Your father has said that when bad health comes his way, he plans to launch himself off the longest pier, take arsenic, tie a noose, or hold a gun to his own head. Not me, I tell him. Not me. I want to see Misty Copeland dance. I want to be a great-grandmother. I want to go back and walk Charles Street on a dark, snowy night just one more time, to peer in the windows of the card shop with the big fat cat licking her paws and then make my way across the Public Garden. I want to stand on the corner of Piedmont Street and listen: first, there is jazz, cool soul-defining jazz, and the clink of glasses and the murmured laughs, and then there is a hiss, a sizzle, a roar, a deafening roar, and somewhere in it all I will hear my mother; I will hear her as clear as a bell.

March 8, 2017

I woke today feeling afraid; I am afraid of losing your father. I am afraid of the distance he is keeping, and I feel it every time he walks out the door. I try to read or watch the television or the brightly colored Easter egg men passing by on the golf course, or I listen to music, but what I am really listening for is the door. He has promised that he would never do anything without letting me know, but as much as I want to trust him, there’s something that keeps me off balance. After all, I have promised him not to go out and smoke when here alone, but I often do.

March 30, 2017

Dear Frank,

I am writing this note, and I want you to stick it in your wallet. I want you to keep it and read it often. Do NOT leave this house without telling me. Do NOT leave this Earth without telling me. If you do, I will be so mad at you, madder than I have ever been. I love you more than ever

—Lil

Shelley

Shelley has never seen the courtroom so full, like something out of a movie. There is even a television crew from Raleigh, and she can see out the window that there are people waiting on the lawn. Her fingers are perched, like a concert pianist’s, on the keyboard, so much better than that contraption she wore in Atlanta.