I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom for I don't know how long. People moved in and out, curious, I'm sure about the puffy-faced woman standing there with the water running.

Eventually, when I had regained some measure of composure, I took a deep breath and went back out into the hallway. Woody was there, standing patiently with a bottle of orange juice and a plastic-wrapped pastry. He handed them to me solemnly.

"The cafeteria is closed, so I got them from the machine. I can't guarantee the freshness or flavor. But you should eat."

"Thanks," I said in a hoarse whisper. I should have made him stay in Boston. He didn't deserve this. But all the same, I was glad he was here.

We walked back out through the emergency room. There was a young paramedic hovering around the intake desk. As we passed, the nurse behind the desk pointed us out to him.

"Miss!" The paramedic hurried over. "Excuse me...I was one of the paramedics on the scene last night of your father's accident. I heard he didn't make it. I'm sorry," he said with genuine sincerity. I nodded back at him in appreciation.

He held out a small bag. "This was in your father's car. He was still conscious when we got to the scene, and he asked me to take this down from the rearview mirror. He must have dropped it in the ambulance." He smiled weakly.

Great. My father had some kind of final, sentimental fixation on a pair of fuzzy dice or an air freshener. I dropped the bag into my purse and we headed to the car.

We drove on to the hotel in silence. I curled up in the passenger seat, looking with unfocused eyes out at the dark Phoenix sky. Woody took the luggage and checked in. Our rooms would be across the hall from each other.

We did not speak until we reached my room. I went in and sat on the edge of the bed. Woody stood awkwardly in front of me, jangling the change in his pocket.

"I can call the Glendale P.D., if you'd like. See what I can find out."

I nodded. "Yes. Thanks."

"We'll need to get in touch first thing tomorrow with a funeral home about..." He paused and searched for words. "Getting your father ready to be flown home."

"I want him cremated here. I'll fly the ashes back home."

He nodded. "Jordan," he began with a hesitation in his voice. "Have you given any more thought to having a funeral?"

"No funeral, Woody. I said that." My voice was rising in pitch. He put his hands up in resignation.

"All right, Jordan," he said gently. "If you don't want to have a funeral for your father, that's nobody's business but your own, but I hope you won't let the way you feel right now cloud your judgment." He winced, regretting immediately what he had said.

I rose to my feet. "'The way I'm feeling?....Cloud my judgment?!' What the hell is that supposed to mean."

"I understand you're angry. I do. When my father died, I was angry at the world, angry at God. I didn't understand how He could let it happen. It took me a long time to figure out that there are things that we can never understand."

I wish I could adequately explain the sense of betrayal I felt at that moment. I really thought that Woody, of all people, would know and accept what I was feeling.

I stood inches away from him now, a finger pointed accusingly in his face. "This is not God's plan, Woody. It's not. We all have free will, and that man chose to drink, and he chose to get behind the wheel of that car. God didn't plan it. He just sat back and let it happen."

He gently brushed my finger aside. "I'm sorry, Jordan. I didn't mean it like that. All I meant was..."

"God let my father die, and the driver walked away with a few cuts and bruises. That's God's will, huh? Boy, He's sure got a helluva sense of humor." My voice shook with rage.

"Jordan, please, that's not..."

"So, God forced that guy to drink a case of beer and then handed him a set of car keys, all in the name of some divine plan?"

I raised my hands, clenched into angry fists. He took my wrists.

"Jordan, listen, please..."

I struggled to pull away. One arm slipped from his grip easily, and I gave the other a hard yank. It flew with up and connected with the side of his face with a hard, sharp smack.

His head snapped back, and, off balance, he reeled backward into the bedside table, sending the lamp to the floor with a clatter. He stood after a moment of stunned silence and turned to me. His cheek was marked with a bright red palm print, and he dabbed at the thin trail of blood at the corner of his mouth.

"Woody, I'm sorry. That was an accident..." I took a step in to him, but he raised a hand and shook his head.

"Good night, Jordan," was all he said. He moved past me and went across the hall to his room.

I had tested the limits of his patience once again. I knew I should have gone to him then, but I didn't have the strength to follow.

After a moment, I sat wearily on the bed and emptied the bag with my father's belongings. Car keys, a key for a hotel in downtown Phoenix. I would have to go there and retrieve his things. Maybe Woody would go for me. I wasn't sure I was up to it.

His wallet was there. I opened it. They had taken his emergency contact card out and put it back in upside down. I pulled it out to turn it right side up, for some reason needing everything to be the way it had been before the accident.

There was a picture of me underneath, and old class picture. Of all the pictures that had been taken of me over the years, I don't know why he had chosen to keep this one. There I was, smiling stiffly at the camera with braces and a bad perm. My lip began to quiver. I put the card back in the wallet and snapped it shut.

The things sat there on the bed, and I ran my fingers over them. The wallet, the keys, these were the last things he had touched.

I realized then that I had forgotten the bag that the paramedic had given me. I reached for my purse, pulled out the bag, and emptied it on the bed.

It was a rosary. It had been my mother's. My father had given it to her on their wedding day when she had become a Catholic. I remembered seeing her with it, praying quietly, her lips moving noiselessly, rubbing those glass beads between her fingers as if she had been born to it.

My hand shook when I picked it up. It felt alien in my fingers.

So, my father's last thoughts had not been of me. They had been of that rosary and praying his hopeless prayers to a God who would not save him.

I opened the bedside drawer, dropped the rosary in, and slammed the drawer shut.