"No, Mike, no. Let"s not beat ourselves up about what happened."

"It"s been hard not to," he said, "because I know I started us down this path. But, Darcy, one thing-I do love living alone. That"s why I was so angry when you moved. I had the best of both worlds when you were still in the old house. I was living by myself, but I could go home and eat a great dinner whenever I wanted. I could have my tools and workbench, but I was still living alone. That wasn"t fair to you."

"I appreciate your saying this. I really do."

"And apparently I needed to be holed up in a hospital bathroom before I could say it." And he smiled, that clear, sweet, boyish smile.

I wasn"t in love with him, but I will always always always love that smile.

"We probably need to get back out there and see what"s going on," I said, and he agreed.

Claudia was in the hall. She was alone, hovering outside Annie"s room. She was probably afraid to go in. In her shoes, I would have been too.

"Oh, I was wondering where you were." She was relieved to see us. "Darcy, what you did was remarkable. I know that it must seem that I"m responsible for-" Then she caught sight of what I had in my hand. "That isn"t your dress, is it?"

I looked down at the wad of fabric in my hand. "I"m so sorry. I"m sure it"s ruined, but here . . . maybe-" I tried to hand it to her.

"And Annie"s dress?" She couldn"t help herself, she just couldn"t help herself, even though she had to know that caring about this was wrong. "Do you know what happened to it?"

I shook my head. "The ER would have taken it off. It"ll be with her personal effects."

"Dresses?" Mike was puzzled for a minute. "Oh, right, the rehearsal dinner. We need to figure out what to do about that. I can"t imagine that anyone is going to feel like a big dressy event."

Oh, Lord. I hadn"t been thinking. Here it was, late in the afternoon on Thursday. We had the rehearsal dinner tomorrow, and the wedding . . . two hundred and fifty people in an English cottage garden. . . .

I"d seen this before-families in the ICU struggling to figure out what to do about the wedding, the bar mitzvah, the graduation only a day away. Now it was our turn.

"You"re not thinking of canceling the dinner, are you?" Claudia was shocked at the thought.

"No," Mike said. "People still need to eat, but in light of everything that"s happened, maybe we should downsize it, make it more casual. Not have people get so dressed up."

"Not have people get dressed up?"

"Remember, the restaurant warned us that Friday nights in the summer, people wouldn"t be . . ." He stopped. He saw Claudia"s face. He saw how she was frantically trying to hold on to her plans. Despite all that had happened, that was what still mattered to her.

He spoke firmly. "We want to do something that"s appropriate for the moment. This is a family occasion, so let"s think about what"s right for the families involved."

Not the dresses, the pictures, the fashion-magazine article, not Claudia"s brand, but the families.

"Of course," she said. "Of course. I"ll call the restaurant and see what ideas they have."

That was the right thing to say, exactly the right thing, but she had waited too long to say it.

She moved down toward the window where cell-phone reception was better. Mike watched her for a moment, then turned back to me. "I know that the wedding is the bride"s family"s deal, but this rehearsal dinner is ours. And it got completely out of hand. This whole thing with the dresses and coverage in a magazine, that"s not us. I guess I was unconsciously a.s.suming that you would keep us straight. Since you never tried to stop Claudia, I let myself think that it was okay."

"I couldn"t get between the two of you."

"I see that now."

When Mike and I had been married, I"d been the one to get us to church on Sunday, to arrange for us to visit his mother, to plan the family vacations and to tell the boys that no, they couldn"t take friends along on the trip and each would have to play with his brother, who, yes, might be a creep and a jerk, but he was still his brother.

Now Mike realized that he would have to shoulder his share of the job. With the boys nearly grown, it wouldn"t be hard-not like hauling an eleven-year-old and a seven-year-old to Sunday school-but we couldn"t lose sight of the fact that the job still needed doing.

"Before I got here, was anyone talking about the wedding?"

Mike shook his head. "But we had no idea what had actually happened to Finney. How long do you think he"s going to be hospitalized?"

"A couple of days. They"ill pump him full of antibiotics. But even if he is discharged by Sat.u.r.day, he"s going to be timid and clingy. I doubt that he"ll want to have anything to do with a big crowd."

"Let"s see what Jeremy has to say. Then we can support him." Mike opened the door to Annie"s room and motioned. Both our boys came out. We explained how we were going to change the nature of the rehearsal dinner. Then Mike asked Jeremy about Sat.u.r.day. "How"s Cami going to feel if Finney isn"t there?"

The idea made him pause. "Not good. She"ll want him there."

"What do you want to happen?" I asked.

