faced mannequins didn’t help, their paralyzed bodies decked out in the latest fashions.

It was easier to breathe once they entered the main concourse, with its high glass ceiling — the mall was built on three levels, with balconies on the upper two — and vast white floor, which reminded her of an old-fashioned train station. Beyond the central fountain, an enormous Christmas tree towered over a line of children waiting to meet Santa Claus, its angel-tipped peak rising past the first mezzanine. The tree reminded her of a ship in a bottle, so big you had to wonder how it got there.

Karen was a brutally efficient shopper, one of those people who always knows exactly what she’s looking for and where it can be found. She strode through the mall with an air of fierce concentration, eyes straight ahead, no aimless browsing or impulse buying. She was the same way in the supermarket, crossing off each item on her list with a red Sharpie, never passing the same spot twice.

“What do you think?” she asked, holding up an orange-and-blue-striped tie in the Big Guys Wearhouse. “Too bold?”

“For Chuck?”

“Who else?” She tossed the tie back onto the clearance table. “The boys never dress up.”

“Pretty soon they will. They’ll have proms and stuff, right?”

“I guess.” Karen plunged her hand back into the serpentine tangle of neckties. “They’ll have to start showering first.”

“They don’t shower?”

“They say they do. But their towels are always dry. Hmm.” She selected a more likely candidate, yellow diamonds on a field of green silk. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice.”

“I don’t know.” Karen frowned. “He’s got too many green ties as it is. He has too many ties, period. Whenever anybody asks what he wants for Christmas, he always says, Just a tie. A tie will be fine. So that’s what he gets. For birthdays and Father’s Day, too. And he always seems perfectly happy with them.” She released the tie, then glanced up at Nora. There was a sweet look on her face, affection and resignation and amusement all mixed together. “God, he’s so boring.”

“He’s not boring,” Nora said. “He’s just…”

She faltered, for lack of a better adjective.

“Boring,” Karen said again.

It was hard to argue with that. Chuck was a good provider, a solid, colorless guy who worked as a Quality Assurance Supervisor for Myriad Laboratories. He liked steak, Springsteen, and baseball, and had never once expressed an opinion that Nora had found remotely surprising. Always a dull moment with Chuck, Doug used to say. Of course, Doug was Mr. Unpredictable, charming and quirky, a new passion every month — Tito Puente and Bill Frisell, squash, libertarianism, Ethiopian food, sexy young women with lots of tattoos and a flair for fellatio.

“It’s the same with everything,” Karen said, examining a wide red tie with a mix of black pinstripes and wider silver stripes. “I try to get him to think outside the box, to wear a blue shirt with his gray suit, or God forbid a pink one, and he just looks at me like I’m crazy. You know what, let’s just stick with the white.”

“He likes what he likes,” Nora said. “He’s a creature of habit.”

Karen stepped away from the clearance table. Apparently the red one was a keeper.

“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” she said.

“No,” Nora agreed. “You really shouldn’t.”

ON HER way to the Food Court, Nora passed the Feel Better Store and decided to check it out. She still had twenty minutes to kill before she was supposed to rendezvous with Karen, who had slipped off for a little “private shopping time,” family code for I’m going to buy you a present and need you to get lost for a while.

Her heart was still racing when she stepped inside, her face hot with pride and embarrassment. She’d just forced herself to make a solo circuit of the big Christmas tree on the main level, where all the parents and kids were waiting to meet Santa Claus. It was another holiday challenge, an attempt to face her fear head-on, to break her shameful habit of avoiding the sight of small children whenever possible. That wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be — shut down, defensive, giving a wide berth to anything that might remind her of what she’d lost. A similar logic had inspired her to apply for the day-care job last year, but that had been too much, too soon. This was more controlled, a one-time-only, bite-the-bullet sort of thing.

It actually went okay. The way it was set up, the kids lined up on the right, met Santa in the middle, then exited on the left. Nora approached from the exit side, walking briskly, like an ordinary shopper on her way to Nordstrom. Only one child passed, a stocky boy talking excitedly to his goateed father. Neither one of them paid the slightest attention to her. Behind them, up on the makeshift stage, an Asian boy in a dark suit was shaking hands with Santa.

The hard part came after she looped around the tree — there was a giant model train set running in a frantic circle around the trunk — and headed in the opposite direction, walking slowly along the entire length of the line, like a general reviewing her troops. The first thing she noticed was that morale was low. It was late; most of the kids looked dazed, ready to collapse. A few of the toddlers were crying or squirming in their parents’ arms, and some of the older kids seemed on the verge of making a break for the parking lot. The parents mostly looked grim, the invisible cartoon balloons above their heads filled with thoughts like, Stop your whining.… We’re almost there.… This is supposed to be fun.… You’re going to do this whether you like it or not! Nora remembered the feeling, had the pictures to prove it, both of her kids sitting teary-eyed and forlorn in the lap of a defeated Santa.

There must have been thirty children in line, and only two of the boys reminded her of Jeremy, far fewer than she’d expected. There had been times in the past when almost any little boy could tear her heart out, but now she was pretty much okay as long as he wasn’t blond and very skinny with toy soldier spots on his cheeks. Just one girl made her think of Erin, and the resemblance wasn’t really physical — it was more something in her expression, a premature wisdom that seemed heartbreaking in such an innocent face. The girl — she was a thumb-sucking beauty with a wild tangle of dark hair — stared at Nora with such solemn curiosity that Nora stopped and stared right back, probably for a little too long.

“Can I help you?” her father asked, glancing up from his BlackBerry. He was around forty, gray-haired but fit-looking in a rumpled business suit.

“You have a lovely daughter,” Nora told him. “You should treasure her.”

The man placed his hand protectively on his daughter’s head.

“I do,” he replied a bit grudgingly.

“I’m happy for you,” Nora said. And then she walked away, before she had a chance to add anything that would upset him or ruin her own day, the way she had too many times in the past.

THE FEEL Better Store had an interesting motto — Everything You Need for the Rest of Your Life — but it turned out to be one of those yuppie emporia specializing in self-indulgent products for people who had way too much to begin with, things like heated slippers and bathroom scales that offered hearty personalized congratulations when you met your weight-loss goals and constructive personalized criticism when you didn’t. Even so, Nora made a long, slow journey through the interior, examining the hand-cranked emergency radios, programmable pillows, and noiseless nose-hair trimmers, appreciating the pleasantly austere environment — New Age soundscapes instead of Christmas carols — and the advanced age of the clientele. No beautiful little kids staring at you in the Feel Better Store, just middle-aged men and women nodding politely to one another as they loaded up on towel warmers and high-tech wine accessories.

