"Is Matthew there? I wanted to ask him about the Vosses. Poor Walt took a turn this week, Lauren said they've stopped his fluids now. I thought maybe we should send something else. Another arrangement, or a fruit basket. I don't know what's appropriate at this point. Matthew would know, he's been such a help to her."
Renée shut her eyes.
"Has he," she said.
"Oh, she told me at church. She said he's been a real rock. She said she doesn't know what she'd have done these past two months without him. Isn't that just like him? He was always like that, even as a boy. Always taking in strays."
"Carol," Renée said, and her voice came out so calm, so pleasant, that she barely recognized it. "Why did you give Lauren Matt's phone number?"
A short pause. "Well—honey, she was all alone. She needed a friend. They go back so far, you know, they practically grew up in each other's kitchens. I thought it would be a comfort to her." Another pause, and when Carol spoke again her voice had gone a little tighter. "I hope that wasn't—I hope you didn't mind. It never occurred to me you'd mind."
"No," Renée said. "I don't suppose it did."
She did not say anything else. She let the silence go on long enough that she could hear Carol breathing on the other end of the line, could hear the older woman begin to understand that something had happened, without yet understanding what. Then Renée said, "I'll tell Matt you called. We'll see you at two," and she hung up, and stood in the closet holding the shepherd's bathrobe against her chest for a long time.
* * *
The Voss house on Elm Street in Arden Grove was a white two-story colonial with black shutters and a deep front porch, the kind of house that appeared in the background of every small-town Christmas movie Renée had ever half-watched on a night off. Someone had strung white lights along the porch railing, but only halfway; the strand ended abruptly at the top of the steps, its last few feet coiled loose on the boards, as though whoever had been hanging them had been called away and never come back.
Renée sat in her car at the curb for eleven minutes with the engine running and the reindeer gift bag on the passenger seat.