Ada couldn't forget the lights in the house going out, or hearing the irritated sputtering of the chain saw on the ground, or looking out the window. She couldn't forget the sight of her husband's body. The emergency workers had told her she'd behaved rationally on the phone, reporting all the details, not touching the ladder, speaking coherently when they arrived. She'd tried to revive him until they came. But what they told her later was all a story. She remembered none of it, except Wyatt on the ground with blackened hands.

She buried him two days later, with only the children, the Larsons, and Buzz and Chick and Tim in attendance. Only Melody was missing. She never gave out her phone or address. She'd left the family, except for rare visits or calls to Clover, since they lived to close to each other.

Ada wanted the formalities as few as possible -- no church ceremony, no eulogies. The children insisted on a wake: Gabriel insisted, and Clover backed him up. Ada yielded because she didn't have the energy to fight her son and daughter.

People came whom Ada had almost forgotten. A grapevine existed, or came into existence. Friends the children knew, or found in their father's address book, called other friends, who called yet more. Even the surviving members of Euphoria, some of whom he hadn't seen or talked to in decades, showed up and offered the conventional condolences. Ada had to take their names on faith, because she didn't recognize these people. She'd met them only briefly, in college. Now they variously looked like decadent Angelenos or successful businessmen.

Gabriel made the phone calls, and Clover the arrangements for food and drink. She set up a table in the living room with photographs of Wyatt, the awards he'd won, his platinum album, and copies of a brief biography. The living room was full of folding chairs rented for the day, but the crowd spilled into the kitchen. People told how they'd made music with Wyatt, or gone backpacking with him. There were hitchhikers he'd given rides to, and befriended. There were people he'd loaned, or given, money to.

Ada scarcely heard what they had to say. She was reviewing their life together. If she included their time in college, she had spent half her life with him. She had expected to spend the remainder going to bed and waking up together, eating meals, getting his help with heavy chores, listening to his stories, and missing him when he travelled.

She twisted the ring on her finger. She had no reason to wear it now, but she couldn't bring herself to put it aside. The final words of their wedding promise came to her: "for so long as we both shall live". How was she supposed to live alone? The word alone was inadequate, because she had been cut in half. One side of her was unrecoverable. His death was a greater loss than blindness would have been, or deafness. She could have compensated for those. He would have helped. They would have learned new ways. But this? She could not imagine going on without her mate. The house had been empty since the children left. Now it would be airless and dark as well.

A world had disappeared. She had no one to share anecdotes about the children with ("Do you remember the time...?"). All the shorthand references to memories in common: extinct. A culture of two ended. The allusions to shared events and notions: no more. All had vanished. Those who said a language dies with the last speaker were wrong: it dies with the next-to-last, when the only survivor has no one left to talk to. She had spent decades building a life with this man, sharing it with him. Now that life existed only in her brain. Her husband's death had, in a moment, taken away a million details. Those sharings had turned intangible: they had moved from between to inside. All that remained was her memory; the substance had diminished from two persons to one. When she died, they would vanish altogether, and no more of him would be. Until then, the thought of him was all she had. She would never touch him again. He would never hold her.

Since she had been young, Ada had begun every day with a prayer of thanks. She had never asked for the fulfillment of personal desires, but now she knelt by the side of the bed and pleaded, "Take away this pain. Please take away this pain." She had never experienced such suffering, not when her mother died, not when she divorced, not when her father died.

Every day, details reminded her of Wyatt: the tree limb not yet cut up; music on the piano; shoes in the closet. Even the old dog seemed to miss him. She had always loved silence, but its quality had changed, and now she hated it. He would never come back. She knew this. But sometimes she forgot, and found herself noting things that happened, to tell him. Worse, when she didn't forget that he was gone, she found herself remembering him: Thanksgiving evening in the snowstorm; their first time in bed together, and how he had told her he loved her, and laughed at her tears; conversations; nights worrying about a sick baby; even disagreements.

