ONE

      The boy’s eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings as if restlessly scanning the dreamscape into which sleep had transported him. Keeping vigil beside the bed, Daniel thought people were wrong to describe death as sleeping; sleep was an activity of the living, filled, like Wyatt’s, with squirms and fidgets, groans and sighs, frowns and smiles. He was pinned to the narrow bed by IVs and monitoring devices emitting beeps and buzzes above the rasp of his troubled breathing. Daniel drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled as if, by example, he could encourage Wyatt to clear the sickness from his lungs. He entwined his fingers with the boy’s— the warm hand was limp and unresponsive to Daniel’s touch. He should pray, he thought, but what more could he say to God that God had not already heard? Still, he whispered, Father, please . . .

      The faint pressure of a hand on his shoulder silenced him. Gwen held out a foam cup of milky coffee to him. He took it, gratefully. She resumed her watch on the other side of the bed. Behind her, the windy San Francisco night growled faintly against the window. The brisk, jarring, urgent noises of the ward had subsided to a thrum, creating a peculiar intimacy in the small room, as if they were the only three people in the world.

      “Did he wake up at all?”

      He shook his head. “I think he’s out for the night.”

      She smiled wanly. “He hasn’t slept through the night since he was admitted, and he wakes up confused and scared.”

      Her shift had ended, but she was still in her nurse’s scrubs. He wondered when she’d last slept.

      “He’s lucky he’s here where you work instead of with strangers,” Daniel said. “Your nurse friends have been dropping in all night to check on him.”

      “Everyone’s rooting for him.”

      “It’s hard to believe this is where we ended up,” he said.

      She lifted Wyatt’s hand delicately and rubbed her thumb along his palm as if imparting her life force into him. The gesture sparked an old memory, and Daniel asked, “Did you ever read his fortune?”

      She glanced at him in bewilderment.

      “Don’t you remember? The first time we met, you read my palm.”

      She smiled, and for a moment he saw in her tired face the beautiful Black girl who had taken his hand, turned it palm up, and studied it intently on a chilly day in Golden Gate Park almost twenty years earlier in the Summer of Love.

      ••••

      “This is your wisdom line,” Gwen had told him, gravely, tracing a line in his palm. “You’re a seeker.”

      The sun was a white disc