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the draining board beside the kitchen sink, cleaning the windows. She’d already ironed her mother’s shirts and blouses that were piled up beside the ironing board, and she’d swept the yard outside. She was doing all this to keep her mind occupied. She knew the shirts and blouses were never going to be worn by her mother again, but this, along with cleaning the windows, was helping her to process her grieving and think.
    Even though Brigid had lived most of her teenage years in Dublin, the only time she’d spent there recently had been when visiting her parents. She’d been dealing with her father’s imminent departure for the last few years of his life, particularly since his cancer diagnosis, so she’d less grieving to do there. But her mother, her darling mother—her friend, her guide, her fairy godmother, and countless other things—her passing was a different matter, and the loss she felt was massive. She hadn’t expected her to die for another twenty or thirty years, much less fifteen hours after her father’s death. But this was the path, and if it was to be her path, then she’d walk it with her chin up and her heart open, just like her mother always had.
    It was her mother who’d counseled her through the breakup of her marriage. It was her mother who’d advised her on what paintings to include in her shows, just as it was her mother who’d taught her to always take life in stride and who’d encouraged her to be as free and independent and strong as she was.
    â€œNothing is forever,” Lucy had always told her. And now, hours after her death, Lucy’s words echoed in her daughter’s ears as she continued to wipe the windows clean. Brigid was glad she’d been in Dublin for the deaths; she could soak in the freshness of their passing where it had happened, rather than traveling from London and arriving after everything had been moved and set up and organized. For once, she could plan and organize something for her mother and father, and put everything in its right place before heading back to Hampstead to collapse in a heap to wail away her lament and pour it into her pictures.
    The prospect of both her parents’ bodies coming back to their house to be waked rather than staying in the hospital mortuary was a heartening one for Brigid. But it was the romantic element of their dual passing she found most comforting.
    Both Brigid’s parents had been artists all their lives. After their funerals, she’d have to decide what to do with all the paintings in the house, both theirs and the few dozen painted by their friends and contemporaries. She hopped down from the draining board and washed her hands while thinking of her own paintings and what would be next for her now that she had a new well of pain to draw from.
    Her last show had consisted of what she called her Blight Paintings, a series of oils illustrating what had actually happened in Ireland in the nineteenth century during the Famine, focusing on scenes of the food that wasn’t potatoes being transported out of the country under armed guard to England, and all the Irish people being beaten away and dying because they were allowed nothing to eat other than the blighted potatoes. She’d been surprised at how well her work had gone down in London. It seemed the slight controversy the show courted during its time did her finances no harm at all. Her show sold out and managed to get the attention of the art world at large, bolstering her profile and earning power.
    For her next series of paintings, death would probably be the theme. And impermanence. And maybe the state of being solitary. But not loneliness. Brigid knew her parents would always be with her now, in her heart.

SIX
    4:10 p.m.
    I stood amidst the swirling leaves at a door I was getting to know well, waiting to hear Brigid’s voice. It never came. Instead, I listened to the door vibrating before I pushed