The Beginning of After

different way.
    “You know how Hemingway killed himself?” my dad once asked me when he saw I was reading A Farewell to Arms for English class. “He put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I have a lot of respect for that. Messy, but quick. Who wants to bleed to death in a bathtub or free-fall for several seconds off a building?”
    “I like the car-running-in-the-garage approach,” I’d said. My father and I had a way of turning these types of conversations—horrifying, really—into an easy joke.
    “Too wimpy,” he said. “So you go to sleep and it’s not messy or painful. I mean, if you’re going to do it, do it!”
    If you’re going to do it, do it.
    There was nothing at this moment to stop me. I looked at the knife again for what could have been two seconds or two minutes. Everything around me and inside of me froze.
    “Laurel?”
    Nana’s voice like a phone ringing, that high, clear startle. The kitchen flooded with light.
    I looked up at her, as she looked down at me and then at the oversized utensil in my hand.
    Her expression made me drop it to the floor with a clang.

Chapter Twelve

    S uzie Sirico’s office was really just a small converted den in her very large house. It was on the first floor and had its own entrance around the back, and I felt a little like hired help as I made my way along the stepping-stones across the grass to a white wooden door.
    Inside were a couch and two chairs, with a coffee table between them. Everything was overstuffed and brightly patterned, like one of those rooms you see in a home catalogue that you can’t imagine real people ever actually using.
    “Oh, look,” my mom would say when these things came in the mail. “One-stop shopping for people who don’t have any style but want to pretend they do.” She could be a snob about who was born with an artistic eye and who was not.
    Suzie sat in one of these carefully designed chairs with a legal pad and pen on her lap, resting her hand in her chin as she gazed at me with curiosity.
    I sat on one end of the couch—the end farther from Suzie—with both hands tucked between my knees.
    I was here. Bathed, dressed, out of the house.
    “Laurel, you will do this. For me. Yes?” Nana had half asked as she put me to bed the night before.
    Yes, I would do this. For her.
    Now Suzie smiled a bit, still curious, like I was a package she’d found on her doorstep but didn’t want to open yet. We had been sitting in silence for a full minute.
    “I’m glad you’re here,” she said finally.
    It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
    “I heard that Gabriel Kaufman was moved to a long-term care facility in New Jersey, and that David’s staying with relatives nearby.”
    “Oh.” Even just hearing Mr. Kaufman’s name was like a slap in my face, but I didn’t let on.
    “I thought maybe you’d heard from him, since you still have his dog.” She made it sound like I’d borrowed one of David’s CDs and kept forgetting to give it back.
    “No, I haven’t.” I stared at my thumbs lined up next to each other and noticed how the two sets of knuckle creases didn’t quite match.
    “I bring up David because I understand you recently had an upsetting experience with him.”
    Yeah, thanks for reminding me.
    “Do you want to talk about it?”
    I looked at her now and just shook my head. Suzie regarded me for a second, then wrote something on her pad. I watched the tip of her pen wiggle as it made a smooth scratching noise, as if whispering something back to her.
    “Okay,” she said abruptly, plopping the pad down on the end table next to her. “Then I have something fun I’d like to show you.”
    Suzie got up and went to her bookcase, found a wooden box next to a figurine of a fairy sitting on a rock, and sat back down. She opened the box and pulled out what looked like an oversized deck of cards.
    “We call these Feeling Flash Cards,” she said, smiling as she glanced at one. “I think of them as a game. I show you a card with the beginning of a sentence, and you say the first thing that comes to mind to complete the sentence. Shall we try it?”
    This sounded stupid, but I didn’t even have the energy to say that. It was easier just to shrug and nod.
    Suzie pulled out a card, eyed it with another grin, and flipped it toward me.
    Below a picture of a red wilting flower were the words: I BELIEVE WHEN SOMEONE DIES, THEY . . .
    Are watching me.
    That’s what popped into my head, taking me by