"I want Cami to have what she wants. I want Cami to have the wedding of her dreams."

I didn"t know what to say to that. Apparently Mike didn"t either. After a moment, it was, to my surprise, Zack who spoke. "You can knock my head off for what I"m about to say, but this dream-wedding business . . . I know that everything looks great back at the house, but everyone"s on edge and miserable. If this is a dream wedding, I don"t want to see a nightmare."

Zack was right. Even if there had been no unidentified round pink pill or cherry-flavored "all natural" water, this wasn"t the wedding of Cami"s dreams.

So the four of us talked, and, like any family, we repeated ourselves a lot. We said things that didn"t make any sense. We got off track and started remembering the Polar Bear regatta Jeremy"s first year on the Selwyn crew, but sooner or later we understood one another and outlined what we thought should happen.

I knew one thing from watching ICU families labor with such decisions. When you are bewildered, caught between tragedy and trivia, the best thing to do is to call your clergy-your priest, pastor, minister, or rabbi-and have him or her tell you what to do. The good ones know when families need someone else to make decisions for them.

But the Zander-Browns had never joined a religious inst.i.tution. They did not have a relationship with a member of the clergy.

They only had us, and yes, Mike and I were divorced, yes, we had put asunder what G.o.d had joined, but the four of us were still a family.

Fourteen.

M.

ike and the boys followed me back into the room. Annie was awake and agitated; Rose was on the far side of the bed, stroking Annie"s hair, trying to soothe her.

"This is all my fault," Annie wailed. "If I hadn"t taken that pill, none of this would have happened to Finney."

"It was a whole chain; a lot of things went wrong." I touched Cami"s shoulder, moving her aside so that Annie could see me. "You still aren"t yourself, but the drug will wear off. You"ll feel better soon."

"I don"t care about that. What about Finney? And Cami"s wedding? He"ll be out of the hospital by Sat.u.r.day, won"t he?" She was begging me to rea.s.sure her.

The room was crowded-four Zander-Browns, the four Van Aikens-but everyone was suddenly listening for my response. "It"s possible," I said, "but it isn"t likely. The risk of infection is so great."

"Mom, what are we going to do?" Cami sank down into one of the visitor chairs. "How can I get married without Finney there?"

"Sweetheart, I told you"-Guy had the palms of his hands pressed together and was moving them up and down in a slight chopping motion-"we"re going to do everything we can to get him there even if it"s only for a few hours."

I glanced at Rose. She saw me looking at her. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head a bit as if she were asking me to do something. Then she gave her head a slight shake.

"That"s not a good idea," I said flatly. "There"s a fair amount involved-unhooking and rehooking his IVs and such. It"s one thing to do that for a grandparent who would get something out of being at the ceremony, but Finney"s a little boy who likes routine. He"s going to be scared and confused. Honestly, Cami, I know this isn"t what you want to hear, but a plan to take him out of the hospital for a few hours just pays lip service to the idea of him being there. If you"re getting married on Sat.u.r.day, you should accept that he won"t be there."

"But I can"t get married without Finney there."

Mike and Zack exchanged glances. They thought she was overreacting. But I understood. Finney was the glue that held the family together. If he wasn"t there, Cami wouldn"t feel as if her family were. Rose, Guy, and Annie could be present, but the family wouldn"t. That was their weakness: all their connections went through Finney.

"What should we do?" Cami"s voice was a soft wail. "I just don"t know what we should do."

So Guy said it. "Do you want to cancel the wedding?"

"No, no!" Annie shrieked. "You can"t cancel the wedding because of what I did. What about the flowers and the food and the chairs? Mom"s gone to so much work. We can"t cancel. Mom"s worked so hard."

"This isn"t about me," Rose said stiffly.

"But if we cancel it," Annie argued, "everything you"ve done will be wasted."

Rose flushed. She was mortified. Her family thought this wedding was about her.

When she spoke, her voice was light, but she wasn"t making eye contact with anyone. "You"re talking as if we were Marxists and believe that the value of something is determined by the amount of labor invested in it. This family is many things, but we are not Marxists."

I was standing by Mike, and he nudged me. He loved it when people remembered what they"d learned in Econ 101. "Presumably you invested so much effort," he said, "because this was important. You"re a rational being; you made a rational decision."

"I wouldn"t count on that," Rose put in, sounding a little more like her usual self.

As we had planned out in the hall, Jeremy now took over. "Let"s go ahead and have the party. Everything"s paid for, our friends are already on their way from the airport, and in fact, we do have lots to celebrate." He had started off speaking to everyone, but now he was talking just to Cami. "But let"s postpone the wedding part-the actual ceremony. We"ll have a great time at the party, we"ll go on the honeymoon, and then we"ll get married when we get home. Finney will be better, and it will be just the two of us and our families. We don"t have to have a million people and a fancy cake. We can do it in a church in Park Slope."

