After unpacking her valise, I got out of there. When I came back two hours later, I called the police and told them I’d found her at the bottom of the stairs when I came back in. They suspected me all right—they’d be crazy not to—but the autopsy was inconclusive. Because I’d unpacked the valise, they didn’t know she was leaving me. Because I was clearly distraught at her death, and because people knew how much I loved her, I got away with it. I was lucky, or so I thought.

After the funeral, I went in the bedroom and I saw something under the bed. I thought it was maybe a farewell note. I was about to burn it, when I noticed that it had been typed, on my typewriter. It was the last paragraph of All My Colors. She must have typed it out herself. I couldn’t imagine why.

For those of you who are familiar with the book, I reproduce those lines now. Maybe you can make sense of them, work out why Helen felt they were worth typing out. I know I can’t.

“He ran across the road. It was after him. He didn’t know what it was, but it was after him. The road was clear. No cars, nothing. He stepped out—and a wall hit him. It crushed him, it flattened him, it pulled him to the ground and it mangled and broke him.

The last thing he heard as his lifeblood seeped from his smashed body was a voice, a whiney voice, saying again and again, ‘He just stepped out right in frunna me! Right in frunna me!’”

“But that’s not how it ends,” Todd said.

“That’s all there is,” said Behm.

“No,” said Todd, and got up. He pulled his copy of All My Colors from his case.

“Look,” he said, opening the book. Behm looked at the last page.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s different. So what? It’s a different book. Same name, different book.”

Behm looked at Todd, as if realizing something.

“Is that what all this is about, Milstead? The book?”

Todd didn’t hear him.

“You’re right,” he said, and there was a wild tone in his voice. “You’re right. It’s a different book.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you don’t get it. It’s a different book.”

“Okay…”

“If this—” Todd jabbed at the book. “—is different to that, to what he wrote, then—then there’s a chance.”

“A chance of what? Mr. Milstead, you’re losing me.”

Todd grabbed Behm by the shoulders.

“There’s a chance I can change things!”

“Let go, would you?”

“If the books are different, I can write my way out of it! I can move the shapes! Behm, I can move the shapes!”

“Milstead…”