The lawn had just been freshly mowed, and the scent of grass was wafting in on a light summer breeze through the screen door. The girls were out playing in the sprinkler in their pink bathing suits, and Caroline and I kept an eye on their flying, giggling figures out in the sun as we made a quick lunch.
“Honey,” Caroline soothed, spreading mayonnaise on wheat bread, “don’t stress about the Mrs. McGregor situation. It’s just a temporary rut in the road that you have to be patient about. She’ll come around.”
“I know that, I do,” I sighed, “it’s just that I wish she wasn’t such a pain. Her obsession with gas prices is almost disconcerting. I don’t want an old hippy writing about how the world is going down the tubes for our newspaper! That’s not what we need right now. We need positive articles leading up to the huge Halloween Haunt Fundraiser event that we’re organizing and maybe even an actual article about the presidential election that everyone at the office seems to be absolutely deaf and blind to. I don’t know how to turn people around over there.”
Caroline came around the counter and circled her arms around my waist from behind as I violently chopped some tomatoes. Her tight squeeze made my flustered thoughts evaporate, disappearing into the whirring ceiling fan.
She buried her face in the valley of my neck, whispering. “Being manager is never easy, trust me. I may not be in charge of a newspaper, but I’ve definitely had my fair share of managing tough situations…” Caroline was thinking of Rachael and Mags in the backyard. “…and I’ve learned that patience brings even the most aloof of people back to earth in time. But you have to want to make it work.”
Caroline’s thick hair spilled down to the small of her back, tickling my arms. Her scent shot sparks through my bloodstream, as always. I’d never been fully able to wrap my mind around the fact that she was mine, even during the twelve years of our marriage. She had an effervescent glow about her that managed to shock me almost every time I saw her walking through the front door or sleeping beside me—Caroline was the substance of my daydreaming, my kryptonite.
She held me in the kitchen.
Excited screeches filtered in from the outdoors, and we both looked out proudly to our daughters, unashamedly joyful on the bright lawn. They were so content with each other, with the splash of cool water, with the glint of afternoon sun reflecting from their glowing faces—miniature china dolls in performance.
I chopped some more tomatoes; we were silent. The collective chatter of rustling leaves outside filled the room with mysterious conversation.
Our silent thoughts were broken by the sliding of the screen door and the pounding of small feet on tile. The damp striped towels were already obediently draped to dry on the railing. Caroline slowly loosened her embrace and kissed my shoulder before she went to help the girls dry off.
I began peeling bananas and putting bite-sized pieces into Disney Princess bowls. Rachael rounded the counter and looked up at me, a puddle of grassy water forming at her feet.
“Daddy?”
“Oh, hi sweetie,” I said absently. I had been thinking of the newspaper staff again, handling the bananas more forcefully than necessary. “How was the sprinkler with Mags?”
“It was fun,” the wispy voice floated to my ears and made Mrs. McGregor and her estranged politics float away on a cloud.
“That’s good to hear.” I dried my hands and scooped Rachael up, her damp suit soaking my shirt. I began heading around the counter to bring her upstairs.
“Do you want to get changed and have some lunch?” I smiled at her encouragingly and looked into her deep marble eyes. Something dark seemed to be swimming in them like a question, something hesitant yet longing.
She burrowed her wet, curly head onto my shoulder.
I stopped walking. “What’s wrong, Rach? Are you okay?”
There was no answer for a long moment. Streams of sprinkler water ran down my arms, tickling like spiders.
I felt the sensation of warm tears on my shoulder.
“Rachael,” I said calmly, not wanting to startle her, “is there something you want to talk about?”
“Daddy, I’m scared,” the small voice mumbled against my shoulder.
Her little body trembled with cold and tears.
“What is it you’re scared of?”
I tried to think through everything Rachael might have had exposure to recently. Titles of movies Caroline and I had watched after the girls were asleep ran across my mind, books I’d left out, computer tabs I’d left open. I couldn’t think of anything that would have frightened Rachael.
“I don’t want…I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
A rush of relief flowed through my chest. I had gone through the same phase of fearing death at her age. I tried to think of something to say to extinguish this fear I understood so well.
“Do something for me,” I said quietly. “Close your eyes.”
I felt Rachael’s damp eyelashes slide shut on my shirt sleeve.
I spoke slowly. “Imagine that you’re in a summer field with tall grass and flowers…”
“And ladybugs?”
