ADAM DROPPED ME OFF AT AUNT ELISE’S, WHERE THERE was nothing to do but wait. I called Juno to tell her I didn’t want to change my ticket after all, and I was caught off guard when she gave me some pushback. “I feel like you can’t see the forest for the trees anymore,” she said. “And I get that—Talley was your sister. But—”
I cut her off. “But Ju, this tree just popped out at me. An actual redwood tree. I have to stay here for this. I don’t know what else to say.”
On the other end of the line, Juno was quiet, too. Silence between the two of us was a rarity. Even after seeing each other all day long in school and knowing the ins and outs of everything that had happened, we could still log hours on the phone at night. It was a surefire way to irritate my father, especially if I reached for my phone while I was with him. “Don’t you and Juno ever run out of things to say?” he’d asked more than once. All I could do was shrug and tell him that’s what it meant to be someone’s best friend: we thought everything about the other was interesting and worth analyzing.
“I feel like you’re mad at me over this, Ju,” I said, breaking the silence.
“I’m not. I just miss you, that’s all. I got my hopes up when you said you wanted to come home. The triplets are tough, and you’re better with them than I am. I took them for a walk and we ran into Audrey.”
“No way!”
“Yeah, and they like her better than me,” she said. “Apparently everyone does—Cooper, and now Thomas, Theo, and Melanie, too.”
“Well, what do they know?” I said. “They’re eight years old. By the time they start fourth grade, they’ll have seen the error of their ways.”
“It’s just so embarrassing to lose the popularity game to Audrey. You should’ve heard them shouting her name. Just hearing her name is a trigger for me. They might as well be saying Voldemort, because hers is the name that really shouldn’t be spoken.”
“Actually, in one of the books Dumbledore tells Harry that he shouldn’t be afraid to say Voldemort’s name,” I told her. “He said when you make someone’s name verboten, you play into your fear of them.”
“I don’t fear her. I hate her. I hate how she gets everything.”
“She can’t have me,” I said.
“I know. I’m sorry I was just being a total baby about everything. Soraya says Cooper and Audrey deserve each other.”
“That’s what I say, too,” I said.
“I know I’m supposed to think that, but—”
“Hang on. I’m getting another call.” I held the phone out to glance at the number on the screen. It was a 650 area code—Adam’s area code, and Aunt Elise’s area code, and the area code on the flyer for NHL Photography. “Ju, I’ll call you back. I gotta take this.”
I clicked over. “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Nicole Lister calling from NHL Photography. I’m looking for Sloane.”
“This is Sloane,” I said. “Thank you so much for getting back to me.”
“I hope it’s not too late to call. I just picked up your message.”
It was 9:47, according to the clock on the cable box. “No, not at all,” I said.
“Good. You said you found a flyer?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask where?” she said. “It’s always good to know where the advertising is working.”
“The redwood tree on the end of University Avenue in Palo Alto,” I told her. And then, because Talley would’ve wanted me to, I added: “It’s actually bad for the trees to pin things to them.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, bark is a protective layer, like skin. I only know because my sister told me. She’s actually the reason why I’m calling.”
“Your sister is the one having an event?”
“No, she’s on your flyer. There’s a picture of a guy’s face close-up, except you can’t see his face because someone’s hands are covering it. They’re my sister’s hands.”
“I didn’t take that photo,” Nicole said. “It was one of my students—and I got his permission to use it. In terms of your sister, you can’t identify someone just by their hands, and you don’t need to get permission to use photos of non-identifiable people. I looked it up.”
“I could tell it was her from her rings,” I explained.
“There isn’t an event at all, is there?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m really sorry. I needed to make sure you’d call me back.”
“So you could give me a problem about a photo because you think you recognize your sister’s rings? Plenty of people wear rings.”
“I don’t want to give you a problem at all,” I said.
“Okay, good,” Nicole said. “And may I please give you some unsolicited advice?” She phrased it as a question, but I could tell by her tone that she was speaking rhetorically, and she was going to give the advice whether I wanted to hear it or not. “Since you were so kind as to educate me on the bark issue, I think it’s only right that I should inform you that when someone is trying to run a business, it’s really poor form to call them up under false pretenses and pretend to be having an event when you’re not.”
My cheeks were suddenly blazing. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. It was easier to make something up on your voice mail because the truth is so awful and hard to say. My sister died.”
“Oh,” Nicole said. Her voice softened. “I am so sorry for your loss—and I’m sorry for being a jerk just now.”
“You didn’t know,” I said. “It was totally unexpected, and she left this piece of paper—”
“A suicide note?” Nicole asked.
