It never quite worked. I could never get hold of the idea of her. She was gone, unimaginably gone. I was alone in my family. I couldn’t imagine myself being otherwise. But in Ricky’s story, I started to see her everywhere. In Cole’s growing up in Jeremy’s absence. In the trunk Bessie kept in her closet. In the photograph of Oscar that Ricky carried, making the boy into his imaginary friend. Oscar wasn’t imaginary. He has a grave. The fact of a body. But where? I decided I had to ask.