“Yes, lots of ladybugs. Imagine the colors of the beautiful butterflies, flying all around you. There’s a fawn in the distance…”
“What’s a fawn?”
“It’s a baby deer.”
“Oh.”
Rachael was still, listening intently.
“And it looks so peaceful, alone in the field. The fawn doesn’t think about dying, even though a hunter could so easily take its life. It just accepts the life that it still has, and it knows that it still has time.”
After a moment Rachael whispered, “I want to be like the deer.”
I grinned. “I know, sweetheart, and you can be. When you think about death, just try to understand it like the fawn does.”
Rachael opened her eyes and lifted her head.
The fabric of my shirt was dark with escaped tears of fear.
She smiled.
* * *
The phone rang persistently at six thirty, during dinner. I recognized the number on the caller ID as my brother Jim and picked up. After a moment of silent listening, my fork clattered onto my plate and my face twisted. All three of my girls looked at me, concerned. Rachael’s fear had come to pass.
Caroline and I fell into bed, exhausted. I turned off the bedside lamp, and the room fell to ashes. In silence, we gazed up to the shadowy ceiling fan and rethought uttered words.
Finally, Caroline turned to me in the darkness. “What are you thinking about?”
I closed my eyes and let the cool air blow over me.
She rolled over onto me and sighed. She knew exactly what I was thinking about—my mother. But hundreds of memories of her were tearing at the walls of my mind, and my tongue felt petrified. I couldn’t talk about it, or I would break.
“Jeremy, you can’t just ignore Annie’s death. You’ve barely said a word about it since Jim called.”
“I shouldn’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to,” I said, rolling away from her. I sat on the edge of the bed, a crooked figure in the night.
“Then you’re being a coward.”
I burrowed my fingers into my hair. “I just lost someone, Caroline. Someone that I’ve taken for granted my whole life. Now she’s gone. Everything’s lost.”
“No, it’s not all lost. You still have me and Rachael and Mags. Listen to me. I know what it feels like to lose a family member. I’ve lost both of my parents, and a sister.” Her voice was quiet and firm, like ancient stone. There wasn’t a fleck of pity engrained in it. I felt defiant.
“Well this is new to me, so forgive me if I’m bitter,” I retorted. My words stung with sarcasm, and I immediately regretted them.
Caroline let them hang in the air as an example of my stubbornness.
“Okay,” I sighed, turning around to face her hard stare, “you’re right. I know you’ve been through this. But now it’s my turn, and I have to deal with it on my own.”
Caroline moved closer and leaned against me, holding my weight like a crutch.
“You’re wrong. You don’t have to be alone.”
* * *
The sound of rain pouring through the gutters came in through every window, transforming the house into a rainforest.
Caroline had insisted that I go out with her to have dinner with a friend. “It’ll lighten the mood,” she’d said. But I had refused. I had just spent the entire afternoon calling everyone in my extended family and friends, inviting them to my mother’s funeral. I told Caroline that I was too emotionally drained to put on a faux smile—she’d understood. Once she had gone, I allowed myself to sink into the self-pitying depression I’d been craving all day.
Rachael was busy playing with her unicorn Webkinz on the computer; Mags was cutting and pasting pictures of tools from a Home & Garden magazine for a collage project for school.
The raindrops on my windowpane slowly absorbed each other. They trickled down, gaining life and momentum, and then splattered at the bottom, lost causes. One after the other.
The white noise of rain sang a ghostly lullaby, its song seeping in through the cracks in the ceiling, rising from the pavement outside like mist. As I listened, alone in my studio, my eyelids were fickle—my mind slipped with them in and out of consciousness.
Lightning dashed dark images across the room. Thunder shook the shutters.
Just as the opaque objects on my desk were beginning to fade behind my eyelids, I heard slippered feet scuffing across the rug of my studio, and opened my eyes.
Mags was standing beside my chair in her fuzzy pink bathrobe, holding a pair of scissors and a magazine article. Her red hair glowed in the darkness, and her brows were creased with worry; her pursed lips like a stamp on her round face.
“Hey there,” I said, sitting up in my chair and offering my lap to her.
“Hi Daddy,” she said, her clear voice cutting through the electrified air. She sat on my lap. “The thunder made me jump, and Rachael laughed at me for getting scared. She called me a sissy.”
Mags had never been a tattletale. Ever since she could talk at the age of three, she had always told things exactly how they were with no exaggerated details. Caroline and I had always trusted her honesty.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” I asked groggily.
