“Sure. Why the POA?”

“Mom has terminal cancer. Not yet but very soon she’ll need heavy morphine. I’ll handle her affairs.”

We meet at Hospice. Agnes is sitting up, hair brushed, gracious, as pleasant and composed as Emily. She signs the POA, we find witnesses. We chat, then: “Thanks, Paul, so very much. Goodbye!” All without any misgivings, remorse, self-pity. As I leave, mother and daughter carry on, chatting amiably. They make the most of it.

So many sparkles, surfaces splintering sunlight.

He couldn’t name a single confidant. The gravity and the gossamer belonged to him alone.

He snapped the case shut. The light remained. Would it fit? He believed so. He hoped so.

Then again, it didn’t matter. If it fit, they’d tell a fairy book tale. If it didn’t, they’d laugh, they’d reconsider, and they’d refit, impervious to the punches.

All of which they would come to know together. In the meantime, he’d know all alone, confident yet precarious in the center of his chest.

The police wanted to keep the stories from making it into the press, so as not to tip off the perpetrator. They made sure to silence all the witnesses.

Of course, a reporter got onto the news and he had to be eliminated as well. When it eventually leaked to the paper, it became necessary to kill everyone.