“I have to let go of this,” I told her. “Julie, put a spell on me. Make me stop ruminating. I’m sick of this cat-and-mouse game, like waiting, waiting, waiting, for what? For that one fact, that exists only in my mind? Or for the big climax? Is somebody going to shoot him from ambush? Or shoot me? This has to end.”

“Maybe it has ended already. Maybe it’s over and you don’t know it.”

“Maybe. Jep said whoever has been calling might just get bored and move on to some new craziness.”

I drifted off, with my brain for once off its customary red alert. Only a few times over the past several years had I gone to sleep when it was dark and awakened when it was light. Most often, I itched and twisted until I was nearly on the floor with my pillows or lay awake trying to convince myself that I really didn’t have to go to the bathroom. Once I was up, I had to repeat nonsense, Fee Fi Fo Fum, to the bathroom and back, or I would be quietly watching BBC reruns on my computer until the sun came up.

Physical and mental exhaustion can have their uses, and the light that awakened me was red dawn.

Sleep had also sent a letter to my subconscious, as it will. What I kept searching for was a way back to normal. Not just for Stefan, but for me. For Jep. For us as a family. The Healing Project, the TV interview, I wanted them all to do—to do the work of stain remover.

But there would be no return. No one in my family had any “before,” anymore, only after. The “before” was forfeit. Before Belinda died, not much in my life had prepared me for anything except moderate good fortune. I had good parents, good health, good teeth, a pretty good job, really good hair, an astoundingly good son and a very good marriage. My bad luck was customary bad luck, the kind a life contains, a miscarriage, a broken wrist, a coveted job that went to someone else, the rear-end smashup of a new car.

After Belinda died, the good days were the ones when I didn’t want to die. Stefan’s future was shunted onto a broken track where the stops were no longer mortarboards and first real jobs, wedding boutonnieres and champagne toasts, but sobriety tokens and perhaps a street to walk down quietly without being threatened or shunned. And that was my future too, at least, my near future. Only Jep seemed somehow absolved, and how could I be sure he wasn’t just sparing me his complaints? How did I know what kinds of looks he got, what comments broke off when he entered the room?