“Well, this is awkward,” Luke said, trying to sound funny but coming off as ticked. “Hang on a second. I’ll try to figure out what happened. Malcolm? Did you check the breakers?”
A second became a minute and then several. The breakers were fine. Luke, Malcolm, and a couple of other men emerged from the house with flashlights and started checking plugs and connections.
I left the dance floor and found a chair near Nan. Blixen, Nelson, and Stuart were curled up near her feet, sound asleep. So was Maisie. After the first few dances, when I’d carried her in my arms, Maisie’s wriggling made it clear she’d had enough, thank you. She’d pranced off to join her buddies in the dog pile.
Malcolm shone a light up high onto one of the tent poles and yelled, “I see it! There’s the problem. Hey, Luke, bring me a ladder—the big one.”
The ladder was produced and steadied, Malcolm climbed to the top, muttered and cursed and fumbled with cables, eventually finding the loose connection. When he pushed the plug back in place, the lights re-illuminated. At the same time, a spark flared.
The spark didn’t shock Malcolm, but it startled him. He jerked backward, a reflexive response, then lost his grip, fell ten or twelve feet, landed on the ground, and didn’t move.
This time there was screaming, screaming and shouting and chaos. Nan catapulted from her chair and was kneeling next to Malcolm before most people really understood what had happened. A crowd closed in around her, making it impossible to see what was happening. Luke was there, too, hidden inside the scrum of bodies, but I had spotted him kneeling next to Nan before the curtain of onlookers closed. I could hear him telling people to move back, give Malcolm some air, and call 911.
I got to my feet, picked Maisie up from the ground, and held her to my chest—fighting panic, hearing voices.
“Move back! Give us some room!”
“The ambulance is on the way.”
“He’s not breathing. Oh my God! He’s not breathing! Who knows CPR?”
“I do!”
“Wait, wait. Hold on a second. He’s breathing!”
“Malcolm! Malcolm, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
“Yes . . . I . . . I’m all right. I just got the wind knocked out of me. I’m fine. Really. Somebody help me up.”
Then there were cheers of relief and applause, probably because Malcolm did indeed get up from the ground, seemingly unharmed, but I couldn’t be certain because I didn’t see it myself. By that time I was already running across the lawn and up the path to the front of Nan’s house, clutching Maisie close, running as fast as I could from the sounds and voices and frightening scene.
As I jumped into my car, I thought I heard Luke calling my name. I pulled into the street and drove away just as an ambulance and a firetruck arrived. The luminarias were still burning.
Looking into the rearview mirror through a blur of tears, I saw Nan’s house growing very small and Luke on the lawn, watching me leave, backlit by the flame of two hundred candles and a strobe of lights, pulsing blue, red, and white.
Chapter 41
Nan
“Grace?”
I turned my head to press my ear against the door. I couldn’t hear anyone moving inside, but her car was parked on the street. I knocked again, insistently enough, I hoped, so she would realize I wasn’t leaving until she answered.
“Grace, open the door. You can’t spend the rest of your life pretending you’re not home.”
At last, I heard movement, footsteps, the yip of a little dog, the click of a deadbolt lock. Grace opened the door. She was wearing a bathrobe and had a towel wrapped around her head.
“Hi,” she said. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I just got out of the shower.”
“But you’ve been avoiding my calls. And Luke’s. He’s been calling me instead. He’s worried about you. So is Billie. She called and said you told her not to come in to work this week. Are you all right? You’re not sick, are you?”
She shook her head and then waved me inside.
“What are those?” she asked as I put down my bag and set a foil-covered plate down on the dining-sewing table Luke had made for her.
“Peach turnovers,” I said, removing the foil. “I just baked them.”
Grace smiled wryly. “The grief prescription, huh? Is it as bad as that?”
I pulled one of the stools out from under the table and sat down. “You tell me.”
She paused for a moment, then took a turnover from the plate.
“I should make some tea.”
Grace carried two mugs in from the kitchen and sat down at the table.
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she said. “I’ve been busy working.”
I looked around the apartment. Everything looked very tidy, no pins or needles or fabric scraps strewn about, and Grace’s sewing machine was inside its case.
“Not on the dresses,” she said, answering the question before I could ask it. “I’ve been working on the blocks for Jamie’s quilt. I’d like to finish it.”
She gestured toward a small stack of blocks on an end table, lying next to a wicker sewing basket and a small white cardboard box.
“Jamie’s ashes,” she said, indicating the box. “They were delivered a couple of days ago.”
The ashes. I nodded. Now I understood.
“Grace, do you know why I started doing pet therapy, volunteering to help people work through their grief?”
She gave me a curious look. “Well . . . because of Jim, I assumed. Because you’d been through it yourself.”
I shook my head. “It was because of Dani, my youngest daughter.”
Grace tipped her head to one side. “You’ve never really talked about her.”
“No,” I said quietly. “I never have.”
For the next few minutes, I told Grace all about the daughter I never really discuss. I told her about how Dani and Jim had been joined at the hip, how deeply Jim’s death impacted Dani, and how the intensity of her grief, and my inability to