She didn’t notice the chair until she was on her way out. It occupied its own dim corner of the showroom, an ordinary-looking brown leather recliner resting like a throne on a low, carpeted pedestal, bathed in the soft glow of an overhead light. She wandered over for a closer look and was startled to discover that it cost nearly ten thousand dollars.

“It’s worth it,” the salesman told her. He had sidled up and spoken before she even realized he was there. “That’s the best chair in the world.”

“It better be,” Nora said with a laugh.

The salesman nodded thoughtfully. He was a shaggy-haired, youngish guy in an expensive suit, the kind of suit you didn’t expect to see on someone who worked at the mall. He leaned forward, as if to tell her a secret.

“It’s a massage chair,” he said. “You like massages?”

Nora frowned — this was a complicated question. She used to love massages. She’d had a standing twice-a-month Integrative Bodywork appointment with Arno, a squat Austrian genius who worked out of the spa in her health club. An hour with him, and it didn’t matter what ailed her — PMS, bad knee, mediocre marriage — she felt reborn, able to meet the world with positive energy and an open heart. She’d tried going back to him about a year ago, but found that she could no longer stand to be touched so intimately.

“They’re okay,” she replied.

The salesman smiled and gestured toward the chair.

“Try it,” he said. “You can thank me later.”

NORA WAS alarmed at first, the way the headrest lurched so violently into motion, the hard rubber balls — or whatever they were — swirling up against the soft leather upholstery, digging into the knotty muscles surrounding her spine, grabby fingerlike devices pinching at her neck and shoulders. The vibrating seat cushion was undulating indecently, shooting warm, intermittent pulses of electricity into her butt and thighs. It was all too much until the salesman showed her how to work the control pad. She experimented with the settings — speed, temperature, intensity — until she hit upon the optimal combination, then cranked up the leg rest, closed her eyes, and surrendered.

“Pretty nice, huh?” the salesman observed.

“Mmmm,” Nora agreed.

“Bet you didn’t realize how tense you were. This is a stressful time of year.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “Take your time. Ten minutes of this and you’ll be as good as new.”

Whatever, Nora thought, too pleased by the chair to be irritated by the man’s presumption. It really was a remarkable piece of equipment, unlike anything she’d ever tried before. In a normal massage, what you experienced was a slightly alarming sense of being pressed down, your body flattening against the table, your face mashed into the hole, a powerful, if mostly benevolent, force manhandling you from above. This was just the opposite, all the energy surging from below, your body rising and softening, nothing holding you down but air.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of a ten-thousand-dollar massage chair would have seemed obscene to her, a shameful form of self-indulgence. But really, when you thought about it, it wasn’t that high a price to pay for something so therapeutic, especially if you spread out the cost over ten or twenty years. In the end, a massage chair wasn’t all that different from a hot tub or a Rolex or a sports car, any of the other luxury items people bought to cheer themselves up, many of them more cheerful than Nora to begin with.

Besides, who would even know? Karen, maybe, but Karen wouldn’t care. She was always encouraging Nora to pamper herself, buy some new shoes or a piece of jewelry, take a cruise, spend a week at Canyon Ranch. Not to mention that Nora would let her sister use the chair anytime she wanted. They could make it a regular thing, a Wednesday-night massage date. And even if the neighbors did find out, what did Nora care? What were they gonna do, say mean things and hurt her feelings?

Good luck with that, she thought.

No, the only thing holding her back was the thought of what would happen if she actually owned the chair, if she could feel this good anytime she wanted. What would happen if there were no other customers milling around, no salesman hovering nearby, no Karen to meet in five or ten minutes? What if it were just Nora in an empty house, the whole night ahead of her, and no reason to hit the off switch?

THE BALZER METHOD

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING THEY WATCHED a PowerPoint presentation, the eighteen female residents of Blue House gathered in the chilly basement meeting room. That was how they did it for now, simultaneous showings in each house within the compound, as well as the various outposts scattered throughout town. There had been some talk within the Mapleton Chapter about the necessity of building or acquiring a structure large enough to accommodate the entire membership, but Laurie preferred it this way — more intimate and communal, less like a church. Organized religion had failed; the G.R. had nothing to gain by turning into a new one.

The lights went out and the first slide appeared on the wall, a photo of a wreath hanging on the door of a generic suburban house.

TODAY IS “CHRISTMAS.”

Laurie shot a quick sidelong glance at Meg, who still looked a bit shaky. They’d stayed up late the night before, working through Meg’s conflicted feelings about the holiday season, the way it made her miss her family and friends and question her commitment to her new life. She’d even found herself wishing that she’d waited to join the G.R., so she could have had one last Christmas with her loved ones, just for old times’ sake. Laurie told her it was natural to feel nostalgia at this time of year, that it was similar to the pain amputees felt in a phantom limb. The thing was gone, but it was still somehow a part of you, at least for a little while.

The second slide showed a shabby Christmas tree festooned with a few meager scraps of tinsel, lying by the curb on a bed of dirty snow, waiting for a garbage truck to cart it away.

“CHRISTMAS” IS MEANINGLESS.

Meg sniffled softly, like a child trying to be brave. During last night’s Unburdening, she’d told Laurie about a vision she’d had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she’d tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family’s tree, checking items off a list. He wasn’t wearing a red suit — it was more like a blue bus driver’s uniform — but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event — the Night Meg Saw Santa.

In the slide that followed, a group of young carolers stood in a semicircle, their mouths open, their eyes shining with joy.

WE WON’T JOIN THE CELEBRATION.

Laurie barely remembered her own childhood Christmases. Being a parent had obscured all that; what stuck in her memory was the excitement on the faces of her own kids, their contagious holiday pleasure. That was something Meg would never get to experience. Laurie assured her that it was okay to feel anger about that, and healthy to acknowledge and express her anger, much better than feeding it with denial.

