“You have my card?” he asks, rising, briefcase in hand.

“Yes.”

“I shall see myself out, so please do not disturb yourself on my account.” His smile is somber. “Be well, Mrs. Bell.”

“Th-thank you, Mr. Anton.”

I am trembling. Quivering all over. My breath shakes in my lungs. My hands flutter like papery orange maple leaves in a stiff autumn wind. My eyes burn, sting with hot salt tears. You think you’ve wept all the tears a human could contain, wept enough for a lifetime, and yet there you go, weeping even more. Apparently, sorrow is an endless wellspring.

Easy one first. I open the second envelope. It contains, as Tomas indicated, a notecard, five-by-eight, white with blue lines—I recognize it as being from a stack he kept in a desk drawer, for scribbling ideas and research notes and plot points. There is an address in his handwriting on the card—a Georgia address, which I do not otherwise recognize. There is a key, as well. It is not new, the key. Old, tarnished brass. Taped to the notecard underneath is the address.

Hands trembling, I work with ginger delicacy to open the flap of the last envelope. Within are several pages, folded thrice into a compact, flat bundle. The pages are ripped from his legal pad, the one he used for outlining and plotting and researching his stories. He would go through several of them for each book.

Immediately, I recognize the shakiness of his handwriting. He wrote this toward the end. When he could barely sit upright on his own, when he couldn’t keep food or water down, when his hands shook like mine do now, but all the time, sometimes even in sleep. When he should have been in a hospital, on an IV pushing fluids and painkillers. Instead, he was at home, making “extensive arrangements.” Whatever the fuck that means.

God, Adrian. You never did anything the easy way, did you?

I am putting off reading the letter. It represents his last words to me, when I thought his final words had been heard a year ago.

I’m tempted to have a drink before reading it. Slam vodka till I’m dizzy rather than read this.

What could he have to say? Why make Tomas—and me, more to the point—wait a whole year?

Why now?

I was just starting to find something equilibrium.

I can almost hear his sarcastic laugh, when that thought runs through my brain. Because no, I am not finding anything like equilibrium. I nearly overdosed a patient. I should tear up my RN certification. I am not okay. I sleep three, four hours a night. Sometimes up to five. Sometimes less.