“I’m sure we will,” Gary says.

Then Lila lists off other good things that will happen today: “The reception will start at seven on the patio. Nat will be playing the harp with an award-winning cellist who served in Iraq and learned to play cello as part of his PTSD treatment, and maybe it would be good to tell Roy that.”

“I’ll let him know,” Gary says.

The doors open.

“Oh, good,” the mother of the bride says, kissing Gary and Lila on the cheek. “You’re back.”

She looks like the kind of woman Phoebe might see at a very high-end flea market. Flowy linen that matches the color of her hair. She gives Phoebe a kiss on the cheek.

“My sweater looks good on you,” the mother says, and pulls away to get a look at her.

Phoebe forgot she wasn’t wearing her own clothes, though how she could forget about sequins on her shoulders and a sunflower wedged between her toes, she’s not sure.

“Mom,” Lila says. “This is Phoebe.”

“So you’re the woman from Missouri who didn’t bring a sweater to the ocean.”

Phoebe smiles and shrugs. “First-timer.”

“I didn’t realize there were people still like that! Well, you certainly need this sweater more than I do.”

Up close, the mother of the bride has a strong jaw, like it’s been strengthened over the years from staring blankly at the ocean. She smells faintly of booze, though what kind Phoebe cannot tell.

“Do be kind to it,” the mother says. “It was the last gift your father ever bought me, you know.”

“Oh,” Phoebe says, horrified. “You know what? I’ll take it off.”

“Don’t be silly,” the mother says, waving her hand. She gives Phoebe a look that suggests she is not, at this point in her life, ever getting anything back. “Enjoy it. It’s yours.”

“Mom,” Lila says, looking at her mother’s door. “Why are there a bunch of statues lined up outside your door?”

“Oh, Carlson is going to remove them,” she says. “This hotel is very lovely, but the art in the room is just terrible. So morbid.”

She picks up one of the statues. “Who would put a sculpture of this dead bird in an old woman’s room?”

They all study the bird sculpture. Lila looks disturbed by it but says, “I don’t think that bird is dead.”

“Is it sleeping?” Phoebe asks.

“I bet it’s just sleeping,” Gary says.

“Since when do birds sleep with their necks all crooked like that?” the mother asks. She points to the other birds against the wall. “Look at them all. They look like they’ve been assassinated.”

“Well, yeah, when you line them up against the wall like that, it’s creepy,” Lila says.

Phoebe takes a closer look. “Ravens actually sleep like that.”

“Of course you know things about the sleeping habits of ravens,” Lila says.

“They tuck their heads into their chests,” Phoebe adds.

“Well, that doesn’t seem very comfortable for them,” the mother says.

“And why is everybody messing with the hotel’s décor?” Lila asks. “The Cornwall hired award-winning designers to plan out every detail of this place. You can’t just move things around.”

“Carlson said I can do what I like,” the mother says.

Lila looks at Gary and Phoebe. “Go on without me.”

Lila starts to bring the bird sculptures back inside her mother’s room as Gary and Phoebe walk down the hall. They don’t say a word until they turn the corner.

“How do you know things about the sleeping habits of ravens?” Gary asks.

“At some point, every lit professor has to spend a full day researching ravens,” Phoebe says. “They’re everywhere. Writers can’t resist a raven. You know, symbols of death and grief and the underworld and all that jazz.”

“Oh, yeah, love that jazz,” Gary says. “Poe, right? That was the raven poem?”

“Nevermore, nevermore.”

“God, I haven’t read that since high school,” he says. “I remember liking it, but now I don’t remember why.”

“It’s very emo,” she says. “Most of my students tend to respond to it for that reason. Brokenhearted man never gets over dead wife.”

She says it without thinking, but he doesn’t seem rocked by her words.

“I’m just impressed they care about the middle-aged longings of a grieving widower, to be honest,” Gary says.

“My students tend to love characters who sentence themselves to never-ending grief,” Phoebe says. “It seems noble to young people, I think.”

“Little do they know the truly heroic thing is somehow … taking a shower and getting yourself to the grocery store.”

They laugh.

“I just want to say thanks for helping Juice with her dog,” Gary says, still sounding caught up in some emotion from earlier that day. “I know it probably seemed weird, making such a fuss over a little toy, but she got the dog from her mother just before she died.”

“Oh, trust me, I get it,” Phoebe says. “I could tell it wasn’t just any dog.”

He said that even as Juice got too old for it, she checked on Human Princess every day. She still announced her major achievements at breakfast, like, “The Human Princess is eating,” or “The Human Princess has not been tucked in,” and he and his wife would laugh so hard they’d cry.

“I told her I’d get her a new one after the wedding,” Gary says. “But that’s crazy, right? I mean, even as I said it, I didn’t believe myself. We probably won’t get her a new one. I mean, she’s going to be twelve soon. And my dad’s probably right, it’s probably best we get her a real dog, no?”

“Probably,” she says. “But then again, real dogs require real work. You can’t just drop them in the ocean when they die.”

She and Matt debated for years about how much work a dog would be and would it be worth it. Sometimes, she thought just getting a dog would have been easier than endlessly debating about whether to get a dog.

“But maybe it’s a good thing you can’t just drop them in the ocean?” he asks.