“No. It’s cats for me. They need so little. I’m only trying to humor this mutt, with his neediness. Dogs are shameless self-promoters.”

He stretches. His shirt rides up, exposing his belly—which I can’t resist looking at. It’s all smooth, regular, unburned skin. His burns are all located on the parts of him that show.

“What I feel worst about just now is that Noah’s parents are going to have Blix’s journal,” he says, “and then they’re going to try to take her house, and that’s just what she didn’t want to happen. Just another example of powerlessness in the face of fate.”

“You know something? I don’t care if they take her house. You’re leaving, and I’m leaving.”

“You don’t mean that,” he tells me quietly. “They can’t have Blix’s house, because even if we’re not here, it has to house her spirit. It’s not meant for them.”

“No. I think her spirit is somewhere else altogether. I think it’s in the relationships she had with the people. If I have to give up on this house, then I will. I’m not going to do a whole court battle for a building I can’t even take care of.”

He looks stunned. And then I make things so much worse, because I can’t help myself—I go over to him and stand on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek, right below his eye, where there’s the smoothest, pinkest skin. I just want to touch him.

It feels like silk. But he jerks away from my touch. He says, “No! Do not do that!”

“Does it hurt?”

“I can’t stand being pitied.”

“But I don’t pity you. Why do you have to read affection as pity? Maybe that’s what Blix was trying to tell you.” I feel myself start to cry, which is even worse than trying to touch him.

Everything’s weird after that. I’ve made the worst mess of things. He’s rattled and angry. And I’m apologetic, but nothing helps. Nothing feels right.

After he’s gone, I go in the living room, and stop beside the sculpture on the mantel. At least this is something Noah didn’t take, maybe because it’s so big. I touch its strong, deep lines, feel the taut seams underneath the welding, underneath the smoothness. Patrick made this back when he was healthy and whole. But he says he will never be that way again.

I close my eyes. Do I pity him? Am I drawn to him because of how fragile he seems?

Is it that I feel sorry for him because he’s burned and damaged?

You are okay, says a voice.

You are so meant to be where you are.

And you can love him. He is meant to be loved.

THIRTY-NINE

MARNIE

Thanksgiving dawns rainy, windy, and cold. The first really cold day of the season. The wooden floors chill my feet when I get out of bed. It’s five fifteen, time to start the turkey.

It hits me that I seem to have accidentally invited thirteen people for dinner (fourteen if you count Patrick, but he won’t come), and I have no idea what any of them are bringing to share. They all said they’d bring something, and until this moment that seemed good enough for me. Back when I planned this whole thing, I figured whatever arrives is going to be just the thing we need.

But now—what if we end up only with the turkey, my green bean casserole that probably no one is going to like, my pile of mashed potatoes, and a pie that Patrick made? This will be the first Thanksgiving that people will have to call out for pizza.

I’m pretty sure I could qualify for my adulting license on the basis of this day alone, especially if it turns out there’s enough food. I turn on some kick-ass rock music and crank it up loud while I work in the kitchen. I put on an old apron that I find in the cupboard and twirl around before I confront the massive, eighteen-pound turkey looming in the fridge. The happy homemaker, that’s me.

“Tom,” I say to him. “You’re my first. Just so you know. So I’d appreciate it if you could do the right thing here, feastwise. I mean, I’m sorry and all about what you must have gone through. But I want you to know I’m deeply appreciative. Giving thanks for your life.”

I have to borrow chairs, forks, knives, spoons, tablecloths, plates, and platters. Jessica says she has some, and so does Lola, and if those aren’t enough—well, then some people might have to sit on the floor to eat, or else we’ll eat in shifts, Jessica says.

Eat in shifts! I think of my mother with her white damask tablecloth and her candlesticks and the sterling silver turkey platter and dessert forks. She would die at the idea of people sitting on the floor or eating in shifts.

Jessica shows up first, at nine o’clock, bringing two pumpkin pies, coleslaw, four pounds of clams, and an apple crisp.

