“Are you talking about the missing week?” she asked.
“The missing week?”
“This was before my time. But I guess one summer, when she was about your age, I think, she just disappeared. Nobody knew where she went. When she came back, everybody said she seemed different.”
“Different how?”
“Your father said...” She zoned out for a second, trying to remember. “She told him she had made a decision she couldn’t figure out whether or not to regret.” She shrugged and kissed me on my forehead. “Whatever that means,” she added, getting up and leaving my room, closing my bedroom door behind her. As soon as she was gone I wanted her back. When she was here, I wanted to bealone. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted.
What decision could Aunt Helen have made? Where would she have gone for a week? Had something bad happened to her?
I took the next letter from my nightstand and tore it open. Loopy, messy words, like she’d written it in a hurry.
Lottie,
When I found out about my diagnosis, I didn’t cry. It’s a weird thing, Lottie, to have to hear someone else tell you that you’re going to die. I almost didn’t believe the doctor at first, even though it is a doctor I know and trust. Everything in my brain was screaming SHE’S LYING, even the rational parts that knew she had no reason to lie to me. I went home that night and had a cup of tea like I always do, read a book like I always do, watched a bit of TV like I sometimes do. Did. Do I have to say did now? I keep forgetting these letters are for after I’m gone. I keep forgetting that’s the inevitable shadow I’m crashing toward.
I began to write these after a few months, after the cancer moved into places the doctor’s instruments couldn’t reach, swiftly and strategically taking up residency in my body, an uninvited stranger with no home of its own. It had to take mine and turn it against me.
I still didn’t cry, not even as I numbered theseletters and called Harry and set my things in order. I didn’t cry as I decided how to divide up my belongings, all those foolish possessions I had at one time so desperately wanted. Do we crowd our rooms with material things because we’re afraid of the empty space without them? Oh, I don’t know, Lottie. But at the end of it all I only feel sentimental about a few of them. My books. My pictures. My first fancy car (I hope your mom is enjoying it now).
When I was younger people told me I would regret the decisions I had made. You will regret never marrying, Helen! You will regret never having children, Helen! I suppose I only regret not knowing what it might have been like but never the choices themselves. Some women aren’t meant to do all those things. Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Do I have any regrets, then? One, perhaps, and it’s a strange, strange one. It is not the obvious regret that will reveal itself to you soon enough. It’s another, smaller regret. It’s an easier one to get a handle on. I’ll tell you now because these letters allow me to tell you everything, to not keep any secrets from you. You, one of my favorite humans ever. Tied with Abe, tied with your dad, tied with your mom.
Here it is. My one regret:
I never cried.
Weird, right? To regret something so small? But I don’t know. In my whole entire life I never had a really good cry, one that lasted for hours and hurt like hell and emptied out every piece of my insides so I could start new. Your mom had a cry like that once, and I was there for it. If you ask her, she might tell you.
Here is my wish for you, Lottie. Or your next task, if that’s what you’re calling these. Whatever you call them: don’t be afraid to let yourself cry. Cry often, cry long, cry hard. Cry when you’re sad, cry when you’re happy. Cry whenever the fuck you want. Cry for me (but then stop). Cry for you. Cry for everyone in the world. In moderation, it can be the best thing for you.
Love, H.
I put the letter on my comforter.
I was already crying.
I didn’t stop for hours. I cried in my dreams, and I woke up empty and not the least bit new.
The members of the Everlife Society introduced themselves in initials: A., E., Q., and V.
A. and V. were women. E. and Q. were men. None of them was particularly welcoming, although it felt like E. imagined he was, by the way he set glasses of chocolate milk in front of the siblings. (Did he think they were six? Also, Margo was allergic to chocolate.)
Nobody said anything for a long time. The chocolate milk glasses sweated onto the wood. Margo considered asking for coasters, but hey, it wasn’t her coffee table’s funeral.
Then, as if bursting, A. leaned forward and asked, “Did you really make it into the house?”
“A.,” E. said warningly.
Margo shrugged and said, “Yup,” then pointedly pushed her glass away from her.
“Tell me how you did it,” A. said.
“There was a door. We opened it,” Margo said. She was in a foul mood, woken in the middle of the night and brought to the secret headquarters of some secret group. Alvin didn’t blame her, although he did try and be a little nicer.
“We didn’t do anything special,” he added. “We just walked in.”
