In the kitchen I smile inadvertently at my purple wall, then fill a glass at the tap, looking out over the back lawn. A flash of red catches my eye: a fox. He trots insouciantly across the back lawn, pausing halfway to turn his head toward the house. But whatever has caught his attention is too inconsequential to delay him and he resumes his journey, leaping lightly onto the wall to exit the garden. I breathe out slowly when he’s gone, only now aware I’ve been holding my breath. Then I take two painkillers and go straight to bed.

In the morning, I tell Carrie that I’m staying, that I’ll get some kind of producing job in Glasgow, that I won’t be selling the Manse. And that she’s welcome to call it home for as long as she likes.

My father is dead. There is no longer a myriad of possibilities for my father’s life: all that could have been, might have been, has collapsed to nothingness, because my father is dead, because he has always been dead. There’s a clear-eyed solidity to that knowledge that might, in time, give me more peace than all the lives I could invent, but not just yet. I’ve lived with those lives for a long time; I’ve scoured each of them for what they might tell me about myself. I am grieving for them, too.

TWENTY-FIVE

There’s an inquest for Jamie, which records a verdict of lawful killing. That seems remarkably apt. But the inquest can’t answer the questions that really matter. Like when did he lose his grip on reality, or did he never really have one? Were there signs, and if so, how were they missed? Glen is the most troubled by it; Fi says he picks over it constantly. He blames himself for being too hard on him, or for not being hard enough when Jamie twisted facts against his sister—half sister. I don’t think she has told him that she saw it coming. I’m not sure he would forgive her for keeping that to herself. For that matter, I’m not sure all of me forgives her either. My splintered selves have mostly amalgamated, but the one that always watches Fiona can’t seem to fully merge. It sits like a shadow behind my shoulder even as Fiona spends more and more time at the house, something I don’t begrudge in the slightest, because she and Carrie are so lit up by each other that it warms those around them. And both Carrie and I can see that the Manse itself is a tonic to Fiona. She can almost keep time when she’s there.