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“We are with each other now,” Martin was saying. “And in the different ways it means, we must try to make a life.”

Out over the Sfondrata chapel tower, where the fog had broken, she thought she saw a single star, like the distant nose of a jet; there were people in the clayey clouds. She turned,…

“You bought the Spearsons a new picnic bench?”

“Yes, I did.”

She thought about this. “Didn’t they think you were being hostile?”

“Oh … I think, yes, they probably thought it was hostile.”

Adrienne breathed deeply, in and out. “I killed a baby,” she whispered.

“Yes, we have all killed a baby—there is a baby in all of us. That is why people come to me, to be reunited with it.”

“No, I’ve killed a real one.”

Ilke was very quiet and then she said, “You can do the side-lying now.…