November 9

It was like my puppy had died and he was wanting to tell me it would be okay, that I could get a new one.

I’d get a Yorkie, because that’s exactly what the bloodstain looks like if I cover my right eye and squint.

I wonder if I’m in shock. Is that why I’m not crying?

My mother would be pissed that I’m not crying right now. I’m sure attention played at least a small role in her decision. She loved attention, and not in a bad way. It’s just a fact. And I’m not sure that I’m giving her death enough attention if I’m not even crying yet.

I think I’m mostly just confused. She seemed happy most of my life. Sure, there were days she was sad. Relationships that went south. My mother loved to love, and up until the moment she blew her face off, she was an attractive woman. Lots of men thought so.

But my mother was also smart. And even though a relationship she thought had promise ended a few days ago, she just didn’t seem like the type who would take her life to prove to a man that he should have stuck with her. And she’s never loved a man enough to feel as though she couldn’t live without him. That kind of love isn’t real, anyway. If parents have been able to survive the loss of children, then men and women can easily live with the loss of a relationship.

Fifteen minutes have passed since I began contemplating why she would do this and I’m no closer to an answer than I was before.

I decide to investigate. I feel a little guilty, because she’s my mother and she deserves her privacy. But if a person has time to write out a suicide note, surely they have time to destroy things they would never want their children to find. I spend the next half hour (why isn’t Kyle here yet?) snooping through her stuff.

I scroll through her phone and email. Several text messages and emails later, I’m convinced I know exactly why my mother killed herself.

His name is Donovan O’Neil.

Fallon

I drop the page with my father’s name on it. It flutters to the floor with some of the other pages I just read.

I push the manuscript off my lap and quickly stand up. I rush to my bedroom and opt for door number one. I take a shower, hoping to calm down enough to continue reading, but I cry the entire time. No sixteen-year-old should have to go through what Ben went through, but it still doesn’t answer all the questions I have about how this relates to me. But now that I know my father was involved with Ben’s mother at some point, I have a feeling I’m getting closer. And I’m not so sure I want to keep reading, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. Despite the fact that I feel nauseous, my hands have been trembling for fifteen minutes straight, and I’m too scared to read what my father has to do with any of this, I force myself to forge ahead.

It’s at least an hour later before I have the courage to return to the manuscript. I sit back down on the couch and pick up right where I left off.

Ben’s novel—CHAPTER TWO

Age 16

“When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”

—Dylan Thomas

Kyle finally made it to the house. So did Ian. We sit around the kitchen table and talk about anything except why our mother hated her life more than she loved us. Kyle tells me I was brave today. He treats me like I’m still twelve, even though I’ve been the man of this house since he left home six months ago.

Ian calls one of those companies that provide cleanup service after a death. One of the officers must have left their business card on the counter, knowing we would need it. I didn’t even know those existed, but Ian mentioned some movie he watched called Sunshine Cleaning a few years back about a couple of women who did it for a living.

The company sends two men. One man who doesn’t speak English and one man who doesn’t speak at all. He writes everything down on a pad that he keeps in his front pocket.

When they’re finished, they find me in the kitchen and hand me a note.

Stay out of the bedroom for at least four hours so the carpet can dry. Your total comes to $200.

I find Kyle in the living room. “It costs $200.”

We both look for Ian, but we can’t find him. His car is gone and he’s the only one with that kind of cash. I find my mother’s purse on the kitchen counter. “She has enough cash in her wallet. You think it’s okay if we use it?”

Kyle snatches the money out of my hands and leaves the room to pay the guys.

Ian returns later that afternoon. He and Kyle argue about whether or not he informed us he was going to the police station, because Kyle doesn’t remember Ian leaving and Ian says Kyle just wasn’t paying attention.

No one asks why he went to the police station in the first place. I think maybe he wanted to see the suicide letter, but I don’t ask him about it. After reading how in love she was with this guy Donovan, the last thing I want to read is how she couldn’t live without him. It pisses me off that my mother would allow the breakup over a man to devastate her more than the thought of never seeing her sons again. It shouldn’t even be a tossup.

I can almost see how her decision played out. I imagine her sitting on her bed last night, crying over the pathetic bastard. I imagine her holding a picture of him in her right hand and a picture of me, Kyle, and Ian in the left. She looks back and forth between the pictures, focusing on Donovan. Do I just end it now so I don’t have to live without this man for one more day? And then she looks at the picture of us. Or do I stick out the heartache in order to spend the rest of my life with three men who are grateful to have me as their mother?

What I can’t imagine is what would motivate her to choose the picture in her right hand over the picture in her left.