A humidifier had been left on in the corner of the room, and the overwhelming scent of Mentho-Lyptus filled the air. On the table beside the bed-the wood protected by a thick sheet of glass, cut to fit-there were rows and rows of prescription bottles and a notepad made from strips of paper held together with a clip. Beside this sat a chewed-up pencil. It seemed the prompts to off myself were endless.

I put the crayons and Emily’s letter down on the bed and sat by the table. There was something written on the notepad. I picked it up.

She had a shockingly spidery hand.

I realized that almost all the pages of the tablet were filled up, not with lists of chores or groceries needed but with the names of the presidents, the capitals of each of the fifty states, and the names of doctors who had treated her, coupled with their nurses’ names. I looked at page after page.

On her good days, her hand was stronger, and she remembered Frankfort, Kentucky; Augusta, Maine; and Cheyenne, Wyoming. On bad days, her hand shook more, and she forgot Johnson through Bush. My knowledge paled in comparison. I knew nothing of Rutherford Hayes.

I was about to lose it anyway, I could feel the tears waiting to fall, but then I saw a drawing she had made-a scribble really-of a woman’s figure. I knew it was a woman because it wore a skirt, and all around it, in a hand shaky with frustration and fear, were obsessive misspellings of her daughter-in-law’s name. Sherill, Sherelle, Cherelle, Shariwell, Charille. She never got to Cheryl no matter how many times she tried.

I wondered what Cheryl thought of her. I had seen her only once or twice. Was Cheryl someone Mrs. Leverton loved or an ogre she had to befriend in order to get to her son?

I looked again at the figure Mrs. Leverton had drawn next to the butchered spellings of her daughter-in-law’s name. Every day, I thought. Every day, Mrs. Leverton wrote again the things that kept her tethered to the outside world. No matter how frail, she had not relinquished her hold.

I knew what held me.

I found my note to Emily by the crayons. I ripped it lengthwise once. I ripped it this way again. I was determined now to explain what I could to my children and to carry the shame of my mistakes.

I let the confetti I had made fall to the floor and thought distractedly of the water I’d left boiling on the stove. I smiled at the memory of Jake calling Sarah his “Little Gadhafi” because of her penchant for green clothes. I could take the Crayolas and melt them into lumps in a pan. I could mark the capitals of the countries I had never been to and never would. Green for Nuuk, I thought, the capital of Greenland, where everything is green. I could teach art classes in prison. One day I’d be released, and I’d stand in the field at Westmore, coaching old people to paint the rotten oak tree.

I got up. In the kitchen there was a gun on the table and a fire on the stove, but I walked to the casement windows in the corner. One faced the rear of the Levertons’ property, and the other faced my mother’s house.

The trees had grown even thicker in the years since my father’s death, but fall had arrived early, and leaves were dropping fast. I could see my father’s workshop and, beyond this, the house lit by the moon. I saw the window of my bedroom and imagined the vines lacing up, my mother’s front half hanging out the window while my father held her and I sat quietly on my bed.

It must have been then or a moment later that I saw the lights. They were blue lights that seemed to be pulsing from somewhere out in front of the house. Blue lights and red.

I did not understand, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. What my mother’s fear was comprised of, why my father felt he had to leave us the way he did. Or the blessing of children and the love-once, then twice, because Hamish had to be counted-of a more-than-good man.

I stood at the window and edged off my shoes. My feet sank into the plush carpeting. I opened the window ever so slightly, and a breeze rushed in, bringing into the sealed-up room a blast of cool night air. I listened. I heard the branches creak against one another in the wind, and then, coming from my mother’s house, I heard voices and saw dark shadows armed with flashlights spread out across our lawn and enter my father’s workshop.

I would do what I did best, I thought. I would wait. It was only a matter of time, after all.

“She’s not here!” I heard a policeman yell. “There’s no sign of her.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE BLOOD:

BENDER, COOPER, DUNOW, GOLD

THE CIRCLE:

Barclay, Doyle, Elworthy, Fain, Goff, Muchnick, Nurnberg, Pietsch, Snyder

THE UNEXPECTED:

Charman

THE MASTER MECHANICS:

Bronstein, MacDonald, Schultz

THE CITADEL:

The MacDowell Colony

WILD CARD:

Wessel and the Italian Contingent

WILD DOG:

Lilly (woof!)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alice Sebold is the author of the #1 bestsellers The Lovely Bones, a novel, and Lucky, a memoir. She lives in California with her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold.