It was mid-morning on Wednesday, in the first week of November. Winnie sat alone in the hushed conference room, waiting for Jerry to make his slow way back from the restroom. She resisted the urge to go into the hall to look for him—he would hate any sign that she thought he needed help, especially here. So instead, she fussed with the glass of water the receptionist had quickly placed in front of her after she’d asked—a polite college-age young man, which surprised Winnie—but why on earth hadn’t he set it on a coaster? Tiny beads of water ran down the outside of the chilled glass, pooling onto the smooth wood tabletop, and no matter how often Winnie lifted the glass and swiped at them with her bare hand, the wetness remained. One would think that a law firm as posh as McCann Dunham would know to have a few coasters around.

It had been a long time since Winnie had been on the sixty-fourth floor of any building. It was a shame about these translucent shades, pulled down all the way. What she wanted was to look out the windows, all the way down to Sixth Avenue and Radio City Music Hall, and the tops of the taxicabs moving around like little yellow toys. Or would it be Fifty-fourth Street? Being up this high had disoriented her. Without moving, Winnie tried to picture the view across town—the ash-colored streets, those Gothic midtown churches, that museum tucked away and practically hidden, the one with the newer pictures. (Winnie much preferred the stately grandeur of the Met. Now that was the way a museum should look.) MoMA. The acronym came to her, but not the full name, and while she was puzzling it out, she heard voices outside the door.

Ed Weller and Jerry arrived, deep in conversation, and it was astonishing, the way Ed held the door for Jerry and guided him in, a hand on an elbow—astonishing, the way Jerry accepted the help so easily from his old friend and lawyer, the way he let himself be steered to the table, and his cane and chair arranged for him. All while Winnie was accepting Ed’s kiss, and smiling and nodding, she marveled at how it had been accomplished—Jerry’s submission. She would never have guessed another man could effect it, but maybe that was the answer in itself. He didn’t need to protect other men the way he felt he had to protect her: a woman, his wife. They all took seats now, at the table, as well as two junior lawyers who slipped into the room and flanked Ed Weller.

“Not a fun job for me, today,” Ed was saying. “But I’m glad you’re both here. We’ll turn this around. No question. The main thing is not to get downhearted. It’s a bad business, but we’ll turn it around.”

“I told Winnie about this fool motion having to do with the house,” Jerry said. “I told her, but I don’t like having to. Business is business; there’s no need to bring my family into the middle of it all.”

Winnie saw the two younger lawyers exchange a look. She shifted imperceptibly closer to Jerry. With a surprising rush of sisterly feeling, she found herself thinking of Beth Ann, Annette’s mother, and how good it was that the woman was no longer alive. What a sorrow it would have been to her, this ugly fight between father and daughter—and over what? Nothing. Work, money. Then again, of course with Beth Ann alive, none of this would be happening. It was because of her—because of Winnie—that this had all begun.

“It’s a tough situation,” Ed agreed. “But everyone involved knowing the facts is an important—”

“I told Winnie because I didn’t want her to hear anything from anyone else,” Jerry said. “Annette’s stepped way over the line, dragging this in. My house is my own concern and nobody else’s. Just do what it takes, Ed. Send me the bill and let’s be done with it.”

“That’s the plan,” Ed said mildly. “But we need to discuss another matter. The game has changed a bit, and you need to prepare yourselves—both of you.” Winnie ran cold at the way kind Ed Weller gave her a look. The look said This will be hard on him. “We heard from their lawyers early yesterday. I don’t know how much of this is coming from Annette—most likely someone cooked it up for her, so just keep that in mind, first of all.”

“What’s this now?” Jerry said.

One of the lawyers slid some papers out of a folder and was staring down at them.

“They’re filing a competency challenge, related to the property sale,” Ed said. “It’s going to be in a different court, so we’ll have the two matters running at the same time. Dan Wickham—you’ve spoken on the phone—has run up a list of our options, and we have some strong ones, so I wanted to go over these. Let’s talk through what the—”

“Competency?” Jerry said, frowning.

“‘Petition to set aside deed based on defendant’s mental incompetence prior to and at the time of conveyance—’” Dan Wickham was reading from the papers in front of him, but Jerry’s strangled roar stopped him.