“No, Daddy, it’s okay. I can handle it, I just wanted you to know what happened.” Her seven-year-old voice seemed to shift into an adult tone as she said this, and I smiled at her maturity.
Mags got up from my lap. As she trotted out of the room, I caught sight of the magazine page she was holding. It had an advertisement for camping tents on it.
“Hey Mags,” I called after her. She stuck her fiery head back through the doorway. “I know what will make the thunder less scary.”
She came back in, intrigued.
The timer announced that the pizzas were ready. Mags squealed with excitement, and ran to get Rachael. They came tearing into the kitchen, yelling, “Which one’s mine? Which one’s mine?”
The pizzas were miniature-sized and individually decorated by the three of us. All of the ones that Rachael had garnished were sloppy and stuck to the pan with excess cheese. The ones Mags had done looked like the ones on Pizza Hut advertisements—we laughed and brought our plates out to the living room.
The camping tent that we had been using on annual family trips to Allegany State Park was sitting in all of its muddy glory in the middle of the living room. The soft glow of warm, sweet-smelling gingerbread candles gave the room a picturesque quality. The inside of the tent was filled with pillows from our beds and blankets from behind the couch. We nestled into our homemade haven, safe from the booming thunder outside.
As we ate I looked at my daughters sitting beside each other, giggling about stringy cheese and the absurdity of eating dinner in a tent in the living room. Their beaming faces filled the cavern my mother’s death had left behind and a burden of sorrow seemed to lift; my chest shook with laughter as dinner was reduced to a tickle war.
Caroline came home late, carrying leftovers and car keys. She gently shook me awake where I’d fallen asleep on the couch, trying to read a cut up Home & Garden.
We tiptoed upstairs together. I checked on the girls one last time, their content faces poking out above their snug comforters on the different levels of the bunk bed.
I closed their bedroom door behind me.
That night I dreamt of a younger version of my mother, the one I grew up with. She sat with Rachael, Mags and me in the tent, the smell of gingerbread and pizza in the air. She smiled at me in the dream the way she always had when I’d gotten a good grade in school or had mowed the lawn without being asked; it was a smile of all encompassing gratitude and adoration. As we exited the tent after dinner she took my hand and said, her vivid eyes staring into mine, “Thank you, Jeremy. That was a lovely last supper.”
I woke up with the dream repeating itself in my mind—the tent, my laughing girls, my mother’s wide smile and sincere thanks at the end. I turned over to ask Caroline what she thought my mother meant by “last supper”, but she wasn’t there. I sighed, realizing that it was a Monday and she was taking the kids to school already.
Seven thirty. I had to get ready for work. I wondered if I was allowed to take some time off to grieve for my mother, and then decided that sitting around the house all day was the last thing I needed; I was more likely to spiral into a deeper depression that way.
Forty-five minutes later, I shot around the house looking for my keys while trying to juggle a bowl of Lucky Charms and my suit coat. Finally, I spotted them across the room on the coffee table. As I picked them up, I noticed that they had been placed there to hold down a note. The note was written in Mags’ familiar oversized handwriting:
Dear Daddy,
Thank you for making the thunder go away last night. The pizza was good, and I wish we could have dinner in a tent every night. Rachael wants to say something…
The handwriting now abruptly changed into a messy scrawl, only legible with lots of practice.
Hi Daddy. I thought about the deer a lot yesterday and I don’t think I’m very afraid of dying anymore. I think that maybe Grandma was like the deer, and that she wasn’t afraid when she died. I forgot to tell you that earlier.
My eyes began to swell with emotion, but I reined in the urge to cry. Once again, the handwriting changed, but now it was Caroline’s fluid cursive that rolled across the notepaper.
Hi honey, we decided to leave you a note this morning to practice some writing and to help you through your first day back to work. The girls woke up this morning and wanted to wake you to say goodbye, but I told them you needed to rest. They can’t wait to see you when you get home from work.
I’ll be picking up some milk, tomatoes, and eggs today at the store—call me if you can think of anything else we might need! Have a good day at work, Jeremy. I love you.
At the bottom, crunched in the small space that was left, the girls wrote their names and Caroline drew her signature smiley face. I folded the paper up and placed it carefully in my breast pocket. I would need it to keep me company throughout the day, I was sure.
Five minutes later, strategically veering around the girls’ Disney-themed toys and the tent we had never put away, I made my way out the door and into the Honda. The drive to work was uneventful—nothing interesting on NPR, thin coffee. At the notorious five-minute red light on South Goodman, my cell phone shrieked; it was Amy, my secretary.
