“I shouldn’t have told you, should I?” I whispered.

Parker opened his eyes, but he didn’t answer. “Aunt Tilley,” he called in the direction of the screen door. “I’m gonna need the rest of that pie!”

I smiled at him cautiously, one hundred percent sure that he was cracking up, but then cracking up myself when I saw that Aunt Tilley was actually delivering the entire pie pan—minus the two pieces we had already eaten—with a fork.

“I’m not sure pie is going to take care of the problem,” I said, smirking.

“You don’t know that,” Parker said, his mouth full.

“My pie can solve absolutely anything,” Aunt Tilley said.

Maybe she was right. Because by the time he had finished that pie (The whole thing. I’m serious.), I got the sneaking suspicion that, even though he hadn’t deemed it appropriate to share with me yet, Parker Thaysden knew exactly what he was going to do.

Parker A LITTLE LIGHT

SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT of my rental car, still in Amelia’s yard, I took three deep breaths. Sometimes it hit me hard, at moments like this, that I was alone. Really, truly alone.

What I was thinking about now was absolutely ridiculous. No, not ridiculous. Mad. Unhinged. They should put me in a twin bed across the room from Tilley so they could keep an eye on me.

I remembered being in church as a kid, and the minister told us that when we were struggling with something, we should pray really hard and then open the Bible to a random page. God would speak to us through that page and tell us what to do. Well, I figured that God had enough on his hands without having to prove himself to me through some game with the Bible.

But once Greer died, I figured she didn’t have as much going on as God, so maybe I could ask her to shed a little light through her journals. I had only brought one with me from Palm Beach. It was lying in the passenger seat like a therapy dog. And when I got back in the car after Amelia dropped the bomb on me, I said out loud, “G, if you can hear me thinking, then you’re probably thinking I’m crazy. I know I am. But if you could help me decide what to do, that really would help me out.”

I opened the notebook randomly. That’s when I realized that, even though I thought I had known everything about Greer, no one ever really knows all of anyone.

Greer MAY 16, 2016

I ASKED TO SEE THEM today. I was supposed to go to the oncologist’s office, but at this point, I didn’t see a reason to: I was dying; it was as simple and as complicated as that. So, instead, I drove to the fertility clinic.

I walked through the double doors, past the front desk with its sliding glass windows, with several nurses protesting, down a hall with modern art and low lighting, and directly into Dr. Wright’s office. If he was surprised to see me, behind his imposing desk, a pair of giant computer monitors flanking his head, he didn’t let on.