The vow of silence forbade laughter as well as speech, but a few people forgot themselves and chuckled at the next slide, a house lit up like a Vegas bordello, the front yard crowded with random yuletide statuary — a nativity scene, a herd of reindeer, an inflatable Grinch, some elves and toy soldiers and angels and a plastic snowman, plus a sour, top-hatted fellow who must have been Ebenezer Scrooge.

“CHRISTMAS” IS A DISTRACTION. WE CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO BE DISTRACTED.

Laurie had watched a lot of PowerPoints over the past six months, and had even helped to put a few of them together. They were an essential mode of communication within the G.R., a kind of portable, preacherless sermon. She understood the structure by now, knew that they always took a turn somewhere in the middle, away from the topic at hand to the only subject that really mattered.

“CHRISTMAS” BELONGS TO THE OLD WORLD.

The caption remained constant while a series of images flashed by, each one representing the world of the past: a Walmart superstore, a man on a riding lawn mower, the White House, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, a rapper whose name Laurie didn’t know, a pizza she couldn’t bear to look at, a handsome man and an elegant woman sharing a candlelit dinner, a European cathedral, a jet fighter, a crowded beach, a mother nursing an infant.

THE OLD WORLD IS GONE. IT DISAPPEARED THREE YEARS AGO.

In G.R. PowerPoints, the Rapture was illustrated by photos from which particular individuals had been clumsily deleted. Some of the Photoshopped people were famous; others were of more local interest. One picture in this series had been taken by Laurie, a candid snapshot of Jill and Jen Sussman on an apple-picking expedition when they were ten years old. Jill was grinning and holding up a shiny red apple. The Jen-shaped space beside her was empty, a pale gray blob ringed by brilliant autumnal colors.

WE BELONG TO THE NEW WORLD.

Familiar faces filled the screen, one after the other, the entire, unsmiling membership of the Mapleton Chapter. Meg appeared near the end, along with the other Trainees, and Laurie squeezed her leg in congratulations.

WE ARE LIVING REMINDERS.

Two male Watchers stood on a train platform, staring at a well-dressed businessman who was trying to pretend they weren’t there.

WE WON’T LET THEM FORGET.

A pair of female Watchers accompanied a young mother down the street as she pushed her baby in a stroller.

WE WILL WAIT AND WATCH AND PROVE OURSELVES WORTHY.

The same two pictures reappeared, with the Watchers obliterated, conspicuous by their absence.

THIS TIME WE WON’T BE FORGOTTEN.

A clock, the second hand ticking.

IT WON’T BE LONG NOW.

A worried-looking man gazed at them from the wall. He was middle-aged, a bit puffy, not particularly handsome.

THIS IS PHIL CROWTHER. PHIL IS A MARTYR.

Phil’s face was replaced by that of a younger man, bearded, with the burning eyes of a fanatic.

JASON FALZONE IS A MARTYR, TOO.

Laurie shook her head. Poor boy. He was hardly older than her own son.

WE ARE ALL PREPARED TO BE MARTYRS.

Laurie wondered how Meg was taking this, but couldn’t read her expression. They’d talked about Jason’s murder and understood the danger they were in every time they left the compound. Nonetheless, there was something about the word martyr that gave her chills.

WE SMOKE TO PROCLAIM OUR FAITH.

An image of a cigarette appeared on the wall, a white and tan cylinder floating over a stark black background.

LET US SMOKE.

A woman in the front row opened a fresh pack and passed it around the room. One by one, the women of Blue House lit up and exhaled, reminding themselves that time was running out, and that they weren’t afraid.

THE GIRLS slept late, leaving Kevin to fend for himself for a good part of the morning. He listened to the radio for a while, but the cheerful holiday music grated on him, a depressing reminder of busier and happier Christmases past. It was better to turn it off, to read his newspaper and drink his coffee in silence, to pretend that it was just an ordinary morning.

Evan Balzer, he thought, the name floating up, unbidden, from the swamp of his middle-aged memory. That’s how he did it.

Balzer was an old college friend, a quiet, watchful guy who’d lived on Kevin’s floor sophomore year. He mostly kept to himself, but spring semester he and Kevin had the same Econ lecture class; they got into the habit of studying together a couple of nights a week, and then heading out for a few beers and a plate of wings when they were finished.

Balzer was a fun guy to hang out with — he was smart, wryly funny, full of opinions — but hard to get to know on a personal level. He talked fluently about politics and movies and music, but clammed up like a P.O.W. if anyone asked about his family or his life before college. It took months before he trusted Kevin enough to share a little about his past.

Some people have interesting crappy childhoods, but Balzer’s was just plain crappy — a father who walked out when he was two, a mother who was a hopeless drunk but pretty enough that there was usually a man or two hanging around, though rarely for very long. Out of necessity, Balzer learned to take care of himself at an early age — if he didn’t cook or shop or do the laundry, then it probably wasn’t going to get done. Somehow he also managed to excel in school, getting good enough grades to earn a full scholarship at Rutgers, though he still had to bus tables at Bennigan’s to keep himself afloat.

Kevin marveled at his friend’s resilience, his ability to thrive in the face of adversity. It made him realize how lucky he’d been by comparison, growing up in a stable, reasonably happy family that had more than enough love and money to go around. He’d gone through the first two decades of his life taking it for granted that everything would always be okay, that he could only fall so far before someone would catch him and set him back on his feet. Balzer had never assumed that for a minute; he knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling, that people like him couldn’t afford a moment’s weakness, a single big mistake.

Though they remained close until graduation, Kevin never succeeded in convincing Balzer to come home with him for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was a shame, because Balzer had broken off contact with his mother — he claimed to not even know where she was living — and never had any plans of his own for the holidays, except to spend them alone in the tiny off-campus apartment he’d rented at the beginning of junior year, hoping to save a little money by cooking his own meals.

“Don’t worry about me,” he always told Kevin. “I’ll be fine.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Nothing much. Just read, I guess. Watch TV. The usual.”

“The usual? But it’s Christmas.”

Balzer shrugged. “Not if I don’t want it to be.”

On some level, Kevin admired Balzer’s stubbornness, his refusal to accept what he saw as charity, even from a good friend. But it didn’t make him feel any better about his inability to help. He’d be home, sitting at the crowded table with his big extended family, everyone talking and laughing and chowing down, when, out of nowhere, he’d be struck by a sudden, bleak vision of Balzer alone in his cell-like apartment, eating ramen noodles with the shades pulled down.

