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“stubborn” throughout childhood. My Auntie Carol used to say, “You are the most willful child I have ever met.” When I was small, I’d stay at Auntie Carol’s house and in no time, she’d
position me in a corner between the living room and the front room. I’d spend hours with my nose against plaster studying the intersection of two right angles. Auntie Carol told me to think hard about my stubborn nature. She suggested I change my ways.
     
     
    BUD’S FULL NAME was Joseph Everett Lauck. He was a tall, clean-cut man with brown eyes and hair. His shoulders were sloped and he stooped from the waist, as if to apologize for his height.
    Janet was Janet Lee Ferrel and stood about five foot three. Her hair and eyes were almost black. Her complexion was quite fair.
    Bud was an accountant who started his own firm in Carson City. As a young man in university, he did not attend lectures and still aced his exams. He was called a genius.
    Janet was a homemaker whose ambition centered on family. She went to college, majored in art and modeled clothing for department stores. She was called elegant and glamorous.
    Bud was the eldest son in a family of five children. He was raised Catholic. He had a reckless side—he drove too fast and liked to gamble. He also dreamed of being a millionaire by the time he was forty years old. His hero was Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner.
    Janet was the oldest in her family of three kids. Her people were Methodists. Since childhood, Janet had been frail and sickly but she didn’t admit her condition to anyone. When she was “out of sorts,” as she called it, she kept any residual discomfort to herself and took handfuls of aspirin to manage her pain. “A lady doesn’t complain,” she used to say.

     
     
    TO JANET, I was considered a gift from God and the answer to her prayers for good health. She was sure she wouldn’t be given a baby if she were going to die. My arrival felt mystic and important—my place in their world, as daughter, was called destiny.
    I wanted to believe I could be someone’s destiny. I liked to imagine I was of the divine. I went so far as to build rough scaffolding that propped me up on the set of their lives where I tottered around as if I belonged, but if pressed I would admit I felt itchy and wrong, as if I wore a pair of tights that were too small and hung below my crotch. My life was like a series of tugs and pulls where I had to take huge, wide steps across my interior rooms in order to fit, and still I did not find myself at home in their world. Perhaps the reason for this has to do with time. In the end, I had so little of it with Janet, Bud, and Bryan.

FOUR
    THREE DEATHS
    JANET DIED WHEN I WAS Seven years old. Bud died eighteen months later, when I was nine. Bryan ended his life when I was twenty. He was twenty-three.
    For many years of my adult life, I snapped off this news in precise sentences whittled to the most basic facts. Having grown up to become an investigative television reporter and trained in the art of story telling, presentation, and delivery, I’d developed the belief that to tell it straight was the best approach. Why be elusive or even coy?
    Life had been brutal to me and I’d go ahead and be brutal in return.
    Dead, buried, gone.
    That’s how I coped with all that loss and if you asked I’d tell you that I didn’t look back. I’d say, “It happened, it’s over, I’m past all that.”
    For the most part, people believed me and didn’t ask me to elaborate on the gruesome details.

    If they had, I would have been just as succinct: Janet died from complications associated with a tumor in her spine, Bud had an unexpected heart attack, and Bryan shot himself in the head.
    This usually had folks take a step or two back, giving me room, as if my situation had some form of residual effect. Was tragedy contagious?
    Before people went too far away, I was quick to reassure that I was doing just great. Look at me, I practically said. Look at