Sure, sure, no problem, I said, and scooped him up.

  Merci, he said.

  Then kissed me.

  Impulsively.

  On the cheek.

  But still.

  Given the unusual state of his body, it was like being kissed by a lipless, eager ball. But it was pleasant enough. To be kissed again. After all this time. Or, I should say, pleasant enough to have someone arrange his luminous head-blop in such a way that, had we been mortal, he would have been kissing me.

  I find you attractive, he said. Suddenly.

  Not surprising, I said.

  What’s happening? he said. I hope you’re not getting yourself into trouble.

  Don’t sweat it, I said.

  Into the driveway pulled “taxicab.”

  “Taxi.”

  Taxi, yes.

  Centralizing my considerable strength, holding in my heart the intention of sending the Frenchman back to that place to which those of our ilk must retreat when in need of a fresh beginning, I exploded him upward.

  Off he went: smaller, smaller, gone.

  * * *

  —

  A middle-aged woman got out of the taxi, paid the driver, crossed to the statue of the golden dog, uttered a few words to it, trying, it seemed, to delay her entry until she might compose herself.

  I leapt up, passed through the wall of the bedroom, crouched quietly beside my charge’s bed, waited there.

  Julia’s here, his wife called from the landing.

  I heard the front door open, then a hushed greeting, the wife’s crisp summary of the situation, the sound of the new arrival advancing up the stairs.

  Then: a flash of blond hair, plain features elaborately made up; dazzling green eyes, solid build, a golden cross around her neck.

  She rushed across the room, dropped to her knees, kissed my charge on the cheek.

  Oh, gosh, Daddy, she whispered. You don’t look so hot, pard. How are you? How’s everything going? My flight was good. Pretty good. We had some turbulence, which, honestly, about scared the dang pants—

  Leaning in closer, taking in his stillness, his pallor, his shallow, rapid breathing, she began thinking in a hushed, urgent, prayerlike whisper, feeling that, in his diminished state (more spirit than flesh, so close to the end) he might be able to receive it.

  And he was. He was able to receive it.

  As (edging into the conjoined orb of their thoughts) was I.

  Were we.

  The two of us, Jill and non-Jill, now one, mutually resolved to fall silent and listen.

  * * *

  —

  First, okay, she wanted him to know he’d been the best daddy ever. She’d been crazy about him ever since her earliest days, when he’d come in smelling of cigarettes and the road and cheeseburgers and motor oil and pick her up over his head and fly her around the room while Momma kept saying, The lamp, the lamp, K.J., mind her little-bitty head!

  Second: she understood that his early life had been hard and that was why he’d sometimes been a little harsh. And demanding. And sometimes—Daddy, she had to say it—rude. Rude to her friends, rude to her prom date, Randy, that one time.

  That had been—she had to say it—rough.

  But the thing was: she forgave it. Forgave it all. She wanted him to know that. He’d made her strong. Yes he had. By being so difficult. And often unfair. Because look at her now: she took no bull-hockey from anybody, and if a person was being rude to her or trying to bully her?

  She kicked butt, took names later.

  So, thank you.

  Thank you, Daddy, for that.

  Daddy, if you can hear me?

  Thank you.

  What she wanted to say, what she’d come here to say? What she truly believed? Was: Good job, you! Well done! Thou hast been a great warrior and accomplisher and hath—Daddy, you did great things, I mean it. You started low, out there in cowboy country, for Lord’s sake, then went forth and won big while opening up many, many cans of whoop-butt on all who would oppose you.

  And gave us a great life. You did. Truly. We traveled all over the world, always first-class, did things none of my friends at school ever got to—well, most of them, anyway, given that some of my friends at school were also, like us, doing pretty darn well—but, Daddy: London, Moscow, Kenya, Bethlehem, all before I was twenty?