Balzer headed off to law school right after they graduated, and he and Kevin eventually fell out of touch. Sitting in his kitchen on Christmas morning, Kevin thought it might be interesting to look him up on Facebook, find out what he’d been up to for the past twenty years. Maybe he’d be married by now, maybe a father, living the full, happy life he’d been denied in his youth, allowing himself to love and be loved in return. Maybe he’d appreciate the irony if Kevin confessed that he was now the one hiding from the holidays, employing the Balzer Method with pretty good results.

But then the girls came down and he forgot about his old friend, because all at once it really did feel like Christmas, and they had things to do — stockings to empty and presents to unwrap. Aimee thought it would be nice to have some music, so Kevin turned the radio back on. The carols seemed fine this time, corny and familiar and somehow reassuring, the way they were supposed to be.

There weren’t all that many presents under the tree — at least not like there used to be back when the kids were little and it took most of the morning to open them all — but the girls didn’t seem to mind. They took their time with each gift, studying the box and removing the paper with great deliberation, as if you got extra points for neatness. They tried on the clothing right there in the living room, modeling shirts and sweaters over their pajama tops — in Aimee’s case, a precariously thin sleeveless T-shirt — telling each other how great they looked, even making a big deal over stuff like warm socks and fuzzy slippers, having such a good time that Kevin wished he’d gotten a few more gifts for both of them, just to prolong the fun.

“Cool!” Aimee said, tugging on the woolen hat Kevin had found at Mike’s Sporting Goods, the kind with goofy-looking earflaps that snapped beneath the chin. She wore it low on her forehead, almost level with her eyebrows, but it looked good on her all the same, just like everything else. “I can use one of these.”

She got up from the couch, her arms unfolding as she approached, and gave him a thank-you hug. She did this after every gift, to the point where it had become a kind of joke, a rhythmic punctuation to the proceedings. It was a little easier for him now that her skimpy morning ensemble had been augmented by a new sweater, a scarf, the hat, and a pair of mittens.

“You guys are so sweet to me,” she said, and for a second, Kevin thought she might start to cry. “I can’t remember the last time I had such a nice Christmas.”

Kevin got a few things, too, though only after suffering through the usual round of complaints about how hard it was to buy presents for a man his age, as if adult males were completely self-sufficient beings, as if a penis and a five o’clock shadow were all they would ever need to get by. Jill gave him a biography about the early years of Teddy Roosevelt, and Aimee got him a pair of spring-loaded hand exercisers, because she knew he liked to work out. The girls also presented him with two identical packages, dense little objects wrapped in silver paper. Inside the one from Jill was a novelty mug that proclaimed him #1 DAD.

“Wow,” he said. “Thanks. I knew I was in the top ten, but I didn’t think I’d made it all the way to number one.”

Aimee’s mug was exactly the same, except that this one was labeled WORLD’S BEST MAYOR.

“We should celebrate Christmas more often,” he said. “It’s good for my self-esteem.”

The girls started cleaning up after that, gathering the used wrapping paper and discarded packaging, jamming the debris into a plastic garbage bag. Kevin pointed at the solitary gift under the tree, a little box tied with ribbon that looked like it might contain jewelry.

“What about that one?”

Jill looked up. There was a red adhesive bow plastered to her scalp, making her look like a large, troubled baby.

“It’s for Mom,” she said, watching him closely. “In case she stops by.”

Kevin nodded, as if this made perfect sense to him.

“That’s really thoughtful,” he told her.

THEY RANG Gary’s doorbell but no one answered. Meg shrugged and took a seat on the cold concrete stoop, content to wait in plain sight for her ex-fiancé to return from wherever he happened to be on Christmas morning. Laurie sat down beside her, doing her best to ignore the dull sense of dread that had plagued her since they’d set out from Ginkgo Street. She didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t want to go to the next stop on their itinerary, either.

Unfortunately, their instructions were clear. It was their job to visit their loved ones, to do what they could to disrupt the cozy rhythms and rituals of the holiday. Laurie could see the point of this in the grand scheme of things: If the G.R. had one essential mission, it was to resist the so-called Return to Normalcy, the day-to-day process of forgetting the Rapture, or, at the very least, of consigning it to the past, treating it as a part of the ongoing fabric of human history, rather than the cataclysm that had brought history to an end.

It wasn’t that the G.R. had anything special against Christmas — they disliked holidays across the board — nor were they enemies of Jesus Christ, as many people mistakenly assumed. The Jesus issue was a little confusing, Laurie had to admit that. She’d struggled with it herself before joining, puzzled by the way the G.R. seemed to embrace so many elements of Christian theology — the Rapture and Tribulation, of course, but also the inherent sinfulness of humanity, and the certainty of the Final Judgment — while completely ignoring the figure of Jesus himself. Generally speaking, they were much more focused on God the Father, the jealous Old Testament deity who demanded blind obedience and tested the loyalty of his followers in cruelly inventive ways.

It had taken Laurie a long time to figure this out, and she still wasn’t sure if she’d gotten it right. The G.R. wasn’t big on spelling out its creed; it had no priests or ministers, no scripture, and no formal system of instruction. It was a lifestyle, not a religion, an ongoing improvisation rooted in the conviction that the post-Rapture world demanded a new way of living, free from the old, discredited forms — no more marriage, no more families, no more consumerism, no more politics, no more conventional religion, no more mindless entertainment. Those days were done. All that remained for humanity was to hunker down and await the inevitable.

It was a sunny morning, much colder out than it looked, Magazine Street as still and silent as a photograph. Though he supposedly earned a good salary right out of business school, Gary was still living like a student, sharing the top floor of a shabby two-family house with two other guys, both of whom also had girlfriends. Weekends were crazy there, Meg had explained, so many people having sex in such a small space. And if you didn’t do it, if you weren’t in the mood or whatever, you almost felt like you were violating the terms of the lease.

They must have sat on the porch for a half hour before they saw another soul, a crabby old guy out walking his shivering chihuahua. The man glared at them and muttered something that Laurie couldn’t quite hear, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t Merry Christmas. Until she’d joined the G.R., she’d never really understood just how rude people could be, how free they felt to abuse and insult total strangers.

