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Streeter did, but kept his silence.

Their consultation took place in Henderson’s office. At Derry Home Hospital, in the conference room where Streeter had looked at the first pictures of his miraculously cured body, Norma Goodhugh

sat in the same chair where Streeter had sat, looking at less pleasant MRI scans. She listened numbly as her doctor told her—as gently as possible—that the lump in her left breast was indeed cancer,

and it had spread to her lymph nodes.

“The situation is bad, but not hopeless,” the doctor said, reaching across the table to take Norma’s cold hand. He smiled. “We’l want to start you on chemotherapy immediately.”

In June of the fol owing year, Streeter final y got his promotion. May Streeter was admitted to the Columbia School of Journalism grad school. Streeter and his wife took a long-deferred Hawaii

vacation to celebrate. They made love many times. On their last day in Maui, Tom Goodhugh cal ed. The connection was bad and he could hardly talk, but the message got through: Norma had died.

“We’l be there for you,” Streeter promised.

When he told Janet the news, she col apsed on the hotel bed, weeping with her hands over her face. Streeter lay down beside her, held her close, and thought: Well, we were going home, anyway.

And although he felt bad about Norma (and sort of bad for Tom), there was an upside: they had missed bug season, which could be a bitch in Derry.

In December, Streeter sent a check for just over fifteen thousand dol ars to The Non-Sectarian Children’s Fund. He took it as a deduction on his tax return.

In 2003, Justin Streeter made the Dean’s List at Brown and—as a lark—invented a video game cal ed Walk Fido Home. The object of the game was to get your leashed dog back from the mal while

avoiding bad drivers, objects fal ing from tenth-story balconies, and a pack of crazed old ladies who cal ed themselves the Canine-Kil ing Grannies. To Streeter it sounded like a joke (and Justin assured them it was meant as a satire), but Games, Inc. took one look and paid their handsome, good-humored son seven hundred and fifty thousand dol ars for the rights. Plus royalties. Jus bought his parents matching Toyota Pathfinder SUVs, pink for the lady, blue for the gentleman. Janet wept and hugged him and cal ed him a foolish, impetuous, generous, and altogether splendid boy. Streeter took him to

Roxie’s Tavern and bought him a Spotted Hen Microbrew.

In October, Carl Goodhugh’s roommate at Emerson came back from class to find Carl facedown on the kitchen floor of their apartment with the gril ed cheese sandwich he’d been making for himself

stil smoking in the frypan. Although only twenty-two years of age, Carl had suffered a heart attack. The doctors attending the case pinpointed a congenital heart defect—something about a thin atrial wal —

that had gone undetected. Carl didn’t die; his roommate got to him just in time and knew CPR. But he suffered oxygen deprivation, and the bright, handsome, physical y agile young man who had not long

before toured Europe with Justin Streeter became a shuffling shadow of his former self. He was not always continent, he got lost if he wandered more than a block or two from home (he had moved back

with his stil -grieving father), and his speech had become a blurred blare that only Tom could understand. Goodhugh hired a companion for him. The companion administered physical therapy and saw that

Carl changed his clothes. He also took Carl on biweekly “outings.” The most common “outing” was to Wishful Dishful Ice Cream, where Carl would always get a pistachio cone and smear it al over his

face. Afterward the companion would clean him up, patiently, with Wet-Naps.

Janet stopped going with Streeter to dinner at Tom’s. “I can’t bear it,” she confessed. “It’s not the way Carl shuffles, or how he sometimes wets his pants—it’s the look in his eyes, as if he remembers how he was, and can’t quite remember how he got to where he is now. And… I don’t know… there’s always something hopeful in his face that makes me feel like everything in life is a joke.”

Streeter knew what she meant, and often considered the idea during his dinners with his old friend (without Norma to cook, it was now mostly takeout). He enjoyed watching Tom feed his damaged

son, and he enjoyed the hopeful look on Carl’s face. The one that said, “This is al a dream I’m having, and soon I’l wake up.” Jan was right, it was a joke, but it was sort of a good joke.

If you real y thought about it.

In 2004, May Streeter got a job with the Boston Globe and declared herself the happiest girl in the USA. Justin Streeter created Rock the House, which would be a perennial bestsel er until the advent of Guitar Hero made it obsolete. By then Jus had moved on to a music composition computer program cal ed You Moog Me, Baby. Streeter himself was appointed manager of his bank branch, and there