I married a dy*ng stranger so he wouldn’t leave the world as a nameless file. He had no ring, so he slipped a soda can pull tab onto my finger — and put one on his own, and said a number I didn’t understand: “One thousand one hundred and forty.”
Seven days later his lawyer handed me a green backpack. “He wasn’t who you thought he was.” Inside: a notebook from 1979, and ten pounds of pull tabs.
PART 1
I was twenty-nine and still trying to find my way through the grief of losing my mother.
My name is Willa Brennan, and volunteering at a hospital became the only thing that made that pain feel like it had some purpose.
My mother d*ed alone.
I need to say that at the start, because it’s the whole reason I was in that building.
Not neglected — she had me, and
