His letters to me often held the germ of his published pieces in the Challenger, but they were far more passionate, unguarded. And if they were less polished, they were more vivid. We talked on the phone perhaps once a week, short, intense, expensive calls. Oddly, the phone calls were less satisfying to me than his letters. He always added some little intimate thought or endearment to his letters, but he could not always do that on the phone. He called from such public pay phones (undifferentiated voices and noise in the background, sometimes the stentorian roll of a church organ, sometimes honky-tonk guitars and the crack of billiard balls) that when I said I loved him, he could not really respond that he loved me too.

Living without him, I realized how much I had come to count on Terrence’s sheer presence for the rhythms of everyday life. The sounds of the typewriter, his banging out old tunes on the piano, cooking together, washing the dishes, reading by the fireplace, going to bed together. I felt like a seed rattling around in the empty husk of my own life. I reminded myself of those lonely frontier women like Jean Arthur in Shane—look how strong they were. Surely I could do the same. I did the things that lonely women do, like defrost the fridge. I framed the two photographs Thelma had taken of us. I took one of them to bed with me and put the other on the desk. When I went out for a walk on the beach, Bruno always bounded over, looking all around for Terrence before settling for second best, me. One afternoon just before Christmas Mr. Wilbur brought out Bruno’s leash and remarked that he was glad to see I had come to my senses.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that colored man isn’t around anymore.”

“Terrence is not colored, Mr. Wilbur. If anything”—I touched my cheek—“I am colored. Red and white, you see?” I offered brightly, happy for the first time in my life to have a birthmark.

Chapter Twenty-six

The family gathered on Christmas afternoon at Gordon and Irene’s glass-and-steel Benedict Canyon home, for which I was grateful. I could not have endured lunch in the vast, antiqued dining room at Summit Drive with Denise Dell sitting where Julia once presided over Christmas.