A few minutes after that a car turned onto Magazine from Grapevine, a sleek dark vehicle that looked like a shrunken SUV. Laurie could sense Meg’s excitement as it approached, and her disappointment as it rumbled past. She was all keyed up about seeing Gary, despite Laurie’s many warnings not to expect too much from the encounter. Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer — that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with the people you’d left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn’t love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.

NORA HAD been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them — not at all — but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos. What happened in both cases was that you only remembered what you already knew, the same trusty handful of occasions and impressions. Erin was so stubborn. Jeremy had a clown at his party. She had such fine flyaway hair. He sure liked applesauce. After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain.

What she’d discovered recently was that these leftover memories were much more likely to surface if she wasn’t straining to retrieve them, if they were simply allowed to emerge of their own accord in the normal course of the day. Biking was an especially fruitful activity in this regard, the perfect retrieval engine, her conscious mind occupied by a multitude of simple tasks — scanning the road, checking the speedometer, monitoring her breathing and the direction of the wind — the unconscious part left free to wander. Sometimes it didn’t go far: There were rides when she just kept singing the same scrap of an old song over and over—Shareef don’t like it! Rockin’ the Casbah, Rock the Casbah! — or wondering why her legs felt so dead and heavy. But then there were those magical days when something just clicked, and all kinds of amazing stuff started popping into her head, little lost treasures from the past — Jeremy coming downstairs one morning in yellow pajamas that had fit the night before, but now seemed a full size too small; tiny Erin looking panicked, then delighted, then panicked again as she nibbled on her first sour cream and onion potato chip. The way his eyebrows turned lighter in the summer. The way her thumb looked after she’d been sucking it all night, pink and wrinkled, decades older than the rest of her. It was all there, locked in a vault, an immense fortune from which Nora could make only small, all-too-infrequent withdrawals.

She was supposed to go to her sister’s to open presents and eat a late breakfast of omelettes and bacon, but she called Karen and told her to go ahead without her. She said she was a bit under the weather, but thought she’d be okay with a little extra sleep.

“I’ll just meet you at Mom’s this afternoon.”

“You sure?” She could hear the suspicion in Karen’s voice, her almost uncanny ability to sense concealment or evasion. She must be a formidable parent. “Is there anything I can do? You want me to come over?”

“I’ll be fine,” Nora assured her. “Just enjoy the day. I’ll see you later, okay?”

SOMETIMES, WHEN she waited too long in the cold, Laurie drifted into a kind of fugue state, losing track of where she was and what she was doing. It was a defense mechanism, a surprisingly effective way of blocking out physical discomfort and anxiety, though also a bit scary, since it seemed like the first step on the road to freezing to death.

She must have spaced out like that on Gary’s front stoop — they’d been sitting there for quite a while — because she didn’t register the fact that a car had pulled up in front of the house until the people inside it were climbing out, by which point Meg was already in motion, heading down the steps and striding across the dead brown lawn with an urgency that was almost alarming after such a protracted interlude of calm.

The driver circled around the hood of the car — it was a sporty little Lexus, freshly washed and gleaming in the wan winter sunlight — and took his place at the side of the woman who’d just vacated the passenger seat. He was tall and handsome in his camel-hair overcoat, and Laurie’s brain had thawed out just enough to recognize him as Gary, whose confident, smiling face she’d seen numerous times in Meg’s Memory Book. The woman seemed vaguely familiar as well. Both of them stared at Meg with expressions that combined varying degrees of pity and astonishment, but when Gary finally spoke, all Laurie heard in his voice was a note of weary annoyance.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

True to her training, Meg remained silent. It would have been better if she had a cigarette in her hand, but neither one of them had been smoking when the car pulled up. That was Laurie’s fault, a lapse of supervision.

“Did you hear me?” Gary’s voice was louder now, as if he thought Meg might have developed a hearing problem. “I asked you a question.”

His companion gave him a puzzled look. “You know she can’t talk, right?”

“Oh, she can talk,” Gary said. “She used to talk my fucking ear off.”

Looking vaguely mortified, the young woman turned back to Meg. She was short and curvy, a bit unsteady on her stiletto heels. Laurie couldn’t help admiring her coat, a shimmery blue parka with fur-lined cuffs and hood. The fur was probably synthetic, but it looked really warm.

“I’m sorry,” the young woman told Meg. “I know this must be weird for you. Seeing us together.”

Laurie leaned to the left, trying to get a look at Meg’s face, but the angle wasn’t right.

“Don’t apologize to her,” Gary snapped. “She’s the one who should apologize.”

“It started two weeks ago,” the young woman continued, as if Meg had requested an explanation. “A bunch of us went to Massimo’s and drank a lot of red wine, and I was too drunk to drive home. So Gary offered me a lift.” She raised her eyebrows, as if the story told itself. “I’m not sure if it’s serious or anything. We’re just kinda hanging out together. For now.”

“Gina.” Gary’s voice was sharp with warning. “Don’t do this. It’s none of her business.”

Gina, Laurie thought. Meg’s cousin. One of the bridesmaids.

“Of course it’s her business,” Gina said. “You guys were together all those years. You were gonna get married.”

Gary studied Meg with a disgusted expression.

“Look at her. I don’t even know who that is.”

“She’s still Meg.” Gina spoke so softly that Laurie could barely hear the words. “Don’t be mean to her.”

“I’m not being mean.” Gary’s expression softened a little. “I just can’t stand to see her like this. Not today.”

He gave his ex-fiancée a wide berth as he headed toward the house, as if he thought she might try to attack him, or at least block his way. Gina hesitated just long enough to shrug an apology, then set off after him. Neither one of them paid the slightest attention to Laurie as they trudged up the front steps, not a word, not even a glance in her direction.

After Gary and Gina went inside, Laurie lit a cigarette and headed across the lawn to join Meg, who was still standing with her back to the house, staring at the Lexus as if she were thinking about buying it. Laurie held out the cigarette, and Meg took it, sniffling quietly as she brought it to her lips. Laurie wished she could say a few words—Nice going, or Good job—to let Meg know how proud she was. But all she did was pat her on the shoulder, just once, very gently. She hoped that was enough.

