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Show Woodworth/l64 The numbness spreads over Marty's body. Suddenly, Megan's voice becomes hysterical. "I mean, maybe she won't even mean to. She'll just do something, and hope that Daddy will find her. But, the way he sleeps. I mean, he didn't even hear the phone ringing. And if she's been drinking, he's been drinking, too. And she may already be-lying out there, like in the garage, with the doors closed and the motor running. And you get paralyzed from carbon monoxide poisoning. Not many people know that. It doesn't even kill you right away, you get paralyzed. So that even if you change your mind, you can't get out, and you know you are going to die. Or, or, she's slit her wrists, and she didn't think she was going to do it deep enough, and now she's lying in the living room or someplace, bleeding to death." With every suggestion, Marty gets a clear picture of her mother's suicide in her mindt The panic when she realizes that she can't move her legs, the blood oozing into the tan living room rug. "My God, Marty. What if she takes pills. If she takes an overdose, thinking that she can get Daddy to take her to the • hospital, and then she can't wake him up, and she's too drugged to drive to the hospital on her own?" Marty's mind snaps shut. She sees herself sitting in a dark box, talking to Michael. "But, were you there?" she is asking him. "Did he think you were coming back? Did he know what he was taking? Had he ever taken anything from that batch before? Do you know where he got them? Do you think he meant to do it? Do you think he did it on purpose?" "I don't know," Michael says. He turns to her and leers. "If he didn't tell you, he certainly wouldn't have told me." Megan is crying in gulps on the other end of the phone. |