The last image that Natasha has of her mother, other than the photos “taken of her body at the crime scene” (5), is the formal portrait that Gwen had taken several months before her death. Gwen was 40 at the time. In the photograph, she is gazing at something in the distance. She doesn’t smile. Instead, she sits up very straight, as though she intended to look back on the photograph years later as the marker of a new beginning. However, that thought has always depressed Natasha. So, she told herself other stories. In one, her mother knew that she would be killed. She had, after all, gone to see a psychic for fun. She had also taken out numerous insurance policies. The idea of her mother planning for the possibility of her demise comforts Natasha, who hates to think that her mother was surprised by her death.

Nearly 30 years after Gwen died, Natasha returned to the place where she had been killed. Natasha last went there when she was 19 and tasked with cleaning out her mother’s apartment. She kept several of her mother’s books, “a heavy belt made of bullets,” and her beloved dieffenbachia (7).