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I knew one thing that really bothered him was the same thing that had bugged him when Dolly’s plane went missing—had Jilly suffered? When he’d heard from the mountain rescue crews looking for his mother that the plane had broken up on impact and Dolly had been killed instantly, he was so relieved. I only wished I could tell him something similar about Jilly, but it didn’t seem likely from the information we had. Salvation came in a phone call from a friend who owned a local pizza delivery service.

“Barbara,” he told me. “I have something to tell you about the night Jilly died. You must decide whether to tell Frank or not, okay?” He paused. “One of my men was delivering pizza that night and witnessed the accident. He saw Jilly at the window of the car screaming for help.”

“Oh, God!” I cried, wondering how this news could possibly help Frank.

“I just want you to know that Jilly died of the smoke before the fire got to him,” he said. “That’s what the guy saw with his own two eyes. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not, but I thought it might help.”

I thanked him and put down the telephone. What he’d said helped me to come to terms with Jilly’s death, and I was comforted by the fact that he hadn’t suffered in the way we’d all imagined. After some private agonizing, I decided the information might help Frank too, but I knew I had to pick the right moment to tell him, because timing was everything. I waited until we were completely alone. He listened in silence. He was quite overcome, but I could tell it helped him too. From that moment, I believe, he was able to pick up the pieces and go on.

Performing was Frank’s therapy, so within a few weeks we were back on the road. We started in Europe but then just kept on going for the next two years, delighting his many fans. I think Frank believed that if he stopped working he’d die, so he agreed to a grueling schedule of concerts that had him crisscrossing the globe again and performing back in Vegas as usual every New Year’s Eve. He held a fund-raiser in L.A. for his friend the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, then set off for gigs in Germany, Sweden, and England.

We were home briefly for the funeral of Sammy Cahn, who had written the lyrics to some of the greatest songs Frank ever sang, including “Come Fly with Me,” “Love and Marriage,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “High Hopes,” and “All the Way.” Frank once said the great thing about Sammy’s songs was that they really said something. I think he must have felt that, with Sammy gone, his recording career was truly over. Concentrating on his live performances instead, we’d travel on average two weeks in every four.

Whenever we came home, we’d unpack, unwind, and go on a diet after weeks of eating in the world’s finest restaurants. I had a surefire diet plan comprising eight hundred calories a day with no fat, sugar, or salt. I still wanted to lose those two pounds I’d been desperate to lose since my teens, and Frank was watching his weight too, with child-size portions of his usual food. When I could I’d escape to the beach with friends like Dinah Shore, Jolene Schlatter, Suzy Johnson, Angie Dickinson, and Bee Korshak, on what we called a “fat farm,” where someone supervised our exercise regime and cooked all our food so we couldn’t cheat. (Frank sent Jilly and “the Fat Man” Mickey Rudin away once to a special fat farm, and they both gained seven pounds. We found out later that they’d sneaked to the local bus station each night and eaten their way through its vending machines.)

We’d start each day with a long walk on the beach before coming home to play cards and eat healthfully. Walking across the dunes behind Dinah one day, I noticed that her hair was really thin, with her scalp showing through. Dinah had always had such great hair. I knew then that she was going through chemotherapy, but typical of Dinah, she didn’t want anyone to know. I hid my shock and figured that if she wanted to tell me, she would. Eventually, she had to, because