How stunningly random and un-Thanksgiving-like. “What are we going to do with these clams?” I ask, a little nervous.

“Clam chowder, of course! I know, I know; clams and coleslaw aren’t the first things you think of when you’re imagining Thanksgiving,” she says, “but I thought it would be fun. And I feel that Thanksgiving should be about giving thanks for everything you like, not just the turkey. Which, by the way, smells fantastic!”

Lola, somewhat more of a traditionalist, comes in at ten with a squash casserole, some homemade dinner rolls, and two pumpkin pies.

After an hour, I baste the turkey like any expert would. Paco runs over with slabs of roast beef, a beet salad, a vat of onion soup, and some Grey Poupon mustard. And three more pumpkin pies. The waitress from Yolk shows up with her boyfriend, and they get busy playing with the dog, and also with another dog, who has come along with one of Blix’s dog walker friends apparently.

Andrew and Sammy come downstairs and start making a pot of clam chowder that could feed the entire borough. This reminds Lola to mention that she’s invited Harry, just as he arrives with enough lobsters to feed the Eastern Seaboard.

“You are Blix’s favorite niece,” he tells me, and when I correct him, he says, “Okay, okay. Great-niece-in-law, have it your way!” and I feel silly for bringing it up.

I also have no idea how we’re going to cook these things—it seems every burner is being taken up, and there are dishes still waiting for their turn at the stove. Two of my Best Buds customers—the lesbian moms, Leila and Amanda, who were writing to the sperm donor—come and bring rolls and a pumpkin pie.

We are now full up on pumpkin pies, I notice.

Leila starts asking questions about when I’m selling the place and leaving, and I tell her all the problems, blah blah blah, and it turns out that she knows a real estate agent who would be happy to come and look at it and give me some advice. She whips out her phone and makes a call and then she yells over to me, “Tomorrow morning okay? Elevenish?”

“Sure,” I call back to her.

Jessica comes over right then and taps me on the arm and whispers. “Um, just so you know, Noah seems to be here. He’s in the living room, chatting with people and acting like he’s the host.”

“Noah?”

She smiles. “And also—I should tell you, there seems to be something going on with Lola. She’s on the stoop with the New Jersey man, and things do not seem to be going well.”

“Oh my God. I think he’s proposing to her.”

“Proposing? To Lola?”

“Are there flowers involved?” I yell to Jessica over a sudden din involving pots and pans, and she says there seem to be.

“I’ll report back,” she tells me.

The kitchen is starting to resemble a restaurant warehouse—except, you know, way more random. In the corner, Harry and the waitress’s boyfriend are talking politics. Leila and Amanda are trying to set up tray tables in the living room, but the legs of one are broken so Andrew says he’ll get a screwdriver and asks me where one might be kept, then it turns out that Bedford is happily chewing on it behind the couch.

The Yolk waitress says she’ll set all the tables, but then she needs help locating the serving spoons and then the tablecloths and the water glasses.

And then she stops and says, “Andrew? Andrew? Oh my God, you’re here! Are you with your wife? And son?”

I can’t. I just can’t.

Andrew, his face having gone white, is looking around the room, searching for Jessica, probably, and I hear him say, “Please—if you could just not—”

“Not mention that you dumped me? Of course I won’t,” I hear her say, and he takes her by the elbow and steers her into another corner of the kitchen. He’s saying, “I mean, I’ve told her about you,” as they go past. “It’s just that we’re so newly back together . . .”

Harry stops yelling about Republicans long enough to ask me sweetly if I think the lobsters are ever going to get their chance with the burners. And do I know where Houndy’s lobster pots are?

“Where are the serving spoons, again?” someone wants to know.

“Who made the squash casserole? Does it need oven space?”

There are a million conversations going on around me, and I’m basting the turkey one more time, and juggling the piece of aluminum foil I’m holding and the turkey baster, when suddenly I’m aware that Noah is talking to me.