“Good morning, Amy,” I answered more glumly than I had intended.
“Hello, Mr. Phillips.” Her voice was hard, cold. This was always the tone of her voice when she was about to unfold something I didn’t want to hear. I prayed to God it wasn’t concerning the message I had emailed to Mrs. McGregor on Friday afternoon, denying her permission to write any more articles about gas price inflation.
“Is this about McGregor? Just tell her I’ll be there in about two minutes. I’m almost there.” I expected Amy to confirm and hang up, but she lingered for a moment. Her unusual hesitancy baffled me.
“Amy?”
Finally, her tear-choked voice came on. My heart skipped. I couldn’t recall ever having heard her cry in the eleven years I’d been working for the New York Chronicle. Her blubbering words didn’t make sense at first. I tried to sort them out, one by one, and all I got was “accident”, “kids”, “wife”…
Accident. Kids. Wife. My chest thudded, and I swerved the car to the side of the road. My forehead was beaded with sweat.
“We…” She briefly cleared her throat. “We got a call this morning from the hospital asking for you…I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”
I hung up quickly, and stared down at my phone as if it were a rabid animal that had gone for my throat.
My insides felt like they were melting, my tongue like rubber. My eyes burned under my contacts. The keys in the ignition were rocking back and forth against the plastic of the car from my sudden stop, making a sickly scraping noise.
Everything seemed so surreal; the trees outside looked distorted as if they were in a bubble. The school buses roaring past seemed muted in my ears. I was underwater, eyes open and staring, sinking into unconsciousness.
Hot tears smoldered down my face like meteors—first tears in years.
* * *
A nurse spotted me the moment I walked through the front door of the hospital. She firmly took my arm, an urgent look creasing her round face. I must have looked like I was going to collapse, because she used her wide shoulders to prop me up and practically dragged me onto the elevator with her.
She didn’t say a word. Words are useless at a certain point.
Once we’d reached the right floor, I saw an overwhelming swarm of doctors come at me from all sides and take me from the broad-shouldered nurse, speaking at me uselessly. Even if I’d had something to say, my tongue would have gotten in the way. I began to crave the silence of the elevator almost as soon as I’d left it.
I was led to a room with a thick wooden door marked Caroline Phillips. My eyes oozed helpless tears at the sight of her name written in standardized, black letters in such a cold, dead place. The doctors opened the door and helped me in.
They pulled back the curtain, and told me they’d be back soon. They offered me a chair, and told me to push the button on the wall if I needed help.
Inside my voice choked, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me here!” but my shell remained numb.
I stared at Caroline’s pale face; the dried blood around the corners of her mouth; her swollen eyelids; the oxygen tubes in her nose; the IV in her arm. I touched a matted lock of her hair. It was a dead straw color under the fluorescent lights. Her hands were stiff and cold, like dry ice. I was afraid to touch them.
The monitor’s beeping echoed in my skull, keeping me conscious—keeping my life worth living for the time being. The silence of the room sent a rush of panic through me, making my insides writhe. I hit the button on the wall over and over, until an aggravated nurse came in to see what was wrong.
“Where are Rachael and Margaret Phillips?” I croaked, carefully holding Caroline’s limp hand in both of mine.
“Oh,” the nurse said almost apologetically, knowing that they were children, “I can take you to see them right now if you like.” Her face was long and pointed, with a set of dark eyebrows accenting her fierce blue eyes.
An angel of death.
I followed her through the mysterious hallways, watching the backs of her heels. I could feel myself falling further and further into a ferocious trance that made me want to careen into outer space and vault into a black hole that would stretch me as thin as spaghetti and take me to the unknown.
I was in no state to see my daughters lying in hospital beds that were meant for the old and dying; I couldn’t stand to see their perfect faces intruded on by bruises and tubes. My breath would surely catch in my throat, my feet would hold me down like bricks on the bottom of a pool; I couldn’t go into that room.
I stopped walking and the nurse asked me if I was okay. Was I okay? Would I ever be okay? No. No, no, never.
* * *
Visiting hours were over at eight o’clock.
How could they tell me to walk away so soon? I hadn’t memorized all of the cuts that would eventually leave scars; I hadn’t counted all of the stitches that would heal if there were hope. They hadn’t given me a chance to whisper into Rachael’s ear one last time, or to twist another piece of Mags’ bright hair around my finger. I never got the chance to tell Caroline I loved her for the thousandth time that day. They closed the doors in my face, expecting me to walk away whistling.
