color.
Same slight narrowing when she was thinking about something she was afraid to say.
“If I go first, can Jonah come with me?”
I stopped breathing.
Jonah turned his head toward her.
“Blythe.”
She ignored him.
“Because Mommy went by herself.”
I’ve heard men beg for their lives.
I’ve watched powerful people realize in real time that their entire futures had disappeared.
Nothing had ever frightened me like my daughter’s question.
“Nobody’s going anywhere.”
She looked toward the empty chair near the window.
For two years, I had refused to remove that chair.
Genevieve had sat there during Jonah’s tonsil surgery.
She had sat there when Blythe broke her wrist falling from a garden wall.
After she died, the chair became an object nobody discussed.
“Mommy went,” Blythe whispered.
I squeezed her hand.
“I’m still here.”
She closed her eyes.
That night, I returned to my estate outside Chicago
