We Were Three - Ep. 3
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occurred to me while I was sitting next to Rachel l. In her brother's car driving round san anna, california. You hiding out here?

Yeah, absolutely. I've been hiding out here for a while.

Sh'd been in california for a few weeks. When I got here, her plane had been to start clearing out the house where her father and brother had lived. But when SHE got to the house, SHE couldn't stand being in IT.

So SHE fled up to northern california. SHE wanted to be alone, did that for a few days. That was awful. Then SHE met up with friends.

I was Better rate has been talking by phone in text and face time with her teenage kids every day while she's here. But by the time we were driving around together, SHE hadn't been home to her family in register new york for a while. Grief somehow maintains a public image of mainly sadness fragilities. But grief can also be selfish, unfair, kind of an ask hall ryals aware.

I don't know. I'm having a hard time right now. I'm just having a really hard time, uh, connecting with anyone.

It's like fucking up my relationship, you know, with my partner. I just don't feel. Like my like anyone has my grief s back, that makes sense. Like I just I I like crying my car by myself if I go for drives and just scream and then I come home and I mom who's got a chore or you know snowboard lessons to drive you to or whatever it's like I am just I don't know. I just feel like a piece of ship for saying that I just I just can't connect and get myself to do male ordinary .

things that .

are required to me.

Rachel described her father and brother as anchors for her, heavy, but stabilizing without them. She's floating, driving around the place where they lived, looking for ways to feel near to them, to understand them from cereal. And the new york times, this is the last part of we were three.

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C O part .

three。 I'm all that is left. amen. Rachel, I have separate but overlapping missions here or both trying to see these people she's lost as fully as we can. I asked to come to california while she's here, partly because I want to see the places you talked about, but also i'm still trying to understand what life did COVID lands on with her brother and her father, what was happening in their lives before the text messages. Rachel has some answers, and her perspective and other answers are here in california.

I'll be there shortly, my dear.

We're off to see Sandy rachael's father's long time girlfriend one time, as in SHE, met him in one thousand seventy. We're going to meet Sandy now because I want to talk to her and share, agreed. Sandy saw Rachel's brother and father during covet when Rachel didn't, and she's also known all three of them for decades.

SHE met Rachel when Rachel was three years old. This is the girlfriend Rachel called in the middle of the wine and roses fight with her father and his then wife, alex. And he remembers the call, though he doesn't remember finding out about .

the marriage until later. Still, it's okay. We never have my brother wake up.

Sandy's telling Rachel SHE doesn't want us to get there until he has time to do what I make up.

Alright, i'll see you soon. I got a drop in right. I'll see you soon. Thank you. That's great.

Yeah, okay.

But Sandy.

in photos from Michael's childhood, is a Young White woman with blue eyes liner around her big blue eyes, a california girl with her hair parted in the middle and hanging down shesol ding, a grump y looking great cat in one photo, cigarette in another. There are also many photos over the years of Sandy with rituals. Dad santi and Rachel s.

Father never got married, but they never one hundred percent quit each other. Sometimes Rachel call Sandy her kinley step mom. Sandy lived with the katcha family more or less consistently with an occasional month lang hiatus until Rachel was around fourteen, even after standing moved out SHE look grater around the corner for years. On the drive over, Rachel tells me he and Sandy have never talked about her father's abuse. He hit all of them.

the violence.

experiencing IT and seeing IT twisted Rachel view of women, including herself.

to and Candy. I grew up resenting her. I grew up a massage ist. I grew up thinking women were weak. And I pinted all on the fact that he would not leave my dad, I, to me. And this is just, you know, a dumb child mapping IT out for for .

herself. I I just .

believe that women were incapable of having the kind of strength that would allow you to exit. There are a .

lot of things they've never talked about.

I mean, the last time we we had even been with each other.

I, I had, I had.

we were in a physical altercation.

Sandy, yeah, this was after wine and roses, after Rachel l. Had graduated from high school and you didn't have anywhere to live. SHE had a baby boy, and he sometimes stayed with her during the day, and he'd be with her x boyfriend's family at night.

And SHE was pregnant with her second child, Sandy. He let her stay on her couch for many months. Rachel remembers an argument escalating from something tiny, like, did Rachel eat the last packet of Sandy ranch dressing?

And I was on the phone, and he was screaming ing at me. I had been home as at that point for like nine months, and I was just exhausted. And I might get the fuck out of my face, and SHE wouldn't.

And like, leaned over me. I was sitting and I just got a, and I and I just started swinging and SHE felt back and IT was pretty bird. yeah. I and .

you guys.

i've never talked about that.

I moved out the next day. We've never spoken of IT. The first time we spoke again was like the attacks when I reached out from you, like getting her and her from my brother's phone.

Wait a minute. U. S. Had not spoken since then.

twenty. So in twenty .

five years, you guys had not talked from from when you had her until your brother and father died.

And SHE has since spent nothing but a generous, thoughtful, informative person to me. So that's incredible. Like, you know, IT actually have a lot of shame that I responded in the way that I did. And it's just it's just not who I am. It's who I can be.

but it's not who I am.

Here we go. Here goes nothing. See what happens here.

I'm here.

We park in the driveway alongside a single story house, big seculars out front and by the driveway some janius.

You clip this. Hi, dear. I in the shape.

this is the house where Sandy grew up and now lives with one of her sisters. We walked around .

to the backyard table.

Sandy's still got long Brown hair parted in the middle, hanging down a little grey at the roots. She's tand wearing a blue sund dress and flip flops. While we're scrutinising people here, my hair is also a little great, the roots, and i'm dressed in black and navy like a slightly rebellious cat bargle AR.