“It’ll get tossed,” Ed said, leaning across the table. “No question. I’ll testify myself, if I have to. I filed the sale, and there’s nothing about it that was improper.”

“Mental incompetence?” Winnie said, trying to laugh. “That can’t be what she—”

“Senility claims are pretty common,” said the other lawyer. “Mostly you see them in a probate case, but with a business dispute there isn’t as much precedent. Actually, it makes for an interesting—”

Winnie cut him off, hating the young man for saying senility. “What are the…grounds?” She came up with the term at the last moment. “There aren’t any grounds, of course. What can she possibly say?”

Ed looked at Jerry, who was silent, and then back at her. “There are various ways people challenge agency in the elderly. Is the person lucid? Acting of his own free will? Understands the terms of the deal? Sometimes, if they can’t prove full incompetence, they go for weakness of intellect.”

Winnie felt for Jerry’s hand, which stiffly clutched the chair arm. “Weakness of intellect,” she repeated. Worse by far than the news of this claim was Jerry’s stunned silence.

“Boilerplate,” one of the younger lawyers said dismissively.

“And we’ll knock that all down,” Ed said. “But there’s a mention in the paperwork of a prior history, so at some point, Jerry, I want to get a full rundown on the results of any tests and medication. And if there was a diagnosis, we’ll need—”

“All he takes is blood-pressure medicine,” Winnie protested. “How could that matter?”

The four men in the room didn’t say anything. Only after a minute did the phrase prior history hit her.

“I haven’t taken those drugs for a long time,” Jerry said, finally. Winnie turned to him, but he stared at the table. “Those other drugs. All that was a long time ago.”

“She claims that there were tests for pre-Alzheimer’s,” the other lawyer said, consulting his notes. “And a brief hospitalization for disorientation?”

Jerry shook his head. The younger man, thinking he was being contradicted, continued to read: “Treatment by at least two Chicago-area specialists, repeated CAT scans, and a past motion to prohibit driving, which the plaintiff—”

“Rob,” Ed said, silencing him. Ed, she saw, could tell that Winnie hadn’t known. His face was full of concern. “Why don’t we take a ten-minute break?”

Jerry said nothing. Ed looked at Winnie. A wild drumbeat of humiliation erupted in her, and she fought to keep her composure. Slowly, however, the shock and anger—how could he not have told her?—were eventually overcome by fear—how bad was it? Pre-Alzheimer’s. And then, though she couldn’t even look his way, a surge of wordless connection passed between her and Jerry. She knew, of course, why he hadn’t told her. Winnie put her hand briefly up to her face; for better or worse, she mouthed against her own palm.

“No,” she said, to the waiting lawyers. “No need for a break. So, what’s the next step? What strategies have you come up with, and what do you need from us?”

Dan Wickham, with visible relief, turned to the matter of describing the various legal motions by which Jerry’s representatives would block Annette’s representatives from pursuing the claim. There would be a series of challenges on the method of the suit itself—that the documentation wasn’t complete, that the time allotted for response was too short—and then, if necessary, depositions would be taken. Winnie borrowed a pen and jotted down some notes. Almost as an afterthought, the other lawyer mentioned that no major work on the property should be undertaken—no renovations, changes to the structure—until this was all sorted out.

Winnie picked up the wet glass and took a long, angry drink. She stared at the white water ring left on the table. Would it be a relief, to give up the pool? She could drop the whole matter, all the calls and the bills and all the ugliness brewing about that tree. But that would be giving in to Annette’s claims. To this idea of incompetence. So, instead, as they talked on and on, Winnie conjured with effort and deliberation the now-familiar image of the pool—not just the pool, but Jerry in it, relaxed and talkative, with none of the pain now radiating from the man who now sat still and silent by her side. It trembled and faltered, but she held that vision steady, a willful touchstone.

“You’ll come out to Hartfield,” Winnie said. “As much as possible. It’s too much effort, our driving into the city.”

“Yes,” Ed said. “Of course.” Then he nodded at the other lawyers, who shook hands with Winnie and Jerry, and quickly left the room. Winnie could hear their voices, jovial and unconcerned, echo down the hall.