“They’ll be here first thing in the morning,” they’d said.
I’d looked at them with a chilling glare, cursing their promises and statistics.
Jim was waiting for me outside in his truck, crying. His eyelashes were clumped together, just like they always used to be when we were boys and I’d pick on him for being younger or less muscular. I got in and slammed the door. My emotions had been molten lava all day; now they were ash and rock, the crumbling remains of the man I’d been that morning.
Jim put his right arm around me and pulled me into a hug that forced every molecule of breath out of my lungs. He didn’t let me out of his cemented hold for a very long time. It was what I needed, but it still wasn’t nearly enough. Both of our faces were sticky with the dried tears.
“I came as soon as I heard. Those damn doctors didn’t even contact me until just a few hours ago.” I waved away his excuses, forgiving his absence; we were silent during the drive to his apartment on the west side of the city.
I dozed as Jim drove, and my dream from the night before materialized again. The tent, the pizza, the candles…my mother, my girls. “Thank you, Jeremy. That was a lovely last supper.”
I jolted awake and startled Jim.
“Last supper,” I murmured. “Last supper…”
“What do you mean, Jeremy?” Jim thought I was talking to him.
“I had a dream…Mom said “last supper”…it was a clue…my dream was warning me and I was too stupid to pay attention! I should have called Caroline to come home…it’s my fault…the dream, it explained everything. Mom explained everything…she was trying to protect them and I was too stupid…” I cried like a child. Jim pulled over. I told him to keep driving, that I would explain everything in the morning. I was too afraid to fall asleep again.
He drove on.
I thought of what the doctors and policemen had told me throughout the day as I’d gone between rooms. “The drunk driver—a man, according to witnesses—side swiped your wife’s car, hitting Rachael first, but slamming Margaret’s side of the car into another vehicle. Caroline then lost control and hit the car in front of her, shattering the windshield. The airbags activated perfectly, but just didn’t do the trick.”
Didn’t do the trick…what a thing to say to a man who’d just been told exactly how his wife and two children were jolted into a coma.
They told me statistic after statistic. Each percentage of survival pulled its noose around my neck tighter and tighter, until my eyes were bulging and my words couldn’t escape anymore.
There was a five percent chance of survival for Rachael—little innocent Rachael, afraid of dying. I could feel her big dark eyes watching me from outside of Jim’s car window, her haunting laughter dancing in my ears.
There was a fifteen percent chance for Mags, my fiery-haired, energy-filled daughter who could never tell a lie; like me in so many aspects, with her clear perspectives and broad understandings. She never cried without good reason.
Tears stung my swollen eyes for the hundredth time that day.
And Caroline, my wife—there was a twenty-five percent chance she would ever get up out of that filmy fold-up hospital bed. I knew she wouldn’t want me to feel as terrified and alone as I was feeling without her, but then again she’d promised me I wouldn’t have to be alone. She’d promised me she’d be there, but had never told me what to do when she wasn’t.
That night Jim warmed up a pot of chili. He told me he didn’t expect that I was very hungry, but to try and eat some anyway. I thanked him as sincerely as I could but couldn’t touch it. The thought of eating a meal so far away from my family didn’t seem to make any sense—all I could imagine was spooning Rachael a mouthful, or telling Mags to slow down, eating dinner wasn’t a race; telling Caroline it was delicious, that we should have chili more often. My bowl sat before me until it turned cold.
I slept on Jim’s huge bachelor sofa that night, completely unable to sleep for fear of having the same dream I’d had the night before. He had told me to call him if I needed absolutely anything; he was there for me.
It had only been the night before that I’d been sleeping beside Caroline, our breathing in sync. The girls had been safe in bed, their sleeping faces traced in moonlight—smiles pulling at their lips.
Now the stars shone in through the window, a million dashed dreams.
* * *
Rachael passed in the night, her tiny soul seeping out of her unused body and into the world that she’d never had a chance to encounter.
The monitor’s beeping had slowed, bit by bit, until there was nothing else to do but stop altogether.
Jim had been standing with me when Doctor Montgomery, the new doctor assigned to us, informed us. When he sighed and said Rachael’s name I had stopped breathing, closed my eyes, and imagined her face with every pore of my body. Parts of it were already fading away, like the shape of her nose or the location of the freckles on her cheeks; even her eyes seemed dimmer in my labored recollection of her.
