Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital

sit with them.”
    “ Lowell’s mother,” Sam repeats in astonishment. “You wouldn’t sit with your father and Lowell’s mother?”
    Jacob starts combing his skull with his fingers, a tic Samantha recognizes: first sign of one of his migraines coming on.
    “Your father and Lowell’s mother,” Cass says. “In a photograph. With no clothes on. Papa tore it up but I saw.”
    “Cass,” Samantha says gently. “Do you know Lowell? How do you know Lowell?” But Cass’s mind is off with the birds in the marsh.
    “Her name was Isabella Hawthorne,” Jacob says. “I know she was leaving a husband and son. I know nothing else about her and never wanted to.”
    Samantha can feel heat rising, she can feel the low thrilling hum of new data coming in from new directions, which means new curves can be plotted on the graph. “This is so strange,” she says. She knows the airline’s passenger manifest by heart: Isabella Hawthorne. Next-of-kin: Lowell Hawthorne, son. “It’s strange because I tracked down the son a few weeks ago. I’ve tracked down Lowell Hawthorne, but he won’t return calls.”
    Jacob stares at her. “Don’t touch this, Sam.” He begins massaging the front of his skull at a frantic pace. “Oh God,” he moans. “Have you got something I can tie over my …? I need to block out the light.” He rocks his head against one of the beams.
    “This might work.” She takes off the linen jacket she is wearing and folds it, once, twice, a thick bandage. She puts it over Jacob’s eyes and uses the sleeves to tie it behind his head. “Does that help?”
    “Mmm,” he moans. “Thanks. Can you drive us?”
    “Yes, of course,” she says. “Jacob? Do you think if you met with Lowell Hawthorne, it would help?”
    He pulls the jacket from his eyes and stares at her in anguish, his left eye horribly bloodshot. “No,” he says. “I don’t think it would help. The repercussions of what you’re doing terrify me, Sam.” With a groan, he re-covers his eyes. “You might as well post a sign on the Internet: I’m going after classified secrets. I’m stirring up trouble. Come and get me. ”
    “But they can tell us things, all the next-of-kin can. There are things they don’t know they know.”
    “I know more than I want to know already. I’m in agony, Sam.”
    “It’s unresolved grief, you know it is. Just listen to me, Jacob. It’s weird how many links and cross-connections there were between passengers, and between the families of passengers. It defies statistical odds. It has to mean something.”
    “I don’t want to know what it means,” Jacob says. “Sam, Sam.” He is rocking his head in pain. “I need my medication. I’m begging.”
    “Sorry,” she says. “Oh God, sorry. Let me help Cass down first, and we’ll go.”

5. Lowell
    Even before Lowell speaks, Samantha has an intuition that the phone call will be momentous, but that is because she is already in a state of febrile and heightened alert. She hears the under- and overtones when people talk. She imagines an aura of electro-magnetic feelers extending invisibly from her skin and waving about her like angel hair, like the sustenance system of certain sea creatures on tropical reefs: as water rakes through their unseen silken mesh traps, all that is needed stays. Information is falling toward her. It adheres.
    “Samantha?” Lowell says, and she recognizes his voice instantly. She has heard it often enough on his answering machine. She has scripted future conversations they will have.
    An avalanche starts with a pebble. Samantha thinks of the random searchlight of Cassie’s lucidity as setting scree tumbling, loose drifts of it that pull scattered data along in their train. They gather density and speed. Clusters of detail roll over each other and cling. They generate force and the force intensifies. Disparate pieces of information cohere, connections pick up momentum, new facts are exposed. Samantha has a premonition that