“I need to visit the restroom,” Jerry said, and she held the door while Ed steadied him.

As soon as Jerry was out of earshot, Winnie turned to Ed. “Tell me,” she said. “How bad is this?”

By the way he instantly dropped his voice to respond, she had her answer. “It’s not good,” he admitted. “The case itself is weak, no question. But it will stir up a lot of unpleasantness—personal information, details about his health, then and now. He’ll hate that—anybody would, of course. The other thing is, I imagine the news will get out.”

“Because of the house? Nobody could honestly believe that Jerry didn’t know what he was doing when he bought our house.”

“It’s the family-feud aspect. Father vs. daughter. TrevisCorp is a well-known company, and once this comes out, the infighting will be an irresistible angle for the local Chicago papers. Less so here.”

Winnie flinched, and Ed switched back into his lighter mode. “At least we can all get a good lunch out of it. You might give me ten minutes, and I’ll meet you both in the foyer. L’Auberge fit us in at the last minute—Jerry will get a kick out of it. We ate there once twenty years ago, and he had a field day because they forgot my salad or something. He had the manager out to us, on the double—”

“That’s so kind, Ed. I just don’t think we’re up for it today.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s me, really. I tire out so quickly these days. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, of course, of course. Rain check.” They could see Jerry making his slow, stubborn way down the long hall.

“Where is that L’Auberge, though? Nearby? I’m sure it sounds familiar.” Distracted, Ed told her—Fifty-third Street—his eyes on Jerry’s approach. He moved to shake hands with his old friend, and Winnie observed the smooth return of the lawyer’s calm demeanor, a natural pose of carelessness—this is nothing, don’t worry a minute, we’ll take care of everything—that somehow managed to be soothing despite it all.

The funny thing was, she and Jerry had crossed paths—barely—sixty years ago. For about a year and a half, Winnie had attended Mary Edward College, a middling women’s school now long folded, in upstate New York. It was the only year of Winnie’s life that she had been away from Hartfield. She had studied literature; she hadn’t wanted to go. But after her mother had begun the long, slow descent of illness, the house was crowded and uncomfortable, and both parents seemed to want her away. When her roommate Beezie Collins became engaged to Dick Trevis, of the Chicago Trevises, Winnie became caught up, mostly by proximity, in the endless round of parties, dances, and introductions that made up a wedding of that sort back then. (The next year, her own to George—studying medicine at nearby SUNY Buffalo—would be a sober, positively shotgun affair in comparison.) Dick’s cousin Jerry had attended several events. Winnie wanted to say that she remembered him vividly, and in an undated photo she dug up of Beezie’s wedding-party lineup, there he was, next to his brother Frank—short and unsmiling, in an ill-fitting cutaway suit. She herself was standing at the far end of the bridal party, in a pretty gown she didn’t remember the color of, holding a puffy bouquet of hydrangeas.

Jerry maintained a long, detailed recollection about dancing with Winnie at the reception—specifically, of asking her onto the floor twice in a row, a noted faux-pas—but she wouldn’t put it past him to embellish the memory. It was enough for Winnie that they shared this odd piece of the past, even if it hadn’t produced any lasting connection. She would go on to drop out of college to marry George, and Jerry would meet Beth Ann at a cotillion the year afterward, and as far as Winnie was concerned, the Trevis family faded from all significance (she and Beezie exchanged Christmas letters for some time, and then stopped) until March of this year. Just seven months ago.

Danny and Yi-Lun had pleaded with her to join them for any part of their twice-yearly three-week stay in a time-shared house on a beach near Jacksonville. Why anyone who lived in San Francisco would fly to Florida yearly for a vacation was a question that was never sufficiently answered, at least so far as Winnie or Rachel could see—but Yi-Lun had family in the area, and she wanted their son, Matthew, to spend time with them. Fair enough, but Winnie had begged off the two years previous. How could she have gone anywhere? With Bob in the hospital for those many months—and then the long year of rehab—she was on the run, almost every day, picking up the girls or dropping them off, seeing to school matters and doctors’ visits and dinner preparation and whatever else Rachel needed her for. This March, though, she had little excuse—even Rachel had urged her to go. You need a rest, her daughter had said, and Winnie couldn’t disagree. The visit had been lovely: sea breezes blowing through the window of her first-floor room, ruffling the pages of a satisfyingly quiet Anne Tyler novel; hours of Scrabble, Danny’s childhood favorite; long walks on the beach with Matthew.

