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Sticking out of the wastebasket is one of her personal note cards with her embossed initials at the top. It’s a letter she’s started to me. So I pull it out of the trash even though my hand is crazy with shakes. And I look at Allison and I tell her I’ll read it later. I tell her Thad and I are going to be all right. You’ll see. We’re going to be all right.

Putting the letter in my pocket, I step out of my shoes and go through her bedroom and lock the bathroom door and I’m standing in her bedroom barefoot. I look in that wastebasket and there are two more letters she started and I take those and fold them and put them in my pocket as well. That’s how I find the first three suicide notes. And I still haven’t called the police because I need to take care of Thad and I need to think. That’s one thing she’d want me to do for sure, to think about how I’m going to handle this with the media and Caesar’s Inc. and Child Protective Services if they show up.

I find one letter in her lingerie drawer facedown. I find two in the highboy. Back downstairs. Three in the office, one in the kitchen trash. I find fourteen in all. None of them complete. Just starts, just intentions of letters, none of which had apparently hit the mark.

I wash up at the sink. I wash my feet. Then I call Julie.

Julie tells me to turn on the kitchen monitor to Thad’s room, so I can hear him if he wakes up. Lloyd and Julie will be here in a few minutes. She directs me to the hall closet where I should get a warm sweater or jacket.

—Anything. Take anything, she says. —And put it on.

She tells me to put my arms in the sleeves of anything. I am to go back to the kitchen and open one set of French doors onto the patio, it doesn’t matter which set. I turn the lights out in the kitchen.

—You need to sit outside and get some oxygen.

She wants me to stop hyperventilating. Julie instructs me to sit in a chair on the patio with the French doors wide open so I can hear the monitor.

—Whatever you do, she says, don’t turn on the outside lights. That would only draw the paparazzi. Just sit out in the night air and whisper with me. Just listen to my voice if you can’t talk. You’re going to get through this, Lyn. Lloyd and I are here for you, baby.

So I sit in the dark and look at the phone I’m holding.

—Who’s calling? I ask.

I notice it’s a mild night and I wonder if it’s going to rain tomorrow. No one has been able to figure out how to turn the timer off on the sprinkler system since Tommy’s death.

—You’re still talking to Aunt Julie, dear. Now really listen. It’s important that you don’t go back upstairs unless Thad wakes up. Don’t talk to anyone if the other phone should ring and don’t answer a knock at the door. We’ll come the back way. I’m on my phone and I won’t put it down for a second until we get there. We’ll just stay on the line and keep talking together.

—Julie? Did you say you’re coming over?

—We’ll be there before you know it. We’re on our way. You let Lloyd and me handle everything, sweetheart. We’ll take care of every last thing. You’re going to be all right, I promise. Thad and you are both going to be all right.

There’s enough of a moon out so I can see the dark outlines of Allison’s plants. Maybe she planted too much narcissus this year, the smell is very intense.

—Julie? I didn’t know you were on the phone.

—Yes, Lyn, this is Julie.

—You’re crying, I say.

—I’m just feeling sad, Lyn. But we’re on our way over right now. We’re in the van. I’m going to stay on the phone with you the whole way. I don’t want you to think about anything except taking deep breaths.

I look at the phone in my hand.

Maybe I had been trying to call out.

CHAPTER

27

Thad holds my hand during the entire memorial. If Allison could come back from the dead long enough for the service, he would hold her hand the whole way. She was, after all, the one who got him through everything.

Although I still don’t think he understands that Tommy is gone,