Do you want to know what else we talked about tonight? We talked about Robin. And it was wonderful. It was the kind of conversation I’ve always wanted to have. They asked me questions about her, what she was like, the colour of her eyes, her hair. We imagined who she might have been had she had the chance to grow up. We guessed that maybe she would have dated one of her brothers’ friends in high school, or that she might have gone through a rebellious teenage phase. We wondered if she would have been a writer too, perhaps the best one of the lot, or if she would have chosen a different path altogether.

I know you thought the ony way to deal with our loss was to shut it out. But I realise now I did the wrong thing by letting you do that. I should have encouraged you to remember her and to celebrate who she was. I thought I was sparing you the pain and helping you to cope, but instead I made it worse for both of us. It’s never good to bottle up feelings and it’s never good to keep secrets. I know that now. I wish you could have been there for tonight’s conversation, because it really was glorious. It made my heart sing to know that she was finally being remembered, the way she should have been.

And you know what else? I’ve stopped doing all those Hail Marys. And I’m finding I’m sleeping a lot better these days.

Love,

Jill

*

Mimi

‘Mimi! You can’t leave me here. Mimi!’

She woke up and lay still, breathing hard. She often dreamt about that moment in Tony’s car. Not every night, but maybe once every two or three weeks. Just enough to make sure she would never forget it.

It was ironic. Now that the twins often slept through the night, here she was waking from nightmares and unable to fall back to sleep. She didn’t know if she’d call it guilt exactly. Because she didn’t feel guilty. He deserved to die.

No, what she felt wasn’t guilt. It was fear. Fear that one day, the truth would come out. Because she didn’t simply leave Tony in the car. She did much, much worse than that.