The nightmares started a few days after the funeral.
It was guilt, I’m certain, that fueled them. Even as I told myself I had not been to blame, as I reminded myself yet again that I couldn’t have anticipated and could not have been prepared for an intelligent, city-bred woman charging heedlessly into oncoming traffic, it felt as though her demise was something I had to atone for.
Most of the dreams had nothing to do with Mother. Not directly, anyway. The one that tormented me more often than the others had to do with a dog. We’d never had a dog. I don’t know where the image came from.
The dog was missing. It had to be found, for reasons the dream didn’t make clear. It had no name. I don’t even know whether it was male or female. Somehow I knew it was a fairly large dog, and it had curl
