The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

The bad part wasn’t trying to find her, but waking up and remembering she was dead.

There had been nights in the desert where I was so sick with laughter, convulsed and doubled over with aching stomach for hours on end, I would happily have thrown myself in front of a car to make it stop.

Certainly I would be less frightened of death (not just my own death but Welty’s death, Andy’s death, Death in general) if I thought a familiar person came to meet us at the door, because – writing this now, I’m close to tears – I think how poor Andy told me, with terror on his face, that my mother was the only person he’d known, and liked, who’d ever died. So – maybe when Andy washed up spitting and coughing into the country on the far side of the water, maybe my mother was the very one who knelt down by his side to greet him on the foreign shore. Maybe it’s stupid to even articulate such hopes. But, then again, maybe it’s more stupid not to. Either way – one-off or not – it was a gift; and if she had only one visit, if that’s all they allowed her, she saved it for when it mattered.