“No, not exactly,” I said. “But you’re right. That is how she died—by suicide—and she left a list of random things. It turns out that a number of them were here, in the Bay Area, even though we’re from Minnesota. So that’s why I’m out here—I’m trying to piece it all together. I saw the flyer, and I recognized her hands. I know a lot of people wear rings, but I know those were Talley’s rings. She wrote ‘NHL photo revelations’ on her list. I’ve spent hours googling those words, but all I’d found were pictures of the National Hockey League.”
“I should rename my business,” Nicole said. “For now it’s just a side deal. By day I’m a kindergarten teacher. I’ve only taught one group of photography students so far. ‘Revelation’ was an assignment I gave them.”
“I don’t think I knew what that word meant when I was in kindergarten.”
“Oh, my photography students are adults, not kindergarteners. I told them to walk around with their cameras and take pictures without thinking too hard on it. I said the things they focus on when they look through the lens would reveal what they’re interested in. I guess one of them was interested in your sister.”
“Everyone was interested in Talley,” I said.
“Her name was Talley?”
“Natalie,” I said. “We all called her Talley.”
“Listen, Sloane, I want to apologize again for how I was at the beginning of this call. It’s been a long-ass day, but that’s not your fault, and I took it out on you. I also want to tell you that I know how you’re feeling. I hate when people say that, because personal experience is so . . . personal. But my dad died by suicide, too. It was exactly two years ago today. When I got your message, I wasn’t in any kind of mood to talk to anyone. But I knew he’d want me to call you back. He wouldn’t want me to miss an opportunity for business just because I was missing him.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t really have a business opportunity for you.”
“That’s all right. I have a feeling he’d want us to be talking right now anyway. When did your sister die?”
“Last month,” I said. “Three weeks and four days ago.”
“Oh, God. It just happened.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” I said. “It feels like I’ve been living without her for forever already. But I’m still not used to it. When I wake up in the morning, I always think she’s still alive. So I guess my subconscious is still in denial.”
“That’s totally normal,” Nicole said. “They say there are five stages of grief—the Kübler-Ross stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.”
“I read about those online,” I said. “I really can’t imagine ever getting to acceptance.”
“I think it’s harder for people like us—people who lost someone they loved to suicide. I don’t mean to minimize the pain of people who lost their loved ones in other ways. Loss is awful no matter what, but . . .”
“But at least if it’s cancer you know you couldn’t have done anything to change it,” I filled in. “If Talley had died of cancer, I’d be heartbroken. But it wouldn’t have been my fault. Or if she died like my mom—”
“Your mom died, too? I’m so sorry.”
“She was in a car accident when I was really young,” I said. “There was nothing I could do about it, so it feels so different. I feel really sad about it sometimes, but I don’t feel guilty.”
“When my dad died, I felt so guilty,” Nicole said. “I was sure I could’ve stopped it. I was sure I should’ve stopped it. I would lie awake and play scenes in my head, pretending I’d said the exact right thing he’d needed to hear at the exact right time, and changed everything. But of course I hadn’t. I was raging with anger at him for not getting help, and I was even angrier at myself for not knowing he needed it.”
My mind flashed to Talley, the last time I saw her alive, when she was in her bed and asking me to play hooky with her for the day. “Did he say anything to you that last day?” I asked.
“No,” Nicole said. “But I thought it was up to me to say something to him. Which made it all the more difficult to get to acceptance.”
“I’ll never get to acceptance,” I said.
“I would’ve said that, too,” Nicole said. “When I was just three weeks and four days past his death. But I don’t speak in absolutes anymore. Everything can change, including your feelings about things. Today was not an easy day for me, obviously. But when my dad first died, I didn’t think I’d have any more good days. Maybe I’d have a good moment or two, but no full day could be good without him in the world.”
I remembered my realization at Talley’s funeral. I’ll never have another day of pure joy, without Talley in the world.
“But it turns out,” Nicole went on, “that I do have good days. It doesn’t mean I miss him any less, because I don’t. But I have a full life with a lot of people who love me, and I love them. I can spend time with them, and laugh at jokes, and just live—and I don’t feel like I’m betraying my father anymore. At least most of the time, I don’t feel that way. Maybe that’s helpful to hear.”
I shrugged, then remembered Nicole couldn’t see me through the phone. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to who lost someone from suicide,” I said. “Aside from people I’m related to.”
“We’re something of an underground. People don’t understand suicide. They don’t know how to react to it. I go to a support group every week, if you’re interested in joining. We talk a lot about self-blame, and all the rest of it.”
“I don’t even live here,” I said. “I’m from Minnesota.”
“Oh, right. You said that.”
“But there is something you can do for me, if it’s not too much trouble. Can you reach out to the student who took the photo?”
“Absolutely. It may not be till tomorrow, given the time now. But I promise that as soon as I have any information, I will call or text you.”
“Thank you,” I said.