  Although, yes, true, she’d taken some guff in high school from some of the liberal kids, because of his job, which—Lordy, don’t get her wrong, she was not now, and never had been, a lib. She didn’t want him thinking that. She believed in this country, and in positive values and taking responsibility for oneself, like he’d taught her, and saw zero use in complaining or looking only at the negative side of things or pissing and moaning about every little hardship the way the libdopes tended to do, as if nothing in life was fun or beautiful or a cause for joy and everything was a terrible dang guilty burden to bear. (And, yes, Daddy: she and her church friends used “libdope” now, not “libtard,” not because of p.c. but because “libdope” seemed somehow kinder, more in keeping with the teachings.)

  Anyway: her worldview was solid. She wanted him to know that. She’d recovered from her brief, friend-induced flirtation with libtarditude. Dopitude, rather. Especially after that batshit gal at the country club had implied she was a racist. Too much!

  Just because a person mistook one black waitress for another, did that make her a racist?

  It was too much, libdopes.

  Back it on down.

  She loved everybody just the same, like he’d taught her: white people, brown people, red people, gay folks, those two indistinguishable black (or Black, she guessed you had to say now) waitresses, even the young white-trash/trailer-girl waitress who’d called her racist, although, as far as that lowlife, she had to admit she was going to have to really work at loving that dipshit, or even letting her wait on her ever again, because, when you really thought about it, wasn’t that white girl being racist herself, against whites, by coming after her the way she had, literally pulling her into the coat-check closet, just seething with self-righteousness, wearing way too much makeup, with a nose ring like an enraged baby bull and one of her blocky ugly waitress shoes untied? Coming after her so hard that the Black waitress she’d mistaken for that other Black waitress had to come racing in and pull that White biotch off her?

  Anyway.

  (Oh, he loved listening to her. Always had. The two of them would stay at the table after dinner and she’d talk and talk, about things at school, world events, which trees she liked more than others, and so on. Smart kid. Knew her own mind.)

  Look, she was just going to say it: he was dying. Okay? Sometimes, dying people got trapped in denial. And denial? Takes a lot of energy. This friend of hers at church? Did hospice. She said that if a loved one present could sort of sound the gong, you know, saying, in effect: It’s happening, really happening, to you, now? That was good. A good thing.

  According to Cara.

  Her friend from church who did hospice.

  Was she making things worse? By being so frank? She could stop. If it bothered him. But one thing she’d learned (through counseling, yes, but also at Bible study) was:

  God does not like closed.

  God does not do denial.

  You know who opened up big-time there at the end? Our Lord. Jesus Christ. Dying, He’d called out to His Father to forgive His enemies, who were, literally, at that moment, up there on Golgotha, killing Him. He knew He was dying and had the presence of mind to wonder: How might I, even in this dreadful moment, continue to serve? While there, below, at the foot of His cross, stood His enemies, the terrible Romans, leering up at Him with their big old pikes and swords and horrid strappy sandals and pointy helmets and whatnot. Could he, her daddy, do that, here and now? Forgive his many enemies? The many enemies who had, over the years, opposed him, including those mysterious dumbasses who’d left a buttload of dead seagulls on their lawn once, during the whole Galatea spill crisis thingamabob when she was in junior high, which, by the way, had been just super for her social life, and thanks y’all protesters for that, and could he forgive, also, those morons in the media, and those trolls who’d sent, over the years, just an endless stream of terrible letters, calling him, among other things, “corporate pig,” “godless seeker of Mammon,” and “tone-deaf monster,” when really what he was, was not a monster at all, but just a tiny sweet little old thing (always the smallest of all the other daddies), who’d (crabbily, but still) taught her how to change a flat out there in their garage and had shown up, unannounced, when she was eight, at her Junior Miss Bowling class, and bought every single girl there a Coke, and insisted that every last girl finish hers, so as not to be wasteful, even, unfortunately, that one girl, Lydia, who, it turned out, was diabetic?

  Maybe they should pray.

  Could she pray with him a bit?

  You good with that, Daddy? she whispered aloud. Should we maybe pray a little?