NORA HADN’T planned on going for a long ride. She was supposed to arrive at her mother’s between one and two in the afternoon, a timetable that only allowed for a fifteen-or twenty-mile spin, half her usual distance, but hopefully enough to clear her head and get her heart pumping, maybe even burn off a few calories before the big meal. Besides, it was freezing, only in the mid-twenties according to the thermometer outside her kitchen window, hardly ideal conditions for a strenuous workout.

But the cold turned out to be less of an impediment than she’d anticipated. The sun was out, the roads were clear — snow and ice were the real dealbreakers for winter riding — and the wind wasn’t all that stiff. She had high-tech gloves, neoprene shoe covers, and a polypropylene hood beneath her helmet. Only her face was exposed to the elements, and she could live with that.

She figured she’d turn around at the eight-mile mark, halfway out on the bike path, but when she got there she just kept going. It felt too good to be on the move, the pedals rising and falling beneath her feet, white vapor steaming from her mouth. So what if she was a little late to her mother’s? There would be a big crowd — all her siblings and their families, some aunts and uncles and cousins — and they wouldn’t even miss her. If anything, they’d be relieved. Without Nora around, they could laugh and open presents and compliment everyone else’s kids without wondering if they’d inadvertently said something to hurt her feelings, without giving her those sad, knowing glances or making those tragic little sighs.

That was what made the holidays so exhausting. Not the callousness of her relatives, their inability to acknowledge her suffering, but precisely the opposite — their inability to forget it for even a second. They were always tiptoeing around her, so careful and considerate, so painfully sympathetic, as if she were dying of cancer or afflicted with some disfiguring disease, like her mother’s aunt May — a pitiful figure from Nora’s own childhood — whose face had been paralyzed into a permanent crooked grimace by Bell’s palsy.

Be nice to Aunt May, her mother used to tell her. She’s not a monster.

The dicey stretch of path beyond Route 23 was nearly empty today, no creeps or stray dogs in sight, no animal sacrifices or criminal activity, just the occasional rider traveling in the opposite direction, tossing her a comradely wave as they passed. It would have been close to idyllic if she hadn’t had to pee so badly. During the warmer months, the county maintained a Porta-John at the end of the path — it was gross, barely tolerable in a pinch — but they took it away for the winter. Nora wasn’t a big fan of squatting in the woods, especially when there wasn’t a lot of greenery around to block the view, but there were days when you had no choice, and today was one of them. At least she found a Kleenex in the pocket of her windbreaker.

Before getting back on her bike, she dialed Karen’s cell phone and was relieved to be sent straight to voice mail. Like a kid playing hooky, she coughed once or twice, then spoke in an artificially congested voice. She said she was feeling a little worse than before and didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave the house, especially since whatever she had might be catching.

“I’m gonna make some tea and get back into bed,” she said. “Tell everybody Merry Christmas for me.”

The roads beyond the bike path were semirural, winding past isolated houses and the occasional small farm, corn stubble poking up from the frozen fields like the hairs on a leg that needed shaving. Nora didn’t know where she was going, but she didn’t mind getting lost. Now that she was off the hook for Christmas dinner, she didn’t care if the ride lasted all day.

She wanted to be thinking about her kids, but for some reason, her mind kept returning to poor Aunt May. She’d been dead a long time, but Nora could still picture her with strange clarity. She used to sit quietly at family gatherings, her mouth slanted at a weird angle, her eyes swimming with desperation behind thick glasses. Every now and then she tried to talk, but nobody could understand a word she said. Nora remembered being coaxed into hugging her, and then given a piece of candy as a reward.

Is that who I am? she wondered. Am I the new Aunt May?

She rode for sixty-seven miles in all. When she finally got home, there were five messages blinking on her answering machine, but she figured they could wait. She headed upstairs, stripped off her clammy clothes — she was suddenly shivery — and took a long hot bath. While she soaked, she kept contorting her mouth so that the left side hung lower than the right, and trying to imagine how it would feel to live like that, your face permanently frozen, your voice garbled, everyone trying to be extra nice so you wouldn’t feel like a monster.

THERE WAS something pathetic about watching It’s a Wonderful Life all by yourself, but Kevin couldn’t think of anything else to do. The Carpe Diem was closed; Pete and Steve were busy with their families. He gave a fleeting thought to phoning Melissa Hulbert, but decided it was a bad idea. She probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to receive a halfhearted booty call on Christmas Day, especially since he hadn’t tried to get in touch with her since their last ill-fated encounter, the night she’d spit on the Watcher.

The girls had left about an hour ago. The abruptness of their departure had startled him — they got a text and they were gone — but he couldn’t say he blamed them for wanting to spend some time with their friends. They’d hung out with him all morning and most of the afternoon, and it had been a lot of fun. After they finished with the presents, Aimee had made chocolate chip pancakes and then they’d gone for a long walk around the lake. When they got home, they played three games of Yahtzee. So, really, he had nothing to complain about.

Except here he was, with the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening stretched out ahead of him, a vast expanse of solitude. It was incomprehensible how his once-crowded life had dwindled down to this, his marriage over, his son lost to the world, both his parents gone, his siblings scattered — brother in California, sister in Canada. A few relatives remained in the immediate area — Uncle Jack and Aunt Marie, a handful of cousins — but everybody just did their own thing. The Garvey clan was like the old Soviet Union, a once mighty power that had dissolved into a bunch of weak and cranky units.

This must be Kyrgyzstan, he thought.

On top of everything, he wasn’t loving the movie. Maybe he’d seen it too many times, but the story seemed so labored, all that effort just to remind a good man that he was good. Or maybe Kevin was just feeling a little too much like George Bailey himself, with no guardian angel in sight. He kept flipping channels, searching for something else to watch and ending up right back where he started, repeating the cycle over and over until the doorbell rang, three harsh buzzes so sudden and thrilling that he rose a little too quickly from the couch and almost fainted. Before he could greet his visitors, he had to stop and close his eyes, giving himself a moment to absorb the shock of being upright.

FOR A minute or two, Laurie couldn’t think of anything except how good it felt to be out of the cold. Slowly, though, as her body warmed, the strangeness of being back home began to settle in. This was her house! It was so big and lovingly furnished, nicer than she’d allowed herself to remember. This soft couch she was sitting on — she’d picked it out at Elegant Interiors, anguishing for days over the swatches, trying to decide whether the gray-green worked better with the rug than the brick red. And that wide-screen LCD HD-TV—It’s a Wonderful Life was on, of all things — they’d bought that at Costco a couple of months before the Rapture, thrilled by the lifelike clarity of its picture. They’d watched reports of the catastrophe on that very screen, the anchors visibly freaked out by what they were saying, the footage of traffic accidents and bewildered eyewitnesses playing over and over in a mind-numbing loop. And this man standing in front of them, grinning nervously, that was her husband.

