I looked at it.
Emergency contact: Nathan Rhodes. Son. Phone: (unknown).
Do not contact Laura Rhodes under any circumstances unless Nathan requests it.
She has earned her peace.
I put my hand over my mouth.
“He wrote that in May,” Marguerite said quietly. “Before your son found him. He didn’t even have Nathan’s phone number. He just wrote his name. In case.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Your son requested it,” Marguerite said. “Tonight. In the ICU. When we told him he had to go home. He said, ‘Can I bring my mom?’ And Mr. Rhodes said…” She paused. “Mr. Rhodes said, ‘Only if she wants to come. Don’t make her. Promise me you won’t make her.’”
I sat in that little room for a long time.
I thought about the kitchen floor. The Jim Beam. The pill bottle. My six-year-old in the doorway. Is Daddy dead?
