Sometimes the press would ask her about the Hero Pharm rumors coming out of Europe—or about us, the supposed heirs to Dad’s pharmaceutical company. But she never answered, and eventually they stopped.

She informed me, in a solemn tone, that Tai and I would have to participate in Hero Pharm corporate dealings one day, but she could offer no more information; Dad might not lie to anyone’s face, but he was, as always, extremely secretive.

Dad died without even telling us he was sick.

Tai steps forward and lifts a plate of withered fruit rotting atop one of the boxes of paperwork, left by God knows who and untouched for days or months. She grimaces at me, silent for once.

A voice echoes from the depths. I follow Tai down the vaulted stone hallway with its antique machíkíl cleavers pinned to the walls and its sagging Biedermeier chests—once prized but now riddled with termite holes—past the dining room with its twenty-foot-long dining table made from a single petrified tree and its three whimsical Murano glass chandeliers—handmade to depict the Greek Fates—past the oak-paneled library, its ladders ringed with fewer cobwebs than expected, and into a small, plain ground floor area I’ve never seen.

The door is open. The room’s walls are white-painted drywall, undecorated, and the furniture—chairs, low tables, a bed—is made of plastic or metal and easily folded away. There is one small window. The room is impeccably clean, despite being filled with machinery and paperwork—he was never one to remain idle, even when ill. At least here it smells brightly of peppermint salve and lemon-scented cleaner, not of decay and death. A machine in the corner beeps as Tai approaches the bed, with me just behind her.

Dad must have converted part of the old house into a treatment room. The sight is enough to make me bite my lip so hard it might fall off.

The bed is empty, of course. But his clothes are stacked on top of the clean sheets, and I spot the Mickey Mouse T-shirt Tai insisted on buying at Disney World and mailing to him when she was twelve years old. There’s the cozy waffle-weave shirt he used to wear while reading the science journals out in the garden. At the bottom of the pile are the matching flannel pajamas Mama got all of us for Víxmís one year, stained by the juices of platter after platter of roasted scallops and chestnuts.

It’s impossible not to imagine him here, alone. So small in the bed, smaller than ever before, but deeply familiar, with the cloud of white hair that replaced the jet black and a peaceful, blank expression. A plain white shirt buttoned simply down the front, loose around his concave chest.