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mother. “More evolved than most, and, I’m afraid, little understood because of it.” She told Hanne that with each new language, Hanne became, quite magically, larger and grander than before. And now with seven languages, her mother smiled brightly, “you’ve become grandest of all. How can any of those silly girls understand you?”
    Now Hanne says to her son, “Interesting. What is reasonable behavior?” She stifles a yawn. Her eyelids are heavy, dry. She is exhausted from her self-imposed work schedule. But once she begins work today, she knows she’ll tap into energy she didn’t even realize she had and will probably work until midnight again, unless she calls David. After spending so many hours in her mind, David reminds her she has a body. A fifty-three-year old body, she tells him, a body that still has hot flashes, though she no longer has to carry a kerchief to mop her face. A kind man, he always corrects her—a beautiful body, a desirable body, a body he wants to make love to. She runs her hand along her gray V-neck sweater and tucks a loose strand of hair back into her chignon.
    Tomas is still talking about his case, and now he’s resorted to legal jargon and case citations. A cloud covers the weak sun, darkening the room. Across the street on the front porch of an old Victorian stands a tall, wiry man in a fire-engine-red coat and black pants. His hair is a mop of wild black curls, he’s too flamboyantly dressed to belong in this neighborhood. He’s holding a dozen or so brightly colored flowers and dropping them one by one—peonies? Mums?—deliberately, precisely onto the sidewalk below. Hanne imagines him standing on a bridge, tossing the flowers into a river below. Is he celebrating something? Commemorating a death?
    Tomas sighs, probably realizing his mother’s mind is somewhere else, and abruptly shifts gears. “I got some news about Brigitte.”
    â€œOh?” She tries to sound nonchalant.
    â€œI got a call she was taken to a hospital. That’s all I know. Could be nothing. Could be something.”
    The image of a feverish Brigitte comes to mind. Bright red cheeks, so lethargic, her lips chapped and cracking. She must have been six, maybe seven, and for days and days she was burning up with fever. Hanne set everything aside, stretched out beside Brigitte on the couch, and read to her or watched movies. Time sloughed away like an unnecessary skin, as Hanne tended to her, putting the cup of ice water to her lips, offering her saltines, scratching her back to lull her to fitful sleep.
    Tomas wakes her from her reverie. “When I know more, I’ll call you.” He pauses, then adds “If she allows it.”
    â€œIf she allows it,” repeats Hanne, her voice heavy with cynicism.
    He sighs again. “You know how it goes. I figured I could tell you this because someone else called me, not her.”
    Brigitte continues to have sporadic contact with Tomas, as long as he doesn’t reveal their conversations to Hanne. Tomas says he has to go. He’ll discuss taking the trip to Monterey with Anne and be in touch.
    After Hanne hangs up, she stares at the lone tree across the street, waving its spindly branches in the air as if trying to grab hold of something. So thin, so fragile, it looks at any moment like it might topple over. She steps into the kitchen, makes coffee, and eats half a piece of toast to try and settle her stomach. The best thing to do is to lose herself in something demanding. Something hard. Something that requires all of her.
    She heads to her office, turns on Chopin’s Preludes Opus 28, and sits at her desk. Her mother’s desk, the only piece of furniture Hanne kept. Though why she did is baffling because when she looks at it, she sees her mother’s long, straight back. Her mother always sat facing a window. In Switzerland, a window that looked out at the garden of flowers. In