Summary

One morning in December, at her home in Milan and close to an argument with seventeen-year-old Roby, Shay receives a phone call from Senna, who is in Madagascar. He tells Shay that Bertine has died, from what seems to have been a heart attack. Shay finds herself suddenly in tears, and is comforted unexpectedly by her son, who says that Bertine was his mother’s only friend on Madagascar. Shay briefly protests, but then realizes that what he said was true. As he has done in the past, Roby speaks negatively of Madagascar and of how the people who live there are treated. Shay angrily protests that she and Senna did everything they could for their staff, and then again bursts into tears. She looks at her face, “with its very American mixture of races, the countenance that has defined her throughout her...