“Wow,” he was saying. “This is quite a surprise.”

Kevin had seemed a bit flustered to find them standing on the front porch, but he’d recovered quickly, ushering them into the house as if they were invited guests, hugging Laurie in the hallway — she tried to avoid it, but it was impossible in that narrow space — and shaking Meg’s hand, telling her how pleased he was to make her acquaintance.

“You guys look chilly,” he observed. “You’re not really dressed for the weather.”

That was an understatement, Laurie thought. It was hard to find really warm clothes that also happened to be white. Pants and shirts and sweaters weren’t a problem, but outerwear was another story. She felt lucky to have a white scarf she could wrap around her head, and a heavyweight cotton hoodie with an unobtrusive Nike swoosh on the pocket. But she needed better gloves — the cotton ones she had were ridiculously thin, the kind you wore to make a surprise inspection — and a pair of boots, or at least real shoes, something a little more substantial than the beat-up sneakers on her feet.

“You want something to eat?” Kevin said. “I can make coffee or tea or whatever. There’s wine and beer, too, if you want. Feel free to help yourself. You know where everything is.”

Laurie didn’t respond to this offer, nor did she dare look at Meg. Of course they wanted something to eat; they were starving. But they couldn’t say so, and they certainly couldn’t help themselves. If he put some food in front of them, they would be more than happy to eat, but it would have to be his call, not theirs.

“Better not look too hard,” he added as an afterthought. “We’re not eating as healthy as we used to. I don’t think you’d approve.”

Laurie almost laughed. She would have been happy to devour a couple of hot dogs straight from the package to let him know where she stood these days on the subject of healthy eating. But Kevin didn’t give her the chance. Instead of heading into the kitchen like a good host, he just sat down in the brown leather recliner Laurie had bought at Triangle Furniture, the chair she loved to read in on lazy weekend mornings, no lamp necessary, just the sunlight streaming in from the south-facing windows.

“You look good,” he said, examining her with alarming candor. “I like the gray hair. It actually makes you look younger. Go figure.”

Laurie felt herself blushing. She wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed on her own account, or because Meg was sitting right next to her. Still, though, it was nice to receive a compliment. Kevin hadn’t been as tight-lipped as some of her friends’ husbands, especially in the early days of their marriage, but the praise had definitely gotten sparser in recent years.

“I’m going a little gray myself,” he said, tapping himself on the side of the head. “I guess it goes with the territory.”

It was true, Laurie realized, though she hadn’t noticed the change until he pointed it out. Distinguished, she would have told him if she could. Like a lot of men of his generation, Kevin had seemed boyish long after he’d had any right to, and the gray hair — what little of it there was — added a welcome touch of gravity to his appearance.

“You lost a lot of weight,” he continued, casting a wistful glance in the vicinity of his own belt buckle. “I’ve been working out, but I can’t seem to get below one ninety.”

Laurie had to make a conscious effort not to think too hard about his body. It was a little overwhelming seeing him up close after all this time, being confronted with his actual physical self, experiencing the subtle pride of ownership that had been one of the sweeter undercurrents of their marriage: My husband’s a good-looking man. Not handsome exactly, but appealing in a broad-shouldered, friendly sort of way. He was wearing a gray zippered sweater that she used to borrow on rainy days, very roomy and soft to the touch.

“What I gotta do is cut out the late-night snacks. Microwave burritos and blueberry pie, crap like that. That’s what’s killing me.”

Meg let out a soft groan, and Laurie glanced pointedly in the direction of the kitchen, but Kevin didn’t take the hint. He was too distracted by the TV, Jimmy Stewart getting all worked up about something, stuttering and flailing his arms. He snatched the remote off the coffee table and hit the off button.

“I can’t stand that movie,” he muttered. “Remind me never to watch it again.”

Without the TV going, the house seemed ominously quiet, almost funereal. The clock on the cable box said it was only twenty after four, but already the evening darkness was moving in, pressing up against the windows.

“Jill’s not here,” Kevin announced, though it wasn’t really necessary. “She went out about an hour ago, with her friend Aimee. You know about Aimee, right? She’s been living with us since the end of the summer. She’s a good kid, but a little wild.” Kevin chewed his lip, as if pondering a difficult question. “Jill’s okay, I guess. But she’s been having a tough year. She really misses you.”

Laurie kept her face resolutely blank, not wanting to betray the relief she felt at her daughter’s absence. Kevin she could deal with. He was a grown man, and she could count on him to behave like one, to accept the fact that their relationship had undergone a necessary and irrevocable change. But Jill was just a kid, and Laurie was still her mother, and that was a whole different thing. Kevin rose abruptly from the recliner.

“I’m gonna give her a call. She’ll be really upset if she misses you.”

He went into the kitchen to get the phone. As soon as he left, Meg pulled out her pad and scribbled Bathroom? She nodded gratefully when Laurie pointed toward the far end of the hall, and lost no time heading in that direction.

“No luck,” Kevin announced upon his return, still holding the phone. “I left a message, but she doesn’t always check. I know she’d like to see you.”

They stared at each other. For some reason, things were a little more awkward with Meg out of the room. Air escaped from Kevin’s mouth in a slow leak.

“I haven’t heard from Tom. Not since summer. I’m a little worried about him.” He waited a moment before continuing. “I’m worried about you, too. Especially after what happened last month. I hope you’re being careful.”

Laurie shrugged, trying to let him know she was okay, but the gesture felt more ambivalent than she’d meant it to. Kevin put his hand on her arm, a few inches above the elbow. There was nothing especially tender in the gesture, but Laurie’s skin started to hum beneath his touch. It had been a long time.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re here, but it’s really good to see you.”

Laurie nodded, trying to convey the sentiment that it was good to see him, too. His hand was moving now, making a tentative up-and-down motion on her arm, not quite purposeful enough to qualify as a caress. But Kevin was one of those men who didn’t go in for a lot of casual contact. He rarely touched her unless he was thinking about sex.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” he said. “It’s Christmas. You should be with your family. Just for tonight. See how it feels.”

