She paused, struggling. All I could do was look on, allowing her to take whatever time she needed. The air felt heavy, and I could sense the weight of the darkness Violet must have known. Why scream for help when the silence would have been profound, thick yards of soil muffling any sound? The blackness would have been absolute.

Daisy went on, addressing her remarks to the crumbled tissue. “I asked him. I asked… what it would have been like for her. How she died. He said carbon dioxide poisoning. I forget some of it… the technical stuff. He said basically, how deeply you breathe is regulated by your arterial oxygen pressure and carbon dioxide tension, some kind of pH that controls the reflexes in your lungs and chest wall. If there’s not enough oxygen in the mix your breathing picks up. Your body has to have oxygen so it’s compelling… this instinctive drive to take in air. Her heart would have started racing and her body heat would have spiked. She’d sweat. She’d be having chest pains that would only get worse. She’d breathe faster and faster, but every breath she took would use up more oxygen and produce more CO2. She’d start hallucinating. He said her systems would shut down, but eventually there might have been a kind of peace… once she resigned herself to her fate.

“Can you imagine dying like that? All I can think is how scared she must have been, how cold and dark it was, and how hopeless she felt.”

I found myself veering away from the images, searching for safety. I could understand the bind Nichols had been in. Once he laid out the facts, that’s the picture she’d carry for the rest of her life. But if word ever reached Daisy from an unofficial source, she’d be reeling anyway. Adding his betrayal to the horror would only confound any healing she might hope for in time.

Daisy blew her nose again and moved on to something else. I could see the shift. There was only so much she could process. Little by little she’d assimilate the information, but it was going to take a very long time. She picked up six round black circles that were lying on the table. She said, “He gave me these.”

“What are they?”

“My mother’s bracelets. Sterling silver. I’ll polish them and wear them, the last thing I’ll ever have from her.” She set them back on the table. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“Me too.”

“Are you finished?”

“Not quite. Let’s go sit in the yard. We need space.” I’d nearly said “air” but I’d caught myself in time. Daisy must have heard the unspoken word because she winced.