On her last night, they had dinner reservations at Deacon’s, a quiet waterside lobster restaurant. Winnie, who was a little tired of grilled steak and corn on the cob, was looking forward to it. At least they thought they had reservations—as soon as they pulled into the packed driveway, it became clear that something was awry. CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE PARTY, read a sign just inside the door. Dozens of people were packed around the front bar, and the noise level was deafening. While Danny and Yi-Lun argued with the manager, Winnie touched Matthew on the sleeve and told him she would be just outside. She slipped through the crowd, making her way to a side door, out to where the sun was setting in a perfect orange globe over the gray-green water. Winnie was toggling the features of her digital camera, trying to capture the moment, so at first she didn’t notice him sitting there—Jerry Trevis—at a round empty table.

“May I take your photograph?”

“Pardon me?” She turned to the man who spoke. He was smiling at her.

“If you’d like, I can—” Here he gestured to the camera, and then to the view.

“A shot of me, standing alone in front of the sunset?” Winnie laughed. “To tell you the truth, I only came out here to get away from the noise. It’s awful in there.”

“You said it,” Jerry said. He cocked his head and gave her another one-sided grin. There came a burst of noise from the party inside, and she moved a little closer. They held each other’s gaze just one moment longer than was necessary. “Or I could take one of you and your family…your husband?”

Thinks he’s pretty smooth, Winnie thought. But she simply shook her head a little, which to another person her age, she knew, would say everything that needed to be said about George’s being gone. And he picked up on it, nodding once. She put the camera on the weathered wood of the empty table and he rose halfway as she took a seat.

Then there they were, together alone, in the quiet of the side porch of a restaurant off the highway in Atlantic Beach, while Jerry’s niece’s second wedding gathered steam inside and Winnie’s son tried uselessly to wrangle a table—ten minutes at most, until their flustered children discovered them and took them away. She hardly remembered what they said, how they found a way to introduce themselves, or what specifically occasioned that first, formal letter that arrived in Hartfield five days later, on rough cream stationery in a never-wavering hand that jolted her stomach even before she completely understood who had sent it. But Winnie remembered Jerry’s absolute attention to her, his serious consideration of everything she said, the spotless white of his shirt, and thinking that they were perfectly matched in all things—that they had traveled along similar paths through the wilderness of aging and had separately reached the same place.

She remembered this:

Turning away from him, in an effort to regain some inner calm. There was the sun, now mostly gone, a spectacular fiery sinking that spilled flecks of dark gold across the ocean. She said some inane thing about how beautiful it all was, and how odd it was that the most ordinary event could be so stunning. And when she turned back to him, still going on about the view, she saw that Jerry hadn’t bothered to look at the sunset at all. Not bad, he said, his voice indifferent. But his eyes were only on her.

At L’Auberge, their corner table was secluded. Jerry took a long first pull from his scotch and soda.

“Firstborn children,” he said, raising the glass. “Fuck ’em.”

Winnie was just relieved that he had spoken at all, and that they were safely ensconced in the cream-and-white formality of the restaurant. In the cab, she had been the one to speak to the driver, and in the restaurant foyer, she had been the one to step up to the maître d’ and explain that yes, they were with the Ed Weller party, and no, Mr. Weller would not be joining them. She had even ordered Jerry’s drink, from the boy who put down their menus. But now that they were here, in an oasis of muted luxury, and his color was starting to come back, she felt shakiness overtake her from all that effort. The idea had been to be alone, so they could talk about it. Now Winnie realized she didn’t want to talk about it.

“I’ll probably have Dover sole,” Winnie said, scanning her menu, which was devoid of any prices. “You ought to order the tenderloin.”

“Not hungry.”