  (He tried to say he’d be happy to pray. But nothing came out.)

  Hearing nothing, she charged ahead.

  Thank you, Lord, for the gift of this man, she prayed. Through his mighty efforts, the world has been much changed. He traveled far and wide, over every continent. Praise that. Worked with so many different kinds of folks. Amen. Was just terrific at, uh, taking a unit or division and, um, as she understood it, making it more efficient, or profitable? By trimming things back, kind of ruthlessly, and, uh, getting rid of the, like, dead wood? Which, come to think of it, was another group of enemies he might consider forgiving: those two hundred numbnuts he’d fired just before Christmas that one super-cold winter, who’d formed a sad little club and sometimes came over together, all wearing parkas, to picket their dang house.

  She remembered that nice one, Wanda, who used to sneak little waves over at her and had once pulled her aside to slip her a Perfume Patty.

  Lord, forgive him. For any and all mistakes he’d made. Like when he was gone overseas for three straight months her senior year. Or the way he’d kept snapping at Randy, her earlier-mentioned prom date, just because Randy had done his science fair project on electric cars and was sort of fired up about it. Randy had been seventeen, Daddy. Was it so important that he be proven wrong? On the night of her prom? Necessary for you to drag Randy over to the whiteboard in the kitchen and throw all those numbers at him and mock him out as he stood there sweating, nervously pressing her corsage so tightly against his rented ruffled shirt that he ended up crushing it, and then he’d slid that ugly flat thing on her wrist and they’d had a miserable time all night because he kept defending his original calculations?

  Forgive him for all of that, Lord.

  Also?

  For all those questionable things he’d supposedly possibly done.

  Per that stupid documentary.

  That Fran had made her watch.

  Daddy, remember Fran? From grad school? Super-nervous gal? Owned a big old lake house? Or, used to? Up in Minnesota? But then: two straight months of rain, in July, and here came the lake, rising, rising, and pretty soon: no lake house. Or, less of one. After that, Fran had gone a little eco-wacky. And had done this sort of intervention. On her (!). In Vegas. On a trip that was supposed to be fun (!). Fran had tricked her. Into watching that video. Fran’d sat there watching her watch it. After, Fran had said that maybe she, Julia, might want to issue some kind of public statement. Or post an apology on Instagram or whatever? Or donate to an environmental charity? In her dad’s name?

  As if.

  As if, bitcharoo.

  She’d broken with Fran. Fran was dead to her.

  There was no way.

  No. Flipping. Way.

  That he’d done those things.

  Or, if he had done them that he’d known they were bad.

  Or, if he had known they were bad—

  God, why did everyone have to be so mean about everything, anyhow?

  Hello, he was in the oil business, Fran, dunce. The business of oil. Okay? Finding it, getting it out of the ground or wherever, selling it. How did you, Fran, physically get to the Minnesota lake house, when you still had it, dimwit? How did you make your way out of Minnesota and across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts that one autumn to see the Magritte show in Boston you ended up being so crazy about? How did you get to that bat mitzvah in Palm Springs that was so “transcendent” it made you “rethink your ideas regarding the value of ceremony” or that wedding in Maui that had the fire jugglers, one of whom, supposedly, you made out with?

  You drove, you flew, you kombucha-making hypocrite.

  And yet.

  And yet.

  Daddy, she whispered. Do you have any idea? What people are saying? About you? On TV and the internet and in so many articles and books and podcasts lately? Is it true? All of it? Any of it? If so, maybe you were a darker, trickier bastard than I ever—

  Not “bastard.”

  Guy.

  Not “darker.”

  Complicated.

  Not “trickier.”

  Secretive.

  A much more complicated, secretive guy than I ever—

  If so, if you did know, and did it anyway? Which, if I’m being frank, I feel was probably, yes, the case? It breaks my heart, and I have to say, because I want, if we are really parting, for us to do so from a place of total honesty:

  It disappoints me, Daddy.

  Disappoints me greatly.

