Robert Hargrove died in January.
Not suddenly, which would have been a mercy in the specific way that sudden things are mercies. Slowly, over the winter, the way the body decides when it has done what it came to do and begins the process of completing.
Diana was with him.
She had been in Zurich for four months, which had its own answer about the question she had been careful not to answer for years.
She called Damien on a Thursday evening.
He was in the study with the door open and I was in the library and I heard his voice change register, the low, specific register of someone receiving something they have been preparing for.
He came to the library doorway.
I looked up from my book.
“He’s gone,” he said.
I put down my book.
I went to him.
He stood in the doorway and held me for