They asked me if I wanted to see her. I said no, I wanted a picture.
“I’m sorry, but all we have is her body…” the worried looking doctor had said.
I’d roared in agony, tearing at my hair, shaking. Doctor Montgomery had jumped, afraid of my pain; too stupid to see that it was my pain that made me weak.
Room 646. The nameplates on the door had reduced from two to one.
Everything in the room had been diminished by half—only one bed, one chair, one vase of flowers. Rachael had been wiped away like a spill on the counter.
My hands shook as I stood in front of a dark window in the room, staring at the hard sterilized floor. My soft gray shadow wept silently for a while.
I turned to what I had left.
Mags’ body only took up a quarter of the hospital gown she was tucked into. I could see the folds of the crinkly fabric rise and fall with her slight breathing. I wanted to bring her the pink bathrobe from home that she loved so much; I wanted to hang the collage of gardening tools she had made for school over her bed. I felt the urge to make the room her own—because there was no way of knowing if she would ever walk out of it.
* * *
The deep, melancholy chords of the organ filled the cathedral and reverberated in my chest. A mountain of assorted flowers was arranged in the front of the church, their thick aroma blanketing the congregation. Jim was standing at the altar looking solemn.
“We’re all gathered here today on behalf of two deeply beloved people in our lives…”
I looked away from the tears brimming in his eyes, trying to control my own. I gazed instead at the lacquered wooden coffins before me—one large, one small.
“…selfless, beautiful people that we all wish we could have had more time with. We’re here to remember Annie and Rachael Phillips…” His voice cracked, and he was silent for a moment.
I felt Caroline squeeze my hand, and looked over to her. She was dressed in black, her slim body propped up in a wheel chair. Her eyes were squeezed shut above a white neck brace, tears mingling on the surface of her face. I held her hand powerfully, unwilling to let her go.
“I know everyone here admired Rachael’s endless fascination with life and her sweet, joyful personality. She was always the life of the party.”
A small, appreciative murmur rose from the mourners around me. Caroline cried harder.
“And I know we’ll always remember Mom’s strength and brilliance as we look back on our memories with her…and we’ll treasure the love she gave out to those in need.” Jim paused, composing himself.
“Mom, Rachael, we’re all here today to say goodbye, but as for me I know we’ll meet again. See you on the other side.”
Jim stepped away from the altar and put a rose on each of the coffins. He placed his hand on the larger one, and bowed his head for a long moment. As he took his hand away, its ghostly outline remained for an instant, then expanded and disappeared.
I stood up and walked to the podium.
As I looked out over the people that filled the pews before me, I shriveled. My words did back flips in the back of my throat—small, terrified acrobats trapped in an impossible situation. The speech I had prepared scampered away from me, out of reach. I looked down at my mother and daughter’s wooden tributes for inspiration, but found nothing—all I could think of was Mags, all alone, breathing softly in her hospital bed, unable to come even to her sister’s funeral.
As I lifted my eyes again, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A shaft of afternoon sunlight was shining through a stain-glass window, filtering its soft light into the cathedral. The window was made up of light blue and gold shards of glass, forming the striking image of an angel with long, flowing hair. With the sun behind her, she glowed like a vision. Her wings encompassed the entire window, and around her feet were various animals; one of them was a meek-looking fawn.
I cleared my throat. Everyone was looking up at me patiently.
“About four days ago, Rachael came to me and confided in me.”
I could feel the stain-glass angel’s warm eyes peering at me from above—Rachael’s eyes.
“As I was holding her, she whispered to me that she was afraid to die.” Caroline’s face twisted into a mixture of pain and surprise, and I felt my expression do the same. I focused on keeping my voice from faltering.
“I told her to do something for me. And I’m going to ask all of you to do it now.”
I reached into my pocket and traced the edges of the note that Mags, Rachael, and Caroline had left me. I had memorized Rachael’s words:
Hi Daddy. I thought about the deer a lot yesterday and I don’t think I’m very afraid of dying anymore. I think that maybe Grandma was like the deer, and that she wasn’t afraid when she died. I forgot to tell you that earlier.
As the people before me awaited their instructions, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I prayed. I prayed to the stain-glass angel that wherever Rachael and Mom were, they were listening.
“Close your eyes. Imagine that you’re in a summer field with tall grass and flowers. Imagine the colors of the beautiful butterflies, flying all around you. There’s a fawn in the distance…”
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