She pretended to further study the heavy card stock. “I suppose you might try the duck.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say. We’ll have a nice hot lunch and head straight home. Are these wines by the glass? Can you make that out?”

“Ah, Winifred. I’ve really flubbed it, haven’t I?”

Winnie waited until the boy had put down their slices of bread with his silver tongs and then left. She tried to look anywhere but Jerry’s face, for she knew whatever she saw there would crumble her. Where on earth was the waiter? There had to be a way to right this, amid the desperate wild heaving all around them. “Have you thought any more about the shape? We should decide by the end of the week. I like the kidney-bean one, but you tell me if that’s not right for swimming laps.”

Jerry just looked at her.

“Or a plain old rectangle. Why not a rectangle? Everyone always wants to get complicated.”

“But he said not to—didn’t you hear—?”

“I heard,” Winnie said. “If only Rachel—” But here she stopped. No. Bringing up Rachel would veer too close to the subject she was avoiding—would contrast Annette too sharply; she didn’t want Jerry to face the difference between the two, their daughters, right now. Underneath this, at a deep level Winnie only barely acknowledged, whispered another fear, inchoate, immediately pushed aside, having to do with all the money Rachel had recently borrowed from Jerry. A tiny blood-pulse of anxiety ran through her—there is danger in this—and then was gone.

Luckily, their waitress arrived, a tall and sturdy fortyish woman with her hair pulled severely back. She was so warm and solicitous that Winnie had to blink away tears. She fell silent as the woman simply took over their lunch, deciding straightaway for Winnie which wine and cajoling Jerry into ordering the duck, and even—once—into smiling like his old self. The sense of being taken care of, Winnie decided, was what you were paying for. No wonder so many of the other patrons in this wainscoted and chandeliered room were as white-haired as she and Jerry.

When the food came, Jerry said he had no taste for it, and then promptly set about eating half the meat and all of the mashed rutabagas, as well as several forkfuls of her fish. They made small talk about the food, and the weather, the crowds on the sidewalks—each new topic a balm between them.

When their waitress returned, with dessert menus they wouldn’t need and nothing but the warmest concern for their overall well-being—A pot of tea? Not even a plate of the plainest sugar cookies?—something about her tucked-in smile reminded Winnie of Rachel. And suddenly she was furious. Where was her daughter? Where was she when Winnie doubted her own ability to walk much farther in these stiff shoes, when exhaustion was building at a rapid pace, and when she needed the restroom but everything about the journey there and back threatened to swamp her? Rachel, with all her own needs and her uncontainable fixation on money.

Where is she? Winnie cried inwardly. Now that I need to go to the bathroom? Now that I’m old?

Outside their window, the light had changed to a dull, shadowy gray.

“Incompetent,” Jerry said bitterly, all of a sudden. She had let the silence go on too long. Their waitress whisked away the check and his credit card. “Annette had no problem when I chartered that boat for her birthday and they all took a good long sail around the Caribbean. Or when I bought that beachfront condo two years ago and let her turn it around for a nice chunk of change. She didn’t run after me with lawyers then.”

“What’s done is done,” Winnie said. “I guess.”

“I should have told you,” he said, and she met his eyes for the first time. “I was a fool, and I thought it would never come back to bother us. It was never as bad as they made it sound, but I still should have. Even if—”

“Yes, you should have,” she said, letting the words cover over everything else: Why did you think I couldn’t handle this? Don’t you know how much I love you? “You should have,” she said again, quietly, and Jerry bowed his head. Winnie began to think she might be able to try for the restroom. In the ladies’ lounge, perhaps she should call Matty, too, to pick them up.

“Think my grandson’s going to be able to dish up anything as fancy as all this?” Jerry said after a moment, trying to smile. Wordlessly, they had agreed to leave it at that, for now.

And so, arranging her face and voice to match his, Winnie said, “I don’t imagine the younger crowd wants Dover sole anymore. They like sushi, and things like that. Don’t they?”

Jerry grunted.

“Is he really going to go through with it, I wonder? Last week, he said there was some problem with the building license.”

“He sure as heck better go through with it,” Jerry said, scowling, his usual force returned. “I put up half.”