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can smell the decision on me. Tonight will be another kind of leaving day.
    Calling Jackie is the responsible thing to do. To hear her voice one last time and to say, without really saying it, why I need to do what I’m about to do. As soon as I say hello, she starts yelling. When I try to explain how I had to get out of Clayton, she cuts me off.
    â€œPlease, Ezekiel. We all need to get out. But you’ve got a family here. You’ve got a job here. At least you had a job here.”
    She says my sisters are going out of their minds worrying. When I ask to speak to the girls she says they’re busy with homework.
    â€œPut them on the phone, Jackie.”
    â€œNo.”
    The line goes dead.
    Son of a bitch. It’s pointless to call back. On principal, Jackie won’t give in. Even if I said, Hey, you tightly wound ­nothing-is-ever-good-enough ex-wife, put my daughters on the phone, because after tonight I’ll never be able to speak to them again, she would probably assume I had been drinking and hang up again.
    Guilt makes me dial my sister Violet’s number. Instead of yelling, she begins to cry.
    â€œJesus, Vi, I’m sorry. God, don’t cry. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine.”
    She takes a big breath, blows her nose. “Are you fine? When are you coming home?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIs this because of the reunion, Zeke?” Forty-six now, her voice still has the breathy, childlike quality it did when she was a girl.
    The motel manager fixed the TV in my room this morning, looking the other way when he spotted the dog’s water bowl next to the door. An old episode of Gunsmoke fills the screen. Watching it is more appealing than talking to Violet.
    Silence stretches between us.
    â€œI need to ask you something.”
    â€œI got to go, Vi.”
    â€œHold on. Please. I’m so worried about you. Is this about Carter? Because if it is, you need to talk to somebody, sweetheart. And there’s something you should know about Mother. I took her to the doctor this week and she didn’t want me to tell you but—”
    I cut her off. “Tell Daisy I’m okay. Love to everybody.”
    When Carter drowned the month before our thirty-third birthday, Violet and Daisy were all over me about getting my feelings out, talking it through, letting them help me. Little Rosie was the only one who said anything that made sense. After my brother’s dark brown coffin was lowered into the earth, she pulled me aside and said, I don’t understand how there can be you without him or me without both of you.
    And this is precisely my point—how can there be me without him?
    The bottles are lined up at attention like miniature orange-­ colored soldiers along the sink. The notes are stacked next to the phone on the bedside table. Jackie’s is first. I copied a passage from Huckleberry Finn, the one I’ve been rereading every day since coming to Pigeon Forge, about going out in the woods and hearing the sound a ghost makes when it has something to say but can’t communicate it. The ghost can’t go peacefully to its grave until it’s understood, so every night it wanders around grieving.
    I pray Jackie won’t burn Honora’s and Louisa’s notes in anger. Not that I would blame her, but the girls will need to see them. My daughters are the most beautiful proof of my ever having breathed.
    Tucker’s last meal consists of chicken-fried steak and French fries from the diner next door. The dog can smell the food and his tail thuds in happy anticipation. I open the pills and sprinkle their contents on top like parmesan cheese. If I’ve timed everything right, we should both lose consciousness at the same time. But the truth is I’ve got no idea what I’m doing. Drugs have never been my thing. Alcohol, on the other hand, I have some experience with. It seems logical that I’ve got to get the dog set