And then one night, Jade went to sleep.
There had been no warning. No long illness. No accident to blame. No villain. No mechanical failure anyone could point to and say, there, that’s the reason your world fell apart.
She went to bed beside me after rocking Billie to sleep, kissed my shoulder as she complained about me leaving a cabinet open in the kitchen, then said she was going to call her sister in the morning.
She never woke up.
The coroner said it was natural causes. Then different doctors said the same thing. The autopsy confirmed it.
Sometimes people just died.
“She had lists of things she wanted to show you,” I said finally. “Books. Places. Foods. Songs.”
Billie leaned back to look at me. “Songs?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she sing good?”
CJ made a face. “No.”
Bianca nodded. “She was enthusiastic but not technically skilled.”
I laughed. “She was terrible. Very committed, though.”
CJ grinned at the headstone. “Sorry, Mom.”
We stayed there longer than I’d planned. The kids talked to Jade in turns. I stood and took a step, not far; never far enough that I couldn’t see them. I gave them privacy because they deservedit, and also because I needed a second to breathe without any of them watching me.
That was when I noticed Lady Ferdinand. She was technically our neighbor, but she lived far enough away that calling her a neighbor felt generous to the concept of proximity. Her estate sat beyond the woods east of ours, behind a stone gate and a winding road I’d only driven twice, both times after storms had knocked branches down over the lane and her driver had called to ask whether I had a chainsaw.
I did have a chainsaw. I didnotknow how to use it.
Lady Ferdinand stood several rows away in a long camel coat, one gloved hand resting on a cane, the other holding a small bouquet of white roses. Her driver waited next to a polished black car, pretending not to hover while absolutely hovering.
Lady Ferdinand was in her eighties. She still wore lipstick to the grocery store, still sent handwritten invitations for tea, and called my children “the little revolutionaries,” which they found deeply flattering.
I glanced back at the kids.
CJ had started gesturing. Bianca looked unimpressed at Billie’s attempts to stack rocks on the headstone.
They were all right. So I crossed the grass toward Lady Ferdinand. “Good morning.”
She turned before I reached her. Her face brightened, though it carried that particular softness everyone wore in a cemetery. A gentling of the edges. A temporary truce with the rest of the world.
“Conrad Lawrence,” she said. “You look tired.”
“Lovely to see you, too.”
“I’m too old to waste pleasantries on lies.”
“That does sound nice. Honestly, who has time for pleasantries?”
“It’s one of the few rewards of surviving this long.” She looked past me toward my children. “And there they are. Taller every time I see them.”
“They refuse to stop growing.”
“Children do that. Mine did as well, despite repeated warnings.”
