Without realizing it, his definition of darkness expanded over the years so that it wasn’t just grief over a lost life he silenced. He found ways to switch off his feelings for all sorts of things that might end: friendships, loves, dreams. Over time, his idea of what constituted an end expanded, too. He learned to protect himself not just from the prospect of grieving, but from any loss, any pain. He began pulling the plug on possibilities earlier and earlier, shutting himself off from everything he might care deeply about before it had a chance to hurt him by dying in front of him—the way his mother had.

Now, lying in a prison cell, exhausted and alone, an unbearable wave of pain broke over him, and he asked himself for the first time what the opposite of his light-switch philosophy might be. He pressed his fists against his eyes. He could not stop their faces. His mother walking past him, his father on the drive to prison, the boy and his bicycle lying under his car. He saw Bernard jingling up a mountain in front of him, Lekorere lifting his beer bottle in salute, Hungry kneeling in Sehlalo’s blood.

He stood up. He exhaled. So much death. All these years he had dismissed those who mourned a corpse in a box, while he had been mourning something far less rational, and far more destructive. While the world around him grieved death, he had grieved life.

He hadn’t turned his back on death; he was living it, mourning every moment, chasing criminals to distract himself, grieving a light that could never be switched on again. “Mom,” he whispered. He knew that if he lay down on the bed now and closed his eyes, her red coat would appear. Her polished black shoes would walk by. He would call to her as he struggled with his shoelace, but she would not turn. In all these years, dreaming over and over again of that terrible day, she had never once paused to listen to him. She walked out of the living room, through the kitchen, and down the ramp to her death.

He lay back down on the bed. He closed his eyes.

He allowed himself to remember.

—

He was nine years old, standing beside his father on the Atlantic City boardwalk, watching a dollar-green Cadillac convertible roll toward them. His father wore a light gray suit and dark tie. He and Sean wore their navy-blue Easter suits. The car had its top down. The governor of New Jersey, Brendan Byrne, sat on the car’s shiny trunk, his shoes on the tan leather back seat, waving. People cheered.