A bullet in my back . . . an infection in my lungs . . . my heart stuttered and quit pumping. . . I was just too old and worn out . . . the car hit so hard . . . the fall was from too high . . . I picked up the razor blade . . . I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, my inhaler was too far away . . . the meat lodged in my throat . . . the virus traveled through me and laid waste to my body . . . the knife traveled through my liver, then my stomach, then . . .

The dead all had stories, but they never explained or condemned. I’d heard, on odd little message boards that I visited, that some others like me—people who’d been French-kissed by electricity—could see the dead, could even communicate with them. No one else had confessed to having my truncated sort of relationship with those in their graves. There were lightning-struck people who could see the future, who now walked with a limp, who were blind in one eye. One woman had said no one in her family would help her right after she’d been hit because they were convinced she was charged with electricity. On a more private board, a board with far fewer members, a man in Colorado Springs posted that he was accompanied everywhere he went by his dead brother, who’d been killed by the same lightning bolt. No one else could see the brother, of course; his family had even had him committed for a time.

I stayed in my room all night. I ordered a delivery pizza. Hollis called to tell me he was working that night, all night, and to remind me to call him if I needed anything. I got one heavy-breathing anonymous call, a call I figured came from one of the teenage boys who’d confronted me. Paul Edwards called to tell me he was sorry about my brother’s “situation,” and he offered to help me in any way he could.

Since it was his cousin who had arrested my brother, I was pretty sure there would be a conflict of interest there, but I thanked him politely. He hinted that he wanted to come over and hang around with me. I turned him down, much less tactfully.

He was handsome, and he was a lawyer, and I could probably use a handsome lawyer friend, but Paul Edwards didn’t offer to come hang around with a woman for no reason at all. He wanted something, and maybe it wasn’t sex. He didn’t seem to be a constant lover. The relationship between the lawyer and Sybil Teague wasn’t clandestine, yet here he was with his ulterior motives.

I got a few hours’ sleep that night, which was more than I expected. I drank coffee in the room. It wasn’t good, but I didn’t have to face anyone to drink it. I couldn’t have eaten anything, so a restaurant was a waste of time.