"Go on the honeymoon before we get married?" She had twisted in her chair to look up at him. She was bewildered and overwhelmed.

"I suppose we could get separate rooms if you think that"s necessary," he said, his voice softly teasing; they had, after all, been living together for a year.

"Oh, Jeremy . . ." She let him pull her out of her chair and into his arms. "I don"t know why I thought I needed a wedding like this. I just want to be married. I want to be with you."

He murmured something into her hair, too low for the rest of us to hear, maybe even too low for her to hear. We all looked away, wanting to give them some privacy in this crowded hospital room.

"So is this the idea?" Guy asked. "Party, yes; wedding, no? Rose, are you sure that you"re okay with that?"

"It"s not about me," she said. "This seems like a good plan, but I don"t even know how to start thinking about it. What will we do about the favors, the cake? The-"

"You will leave it to us," Mike interrupted smoothly. "You take care of Annie and Finney, and don"t worry about anything else. Claudia"s already working on the rehearsal dinner, and when we get back to the house, Darcy and I will get started on the rest."

"Darcy has done enough," Guy said.

"Try telling that to her."

Cami lifted her head from Jeremy"s chest. "If there"s a lot to do, my friends-the bridesmaids-are getting in soon. They"ll do whatever you tell them, especially Trish and Jamie."

Guy followed Mike and me out to the hall. He handed us a card. "Call Mary Beth at the office. She has the e-mail addresses for almost all the guests."

Mike took the card, and we spent a moment thinking about cars. Rose"s Mercedes needed to be fetched from the restaurant. Mike took the keys from Guy and then tossed them to Zack. "Figure it out, son."

"Sure thing."

Zack"s tone had been casual, but I knew, I knew, what this meant to him, Mike turning a problem over to him, trusting him to solve it.

He put the keys in his pocket. "Do you need me to pick anything up for you?" he asked Guy.

"Probably . . . but I have no idea what."

I had an idea. "Guy, are there bookstores nearby? Why don"t you have Zack get Rose some great big cla.s.sic novel, War and Peace or Crime and Punishment?"

"War and Peace? Why? Don"t you think she would prefer Anna Karenina?"

I suppose I should have been flattered that he actually thought I had an answer to that. "I have no idea. Just anything to remind her that her brain is still working."

"Fine," he said. "But she"s not worried about that, is she?"

How could he not know this? Annie was right about their relationship: they needed to spend time together; they needed to be husband and wife, not only professional a.s.sociates and parents of a special-needs child.

Zack set off for the bookstore, and I rode back to Mec.o.x Road with Mike. I called Mary Beth on my cell phone while Mike called Claudia on his. Claudia reported that the owner, the manager, and the chef at the restaurant had been very accommodating. They were faxing over a menu for a more casual buffet, and Claudia had already talked to the florist about creating less formal centerpieces.

Mike told her about the plan for Sat.u.r.day night, and by the time he and I got to the house, she had started thinking about that as well. "We should," she said confidently, "acknowledge that a wedding was planned. We can distribute the favors, and while the groomsmen maybe shouldn"t be in black tie, the bridesmaids can wear their dresses. Cami should bustle her train and not wear her veil, but-"

"You"ve been a busy bee," Mike interrupted.

She blinked. She wasn"t used to people interrupting her.

I spoke to Mike softly. "That wasn"t kind."

He ran a hand over his face. "No, it wasn"t." He could now admit to being wrong. "I"m sorry, Claudia, but you need to understand that people may not want to have much to do with you for the next few days. There may be a lot of anger."

"Anger? No." She gave her a head a little shake. "I may have erred, but everything turned out fine. We need to move forward. That"s what Guy said. He left me a phone message while he was waiting for the ambulance. He said that there"d been previous corn exposures. He sounded as if it had all happened before."

"That was Guy being Guy," Mike said. "You"re a guest in his home; he had to say something."

"And that was before he knew the whole story," I added.

"What do you mean, the whole story?" Mike asked.

I"d been referring to the cricothyroidotomy; while waiting for the ambulance, Guy hadn"t known about that, and it was definitely not something that had happened before.

But Claudia was struggling so hard to excuse herself that she was thinking only about her own actions. "Perhaps he didn"t know about the f.a.n.n.y-pack issue, but honestly, I didn"t know how important it was. If I had, I-"

Mike interrupted her again, insisting that she explain.