Dear Betty:

You used to make fun of how organized I was. In the end, you said, we're all dead anyway. I would agree with you, but why not leave an organized medicine cabinet, anyway?

When your daughter left me to clean up your house, I found the pills that you must have taken. I wanted to throw them away, but realized that I might need them, someday. Just a couple of them, to ease the pain in my knees, or to make me sleep peacefully.

Charlie never did drugs, didn't drink. Roy was so obsessed with it, he didn't notice the other things that Charlie was hiding.

When you were alive, I couldn't tell you what I'd done to Charlie, what I'd let Roy do to him. It's hard to admit even now. Roy found a letter from a young man in Charlie's wallet. Roy thought he could beat what Charlie was out of him, just like he thinks he can beat this new company into something it's not. Maybe he's right. I didn't stop him then, didn't protect my only son from the fists of my husband. Didn't protect my blood. Thought it was enough to have a man, just the way my mother taught me, Never understanding that you can't really have anybody.