“Just put them there,” Patricia says, pointing to the marble table where the raven sculptures sit, like that is where all the dead things must go. Phoebe puts the bag down next to the ravens, all of them turned around so they are facing the wall, like they’re in trouble.

It only takes one quick glance around the room to see that the ravens are everywhere, one painted just above the bed, one sitting under the lampshade on the nightstand. Next to it, Phoebe sees two books, How to Be Your Own Best Friend and We Die Alone.

Patricia turns back to where she had been sitting, which feels like a sign that Phoebe should go, but Phoebe feels compelled to stay. Maybe this woman will die alone, but she shouldn’t have to drink alone.

“May I join you for a drink?” Phoebe asks.

“You want to join me for a drink?” Patricia looks equally confused and delighted, like she just witnessed a sudden snowfall. “Usually Lila’s friends can’t get away from me fast enough. They think poor old widows are the plague.”

Patricia pulls out a glass for Phoebe and opens the beverage cooler.

“I went to your gallery today,” Phoebe says. “I mean, I looked in the window.”

“Thirty years we’ve been building that collection,” Patricia says.

“It must be impressive.”

“At first it was just living artists. And then, as we got older, and some of those living artists, well, died, we started to branch out into dead ones. That really opened things up for us.”

Now they host a huge collection of the Hudson River School paintings, not to mention one Warhol.

“You have a Warhol?”

“I should donate it to the hotel, honestly, give them something worthy to hang on the walls,” she says, then looks to the painting above her bed. “Tell me, Professor, this is a death painting, is it not?”

Phoebe looks at the image of a raven perched on a dried-up orange slice.

“That is undeniably a death painting,” Phoebe says.

“Thank you,” Patricia says. “Finally, someone with a little sense. Lila refuses to acknowledge it, no surprise there. And I understand the hotel is trying to achieve some level of authenticity here, bringing in the Victorian macabre, but must they hang it right over an old woman’s bed? It’s hard enough getting to sleep without the bird of death watching me.”

Patricia holds up a yellow bottle.

“I wasn’t sure about this spicy margarita elderberry hibiscus concoction,” Patricia says. “I’m quite suspicious of any cocktail with such a long name. But it’s delicious.”

Patricia pours her a glass.

“I’m sure Lila has told you all kinds of things about my drinking in the afternoon, even though I keep explaining to her that my doctor was the one who suggested I start day-drinking. I simply can’t drink at night anymore. Just two glasses of wine at dinner, and I’ll never fall asleep.”

Phoebe takes the glass and sips.

“It’s good,” Phoebe says. “Spicy.”

But Patricia is not listening.

“And honestly, what else does the girl expect me to do up here all day? She tells me I can’t bring a date to my own daughter’s wedding. Tells me I can’t give a speech. I can’t drink in the afternoons. Can’t come to the bachelorette party. She expects me to just sit up here with nothing to do. I’m like Rapunzel. Except nobody wants to abduct me. And my hair hasn’t grown past my ears since Bush Senior was our president.”

Phoebe laughs.

“Tell me, friend of Lila’s I know almost nothing about. How did I not know you before this week?”

“I’m not local,” Phoebe says.

“But to never have even heard of you,” Patricia says. “Lila’s closest friend in the world, and I don’t hear a peep? This is what it’s been like, Pamela.”

“Phoebe, actually.”

“See? I don’t even know your goddamned name. Ever since her father died, Lila keeps herself so buttoned up, so closed off to me. She used to tell me things. We used to be what you might call friends before her father got sick. Not that I believe in the whole mothers-and-daughters-being-best-friends thing. That’s, frankly, unnatural. But I do miss her. The real Lila, the one who used to sit in my bed and talk my ear off. Do you know what a talker Lila really is?”

“I do, actually,” Phoebe says.

“God, as a little girl, she was even worse. Total stream of consciousness. Like living with a little Salinger novel. When she lost her teeth, I heard every gruesome detail. When she got her period, I was the first one she told. Besides her guidance counselor, but that couldn’t be helped. The whole thing happened on his chair, which is a little odd, I’m now realizing.”

Patricia takes a sip.

“Wait, Lila wasn’t molested by her high school guidance counselor, was she?” Patricia asks. “Is that why he’s here?”

“Oh no. She wasn’t. If she was, I doubt he’d be here, you know?”

“What a relief,” Patricia says. “It’s not easy having a daughter who’s always been attracted to much older men. That girl fell in love with her sixty-year-old piano teacher when she was nine. I’m the only mother I know who had to force her own child to quit piano. And you don’t have to tell me, I know it was all my fault. I, as Lila said so recently, set the tone.”

“Was Henry a lot older than you?” Phoebe asks.

“Fifteen years,” Patricia says. “I was twenty-six when I met him. God, such a little baby. I had no idea what I was doing, except driving my mother slowly insane. That was clear. After we got engaged, she said to me, No daughter of Paul Winthrop is marrying a Catholic who calls himself the Trash King of Rhode Island.”

“That’s what Henry called himself?”

“It was the name of his business. It’s what everyone in Newport called Henry back then, after he started making his fortune. But my mother didn’t understand. She kept asking me if he was in the Mob, and I kept telling her he was only pretending to be in the Mob. That was his entire advertising strategy, and it worked, and did my mother care that he basically built a million-dollar business in under three years?” Patricia says. “No. My mother is a true snob, and trust me, she’d take that as a compliment. She prides herself on being a snob, on telling everyone how embarrassing it was that JFK’s family wore tails to the reception while Jackie’s family knew to arrive in linen. But I was a kid in the sixties, you know. I didn’t want to be snob. I didn’t want to sit around with my mother and gossip about who didn’t wear linen. I wanted to wear bell-bottoms. I wanted to be American. One of the people. I wanted to go to Woodstock and marry a handsome entrepreneur who seemed to have come out of the dust fields of Ohio in a cowboy hat just to save me from my horrible snobbish family. But my mother, she was not wrong about everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“She kept telling me, Patricia, do not marry this man thinking he can save you from who you really are,” Patricia says. “You’re a Winthrop. A terrible snob, just like me. And one day, you’ll wake up and you’ll see the Trash King of Rhode Island for what he really is. And she was right. I did.”

“What was he?”

“A mortal!” she says. “A mere human being! When the first doctor gave him three months to live, I was so shocked, I started to laugh hysterically right there in the office. I couldn’t understand. My big strong Henry? I actually said, But this is the Trash King of Rhode Island! And so Lila barred me from going to the next doctor’s appointment.

“God, I worshipped Henry in the beginning,” she says, and smiles. “He was so exciting. A man of business, building an empire. He bought me my first painting, you know? And we’d go on these long boozy dates, and I’d listen to him talk about his landfills at dinner like he was talking about Leonardo’s Gran Cavallo. I had no chance, really. The younger woman never has a chance. She’s always doomed to worship, right from the start.”

“I don’t think Lila worships Gary like that, though,” Phoebe says. “I really don’t get that vibe.”

“You should have seen when she came home from that doctor’s appointment with Gary. Her eyes were glowing, Pamela.”

“Phoebe.”

“I’m sorry, once I decide on a name in my head, it might as well be your name,” Patricia says. “It was like the girl was on drugs. She went on, telling me all about this wonderful doctor who was going to save Henry, all we needed was a little optimism like Gary. But I was under no such illusion. I knew the first doctor had been right. I knew Henry was dying. I would try to tell her that, get her ready, but she wouldn’t listen. She had Gary and his second opinion.”

Patricia sighs.