I turn to Daniel. “I think she’s going to kill herself.”

“Shit.” Daniel’s face is paler than I’ve ever seen it. “What do we do?”

I want to cry. I want to break like brittle bones, to smash like glass under stone and disappear. I want to disintegrate, to go to pieces and pour through Daniel’s open hands like sand. I hear the tick tick tick of Moony’s dead watch in my mind—Moony’s dead heart beating a phantom rhythm in a dark room just for me. I see Madora Charles’s smiling eyes and feel her legacy pressing in like a lead sky falling.

I don’t want to be alone, I hear myself say in the hollows of my gut. It is a gong ringing in my heart and a cry ripping through my throat. It is a window on a moonless night and a red hibiscus bush and a car backing out of the drive. It is ten long years waiting and wanting and hurting and pretending I wasn’t waiting or wanting or hurting. It is fear. And it is love. It is happening all over again. And it is now…and forever.

I clutch at Daniel’s shirt. “Call the police,” I squeeze out.

“Okay.” His voice is shaking.

“Then call your grandmother.” I start toward the front door.

“What are you going to do?” He calls. “I should come with you.”

“No.” I round on him. “I need you here in case she comes back. I’ll text Gary,” I tell him. “And then I’m going to find my mom.”

XXXIV.

EVERYBODY DIES, CAT.

The courtyard is too quiet beneath me. The fountain has stopped running, and the water is silent in its dark bowl. A rare breeze sighs through the trees, skittering leaves across the ground. For a second, I think I smell her on the wind. Then I think I smell mint. But it’s all gone as quickly as it blew in.

If I want to find my mother, I have to think like her. But Mary doesn’t think in straight lines. Not when she is in the grip of her disorder. The dots I have to connect won’t be obvious, not to anyone else. But the only choice I have is to look for them, one at a time, and hope they lead me to her before it’s too late.

There is a pattern to the dark…

I send Gary a series of texts.

Mom’s pills are gone.

She came and took all of them.

We called the police. I’m looking for her now.

Please help. I don’t know how much time we have.