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crumpling. Stephen reached again to hold her, but she couldn’t be held. She moved to the window across the room, as far from him, from that word— Munchausen —as possible. Tree branches held their wrists up to the sky. There was no moon. She stared at the Christmas lights from the house across the lake: on, then off; on, then off—and felt her own heart beating in tandem with them. She heard Stephen get up from the bed and cross the room to wrap his arms around her from behind as Noah had three days ago as they stood on the beach. She began to cry. How could she have thought for a minute that losing Noah—or even Stephen finding out about him—was the worst thing that could happen?
    â€œCome on, Grace,” Stephen whispered. He smelled of leather from his coat and homemade bread from Jeff’s bakery.
    â€œI just want to know how this could happen,” she whispered.
    â€œI don’t know, but the investigation—”
    She jerked away from him. “Investigation?”
    â€œWell, whatever it was. Mandy said it was initiated last March, but obviously no one found anything, and hell, for all we know, the ‘investigation’ might have been nothing more than one call to Dr. Mehta and that was the end of it.”
    Grace felt herself go cold again. “Anju knew about this?”
    â€œNo, I don’t know…I was simply—”
    â€œWhy wouldn’t she have told us?” Grace was crying again. She had trusted Anju. She had—she still did—consider Anju to be a part of their family. She thought of the morning, the second or third that Jack had been in the ICU last year, when she woke after a few restless hours of sleep to find an exhausted-looking Anju standing over Jack’s bed. “Is he okay?” Grace asked before she even sat up.
    Anju smiled. “Our boy is doing much better,” she whispered, without taking her eyes from Jack. Our boy. When Jack was in the hospital, Grace often felt as if Anju was his other parent.
    Grace couldn’t stop crying now. Anju was also the only person, the only person—not even Stephen—with whom Grace had ever discussed, seriously discussed, a DNR order. Do Not Resuscitate . How do you explain to anyone what it is like to determine the exact scenario in which you will no longer fight for your child’s life? How do you possibly convey what it feels like in your bones and in the back of your throat to not only imagine that scenario but to plan for it the way you would plan for you child’s first day of school? Not something that might happen. Something that would. And Anju was the only person in her life who knew what this had been like.
    Stephen turned her around, forced her to look at him. “Baby, listen to me. I have no idea if Anju knows or not, but if she does, and she didn’t say anything to us, it’s because she thought this whole thing was bullshit, which it is.”
    She nodded bleakly. “But is that what you thought—” She paused. “I mean, when Jeff first told you, did you think—”
    He pulled away from her. “Think what, Grace?” His voice was angry, but she saw that his eyes were terrified. Terrified because he had thought it, maybe for only an instant, less than that even. But he had thought it. She felt herself dissolving. She wanted to hate him, but she knew that had the tables been turned and someone told her that Stephen had been accused of Munchausen’s, she would have vehemently denied it, but it wouldn’t have erased that nanosecond of doubt, that silent could he have ? And maybe a part of her would have even hoped—for only a second, she promised herself now, but still, hoped —that the accusation was true. Because if it was, it would mean that Jack wasn’t really as sick as everyone thought. It would mean that he would live.
    â€œI know you don’t think that now, but just at first, Stephen, for a