I was thinking the same thing.

Rachel stood up and went into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of white wine and as she took the first sip, she saw Paiges calendar on the bar. So many little squares, some filled in with her small handwriting. Each square was a day, piling on to the backs of others, forever and ever.

Not yours, though, she thought. How many of those boxes do you think you have left?

She looked to the latest box Paige had filled in, a birthday party a friend had invited her to this weekend. Rachel ran her hands over her daughters handwriting and began to weep. And when the faintest of little white flashes seemed to fill her head for the space of two seconds and then disappear, it took everything within her not to throw her glass of wine across the kitchen and fall to the floor in an inconsolable heap.

She sipped from her wine and thought of something Alex Lynch had told her when shed visited him.

Whats it like? Being that close to…to death? shed asked him.

Intimate, but in a very polarizing way. For me, its being right there on the edge of it…knowing that one day I, too, will be on that edge, looking out the other way.

She wondered what that view would be like? Some fabled Heaven with golden streets? A tunnel of light to take her to some other life beyond the veil of this one? Or maybe just darkness, thick and never-ending…a long, unyielding sleep.

She thought of Alex Lynch as she held her wine, thinking of her Grandma Tate and her own little calendar boxes of days, checked off one square at time.

EPILOGUE

Four days later, on an overcast Monday, Rachel told Peter she was heading to work like any other Monday morning. What she did not tell him was that shed already emailed Director Anderson and asked for the morning off. Anderson had, in turn, given her the entire day, suggesting she could use a few days after the way the case had closed in Baltimore. While the cut on her arm was healing nicely, it was still requiring bandages and was itching like crazy.

Rather than driving to work (and piling on another lie shed been telling Peter as of late), Rachel drove to Arlington. When she parked in the visitor lot of Arlington County Jail, she felt as if no time at all had passed since the last time she was herea visit that had also been covered with a lie to Jack.