She had the company of her son. He and Julia were having problems. After the wake, he said, "Mom, can I live here a while?"

"What about Julia?"

"She thinks we should take a break." He picked at his lip. "You know how she is."

"Certainly you can stay. This will always be your home."

But she knew he was there as much to tend her as to move away from his girlfriend.

Every evening he practiced piano for an hour, reminding her of Wyatt, who had the same habit. On one occasion she heard the music stopping and starting, the melody and the chords played with variations, and pauses between the different versions of whatever it was Gabriel was trying to play. She sat on the sofa.

"That was lovely," she said when he stopped and was staring into space. "What was it?"

"Something I was writing," he said. "Dad was helping me." He began playing Traumerei. "Writing songs is hard. When I got stuck, he'd find a way to get me started again." He closed the piano.

"Play some more," she said. "It reminds me of him."

He played Weightless because she liked it. When he finished and turned around she was staring through him. He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Mom?"

"The first time I saw this house he played piano for me. That morning. In this room. On that piano. That song. He knew I'd like it. My God. I can't get used to this."

"I know."

"Do you?" She looked at her fingernails. They were bitten, as always. She rubbed the end of the middle finger of one hand with its thumb. "All this." She gestured around the room. "The house. You children." She looked sideways at him. "That isn't half of what we had. I knew him. Knew him, almost from the moment we met, with nothing between us. Being with him was like dancing with someone you never make a mistake with. You each know exactly what the other is going to do. You think together. How do I dance alone?"

"You find another partner."

"He'd be a very tough act for any man to follow," she said. "Besides, men don't want women my age." She stood and said, "Don't worry. I'm all right." She brushed back the hair that always fell onto her son's forehead. She pressed a hand to his cheek. "I have chores to do."

"Stay here. I'll play you Thumbelina." This was the song Wyatt had written about her.

But she left.

Ada stayed awake that night with the memory of Wyatt's words: the journals she'd been reading, the tender things he'd said, the angry things as well, and his songs. In the middle of the night she could stand it no more, and fell to her knees, and slapped the wood floor of the bedroom. "Come back to me! Come back!" she cried.

She felt her hair move as if it were being stroked. That went on for a minute, and she was raised to her feet, and her arms went around an invisible body, and she pressed her cheek against it. Her sobs quieted and she closed her eyes and turned her head a bit and nestled in to the body supporting hers. She was afraid to open her eyes. It might be Gabriel instead of Wyatt.

"I love you," she murmured. "I know how hard it must be. Please stay as long as you can." She fell asleep.

She didn't know how long this lasted. The feeling of sound sleep, so sound she ceased to be, was all she remembered later. She woke and stepped back. Wyatt was there, though she couldn't see him.

"Are you staying because of me?" she asked.

"Yes." The voice was Wyatt's. "You're holding me here. You have to understand. I'm like the kids. They have their own lives now. I have something to do, too. A task."

"What's that?"

"Completing my death. You have to let me go, Ada. You have to. You're the reason I'm still here. You have to give up."

She felt not pain, but a horrified dismay. This was a betrayal she never could have anticipated. She made a gesture like stroking his hand. Probably, she was. "I need you to stay," she said.

"I know. But I'm too tired. More tired than I ever was when I was alive. Let me go. Stop being selfish."

"I'll try." She thought for a while. "Just a little longer," I said. "Please. There are some things I haven't figured out yet."

He was silent.

"Wyatt, I need to know. Are you real?"

"No," he said. "I never was. No one is."

"I mean, am I imagining you?"

"How would I know? I can't even tell who's dead and who's alive."

"Am I imagining your hand?" She lifted it, invisible, in hers, and lowered it. "Am I imagining the things you tell me? Am I imagining that you've come back to me?"

"I can't answer that. I don't understand those distinctions any more."

"I love you, Wyatt. I have always loved you more than anything, or anyone. I'll find a way to be alone. I don't know how, but I will. If you have to go, then go."

Then she reached out, but did not grasp anything.