On Sunday after a late lunch we started back to Dunleith. It was late afternoon when we got there and the town was frosted with a snow. I walked up onto the porch and the front door opened and Momma was standing there with my little boys by her side. They were dressed in the red velvet suits we had bought for them to wear for Christmas. There were bells laced into their carefully polished white leather hightop shoes. They ran out of the door fighting and screaming to get into my arms. I swept them up and carried them into the room Daddy had built for me. It was finished now, decorated in beige and gold. Everything in it was fine and new and expensive and beautiful. Still, I had been lonesomer in that room than anywhere I had ever been in my life. Lonesomer and more confused. Part of the confusion was caused by alcohol and all the pills Doctor Freer gave me. Part of it was caused by the children and their incessant demands. All of it was made worse by the fact that I never for a second doubted that everything was my fault. If I stopped thinking I was to blame, Daddy was always there to remind me.

Still, on this snowy night, Charles William and Irise followed me into my lovely spacious new room and Mother brought in a tray of tea and cookies and the children ran around and let us talk about how beautiful they were and the world seemed possible and full of warmth and friends.

“Malcolm’s the golden child and Jimmy is an apricot,” Charles William was saying. “They’re angels, Dee. They should be painted in those suits. We’ll get Mimi to paint them. Do you want me to ask her?”

“She only paints people she wants to paint,” Irise said, “but anyone would want to paint them.”

“Sister.” Daddy had come into the room. “James Myers delivered these divorce papers to me today. You better come on and sign them so we can get this settled.” He was standing in the door, looking so kind and charming, holding two sets of legal papers. He lay the papers down on my desk. “Your friends will excuse you a second. Hello, Irise, hello, Charles William. How you doing? How was your trip?” He stood by the desk waiting. I went over and sat down in the desk chair and he opened the papers to a page and held out a pen.

“You want me to read them?” I asked.

“There’s no need for that. One is about the divorce and the other is about custody for your mother and me. You can read it if you want to.”

“I don’t. Where do I sign?” I took the pen and wrote my name in two places on each brief, then dated the signatures and handed them to Daddy.

“You aren’t reading it?” Charles William asked.