  I just feel really let down by you.

  I always saw you as someone who tried to do what was right, no matter what, so this is a truly hard pill for me to—

  Pausing for a look down at my charge, she noted that his hair, badly in need of cutting, was, just a little bit, in the front there, shaking, or quaking, or whatever.

  Just slightly moving with the motion of his frail old body.

  Now the shaking stopped and he went completely still and it occurred to her that (good Christ) she’d killed him.

  With this selfish last-minute bitchfest.

  Then his lips slightly moved, as if he were trying to moisten them.

  Oh, thank God.

  Lord, forget it, they could talk about it later.

  Or not.

  She took the washcloth from the bedside table, dipped it into his water glass, wet his lips.

  There you go.

  There you go, sweetie.

  She leaned over, kissed his head.

  My charge, for the first time since I’d known him, managed to speak aloud.

  Devil, he mumbled.

  Say what now? she said. The devil’s not in here, Daddy. That’s just your meds.

  Lady, he said.

  Are you saying there’s a lady devil in here? she said.

  From deep in his throat he managed a sound of affirmation.

  Okay, she said. All right. What we need here is some rest, I think. Or wait, you know what? Let’s do this.

  She brought her hands together.

  Heavenly Father, she said. Help my daddy out here. Devil lady? Be gone. Any and all devils, be gone. Give my daddy some peace, y’all.

  All the devils many wrong in here tonight, he said.

  Alarmed, she rushed to the landing and called down to her mother to get up here, now, please, because, one, he was awake and talking, and two, from the sound of it, things were getting sort of—Could she, Momma, please get up here now, please, stat, pronto, thank you?

  Hearing no response from her mother, she left the room and pounded down the stairs to find her.

  * * *

  —

  Not a devil, I said.

  He let out a low groan.

  Actual groan.

  Had his daughter or wife been in the room, they would have heard it.

  More than anything that had preceded it (the bird onslaught, his interactions with the Pennsylvania girl, Miss Eva, his father, Ed Dell) this had stung him. By this, his enemies had won. They’d succeeded in turning his only child against him. They’d poured poison into her ear and she’d believed them. She was his dear girl, constant defender, biggest fan. And now, for the rest of her life, long as she lived, she was going to think of him like that?

  In that way?

  As that guy?

  A darker, trickier bastard than she’d ever—

  No.

  Jesus, no.

  What he needed to do was hop out of this bed and go downstairs and fetch the bag of black licorice stashed above the fridge and sit that gal down and say: Cupcake, whatever beef you’ve got with me, it’s because you had it all handed to you on a silver platter, which is why half the time you don’t have any damn idea of how things work out in the real world, angel, I’m sorry to say, and why you have, all your life, been easily misled by people who meant you no good and were trying to take advantage of your kind nature, sweet pea. So, sit down, let’s talk this thing out.

  He became aware of me again.

  You reading my mind? he said.

  Yes, I said.

  I want you to stop it, he said.

  No, I said.

  You seem different, he said.

  I am different, I said. I’m Jill. Jill Blaine. Jill “Doll” Blaine.

  Weren’t you always? he said.

  Not this much, I said.

  From downstairs came the sound of his daughter crying hysterically, her mother comforting her, a glass breaking, a sudden silence.

  What’s all that about? he said.

  I smiled a sad smile.

  No, he thought. This wasn’t it. Couldn’t be. Not yet. His death was meant to take place in an ancient stone mansion. A gray manse on a misty moor. In Europe somewhere. Like in a 1940s movie. He’d always thought that. Why had he always thought that? No idea. He just had. All across the property his peasants would be weeping. In the doorway a butler was trying not to cry. Like that. The doctor with whom he’d aways played chess was racing to him by horse-drawn sleigh through a blizzard. The village luminaries had gathered around his bedside. He’d always been the best among them. Finally, they saw it. It didn’t hurt. It was Death but it didn’t hurt. He was just growing increasingly tired and philosophical.