He said it meant we wouldn’t have to — that they wouldn’t have to do anything to her.”

And there it was: the sentence that made all of it possible, delivered in a family room by a man who was crying.

Part Two: The Cardiac History That Wasn’t

Fourteen months before she died, Emily had gone to an emergency department at ten o’clock on a weeknight with a racing heart.

Margaret knew about it.

She had been told the next day, casually, and she had asked the questions a nurse asks — how fast, how long, any chest pain, any syncope — and Emily had said it was nothing, that she’d had four coffees and hadn’t eaten, and that Nathan had insisted on taking her in.