Laurie cast a worried glance in the direction of the bathroom, wondering what was taking Meg so long.

“Your friend can stay, too,” Kevin went on. “I can make up the bed in the guest room if she wants. She can go back in the morning.”

Laurie wondered what that meant: She can go back in the morning. Did that mean she herself would remain? Was he asking her to move back home? She shook her head, sadly but firmly, trying to make it clear that she wasn’t here for a conjugal visit.

“Sorry,” he said, finally getting the hint and removing that distracting hand from her arm. “I’m just feeling kinda down tonight. It’s nice to have some company.”

Laurie nodded. She felt sorry for him, she really did. Kevin had always loved the holidays, all that mandatory family togetherness.

“This is a little frustrating,” he told her. “I wish you would talk to me. I’m your husband. I’d like to hear your voice.”

Laurie felt her resolve weakening. She was on the verge of opening her mouth, saying something like, I know, it’s ridiculous, undoing eight months of hard work in a single moment of weakness, but before she could do it, the toilet flushed. A moment after that, the bathroom door swung open. And then, just as Meg came into view, smiling an apology, the phone buzzed in Kevin’s hand. He flipped it open without checking the display.

“Hello?” he said.

NORA WAS so startled by the sound of his voice that she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She’d somehow convinced herself, with the help of two glasses of wine on a mostly empty stomach, that Kevin wouldn’t be home, that she could just leave a brief message on his voice mail and make a clean getaway.

“Hello?” he said again, sounding more confused than irritated. “Who’s there?”

She was tempted to hang up, or pretend that she’d dialed the wrong number, but then she got hold of herself. I’m a grown woman, she thought, not a twelve-year-old making a prank call.

“It’s Nora,” she said. “Nora Durst. We danced at the dance.”

“I remember.” His tone was a little flatter than she might have hoped, a bit guarded. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“Fine,” he said, but not like he meant it. “Just, uh, enjoying the holiday.”

“Same here,” she said, but not like she meant it, either.

“So…?”

His not-quite-question hung there for a few seconds, long enough for Nora to take a sip of wine and mentally review the speech she’d rehearsed in the bathtub: You want to go out for coffee sometime? I’m free most afternoons. She had it all figured out. Afternoons were low-pressure, and so was coffee. If you met for coffee in the afternoon, you could pretend it wasn’t even a date.

“I was wondering,” she said. “You want to go to Florida?”

“Florida?” He sounded just as surprised as she was.

“Yeah.” The word had just tumbled out of her mouth, but it was the right one, the one she’d meant. She wanted Florida, not coffee. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some sun. It gets so depressing up here.”

“And you want me to…?”

“If you want to,” she told him. “If you’re free.”

“Wow.” He didn’t sound unhappy. “What kinda time frame are we talking about?”

“I don’t know. Is tomorrow too soon?”

“The day after would be better.” He paused, then said, “Listen, I can’t really talk right now. Can I call you later?”

KEVIN TRIED to look nonchalant as he pocketed the phone, but it was hard with Laurie and her friend staring at him with such frank curiosity, as if he owed them an explanation.

“Just an acquaintance,” he muttered. “No one you know.”

Laurie clearly didn’t believe him, but what was he supposed to say? A woman I barely know asked me to go to Florida and I think I just said yes? He didn’t quite believe it himself. He’d only been off the phone for a few seconds and already it seemed like there must be some kind of mistake — an elaborate misunderstanding, or possibly even a practical joke. What he needed to do was call Nora back and get a few things clarified, but he couldn’t do that until he was alone, and he had no idea how long he was going to have to wait for that. Laurie and her sidekick looked like they’d be happy to stand there and stare at him for the rest of the evening.

“So.” He clapped his hands softly, trying to change the subject. “Is anybody hungry?”

LAURIE WALKED slowly toward Main Street, lagging a step or two behind Meg, enjoying the unfamiliar sluggishness that comes with a full belly. The meal hadn’t been fancy — there were no leftovers from an afternoon feast, the way there should have been on Christmas night — but it was delicious nonetheless. They’d devoured everything Kevin put in front of them — baby carrots, bowls of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup sprinkled with oyster crackers, salami and American cheese sandwiches on white bread — and then topped it off with a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and a cup of fresh hot coffee.

They were approaching the corner when she heard footsteps, and Kevin’s voice calling her name. She turned to see him jogging down the middle of the street, no coat or hat, waving one arm in the air as if he were trying to flag down a taxi.

“You forgot this,” he said when he caught up. There was a little box in his hand, the orphaned present she’d noticed under the tree. “I mean, I did. It’s for you. From Jill.”

Laurie knew that much just from looking at it. A gift from Kevin would have been sloppier, a lumpy, slapdash affair with as few frills as possible. But the box he was holding had been wrapped with care, the paper taut, the corners sharp, the ribbon curled between scissors and thumb.

“She would’ve killed me,” he added, breathing harder than she would’ve expected after such a short run.

Laurie accepted the gift, but made no move to open it. She could see that he wanted to stay and watch, but she didn’t think it was a good idea. They’d already had enough of a family Christmas, way more than was good for them.

“All right,” he said, taking the hint. “I’m glad I caught you. And thanks again for coming.”

He started for home, and they continued on to Main Street, stopping beneath a streetlight near Hickory Road to open the present. Meg stood close, watching with an eager expression as Laurie methodically undid her daughter’s work, pulling off the ribbon, breaking the tape, stripping off the paper. She guessed that the box contained jewelry, but when she removed the top, what she found was a cheap plastic lighter resting on a bed of cotton. Nothing fancy, just a red Bic disposable with three words painted on the barrel in what must have been Wite-Out.

Don’t Forget Me.

Meg took out her cigarettes and they each lit up, taking turns with the new lighter. It was a really sweet gift, and Laurie couldn’t help crying a little, picturing her daughter at the kitchen table, inscribing that neat, heartfelt message with a tiny brush. It was an object to treasure, full of sentimental value, which is why she had no choice but to kneel down and drop it into the first storm drain they saw, poking it through the grate like a coin into a slot. It fell for what seemed like a long time, and hardly made a sound when it landed.