Maya and Leah came to visit in the spring of the year she turned ninety-six. They came separately, the way they always did—Maya from the coast where she taught literature at a small college, Leah from the city where she ran a shelter for unhoused youth, an organization she had named after Elena, who had died three years before at the age of seventy-eight. They came with their children, who were themselves grown now, who had children of their own, and the house was full for the first time in man...