When Sandy met Rachel and Peter's father, the father's name is pete, which can get confusing. That's why I mostly call him Rachel and Peter's father. When Sandy met pete senior, the father IT was the late seventies, and they were living the same apartment complex. IT had a poor in the middle. Pete was putting some very smooth moves on Sandy and SHE was smoothly event them.

He kept saying, come in my apartment. We have the managers former apartment. The air condition is great. And I was so funny because even then, after running in different times, I wouldn't go in. I just .

put my army .

i'm going, yeah, that's nice, good IT isn't funny. I was so nal .

love IT I don't have things .

there was always plating. And then, you know, I think IT really we really became good friends with the pool because gilbert was there too. And then they talked about how they were going to play guitar.

Yes, I think I ended up, since I play a guitar too, come on over. And then they have barracades, and he invited me to the movies. And so that was actually seventy eight, but I didn't really become like a big romance. I know he wanted that to be in a relationship until, like seventy nine.

Sandy got to know pete and his Younger brother gilbert and the rest of the family. SHE hadn't lived with peat in over thirty years when he died, but their relationship in one former another outlasted everything except COVID. Rachel says.

Her father in Peter, when he talked them on the phone, often rolled their eyes about Sandy, talked about their relationship with her as if they were burden. But Rachel is also sure that they roll their eyes about her and complained about her behind her back. So what Sandy describes is three people supporting each other SHE pete senior and Peter celebrated birthdays and holidays, talked on the phone and checked on each other.

Sandy doesn't have a car Peter drove for to get growth reason, go to doctor appointments. Peter didn't like dealing with bureaucracies, and he would make those phone calls for him. He found a dentist and made appointments for him in his father.

At the request, Peter would bring her fresh juice from his juicer, Sandy says. Pete, the father was calling her every week night for a while as he dropped back from work because he was afraid to fall asleep. SHE talked him all the way home, even if he was tired. Ed of talking, pete had told his son that Sandy was the one he should call if he, the father, ever got sick or anything went wrong.

Your dad was, think you seriously considering the vaccine and I said, let me make you unemployment and he said, well, let's let all the because IT just come out, because let's let all the immune compromise people get at first and and he goes because i'm perfectly healthy and he goes, maybe next month that .

was january of twenty, twenty one.

Peter. In the meantime, he didn't like the mass, he said, believing that was gna cause tl mini o got a dim. All these things I would, I would embarrass some stores purpose, even your dad, I talked about this your day would go humi put your mask over your nose. I don't want to die from cove IT nick said I got covered .

vaccines and boosts as soon as he could and when SHE said he felt fine after each shot, Peter the sun would say, yeah, well, let's see how you feel in three years long before cot, Peter had a habit of dismissing things. Other people believed that he didn't by saying, oh, you fell for that COVID seemed to slight right into the, oh, you fell for that groove. Every time Peter drove Sandy to an appointment, he would hunt her videos.

He said he had to see. I've seen some of the videos peta is looking at. There were hundreds of videos in memes on his computer, a pharmaceutical analyst who said covet vaccines were intended to poison in healthy children, someone quoting an undertaker who predicted mass deaths from vaccines, not people who held press conferences and sounded slick, sane. He said the videos, sheer members were regular person sounding off.

And I saw that I got literally on a corner of new york with the, you know, the accent. And IT was somebody interviewing her, but he was a nobody. I was just a person on the street, literally.

And here's going to listen this. I'm going who the f is SHE you're making me listen to all this stupid crap. You give me a head and he would just serve his hands. I can't believe you, Candy. I like, I can't believe you.

And we would argue all the way to my new port beach pain doctor, when I get there, any more pain in my neck and mentally exhausted, a headache, and you know how from stress next titan S I be like, give me double the injections plays from riding in the car with Peter. So we were in all these arguments, but we didn't up laughing about IT. And he end up laugh, but he go say, and really, you need to start listening to these things her dad, just that Peter was being ridiculous and he told me numerous times you just can't he said, I didn't.

He could you know what I do because I try to convince him otherwise on all these things and he doesn't listen. He gets really stubbed and upset. He goes, you can't change his mind.

He goes, so he goes, I don't like caring all of that, you know, he gets on the computer. He started telling me and trying to get me to believe IT. And he goes, I argue with him, so i'm blue in the face. So he goes, now I just go, oh, and walk away and go to my room. Peter started .

believing that the vaccines made people shed the virus, and therefore those people were dangerous to be around. His father told Sandy. He didn't believe that, and it's not true. But in the name of keeping the peace, Peter, sixty seven year old father, now couldn't imagine getting vaccinated.

He said, you know, well, i've been thinking about, he said Peter would flip out that would have probably by that time in a favor march kassin, Peter? Did not want me in the car anymore and that's when he really got we're thinking that we shed the virus. So he said I could never get. He said with Peter believing that, you know, we would talk about all the time and he said he'll think I need to share the virus all over the house and then what is? And I said, just do IT and don't .

tell him that, because secrets .

are always find a way of getting out. And he goes, let's see how this plays out. This is how I played out slowly. He started thinking, just like Peter and I was horrified because you've kept saying he went to get the vaccine then. So, well, I went to wait on that. Then he start saying he was worried about what was in IT and that he was reading things that he could kill you in three years. I mean, he was sounding like Peter.

Sandy, for years have been noticing pete seniors quick, sharp brain becoming less quick. Now the decline seems to be accelerating. Pete, the father was forgetting words.

He even forgot to combine cd's birthday, which uterine out of character. Several months before he died, he started lecturing Sandy in her knee. Ce saravia text.

He puts me and Sarah in a group, texting and, like, bashing, fought some little JPEG. This what you look like after vaccines? A monster. I'm like, oh, my god. And IT got to the point .

where I I mean.

her dad was always a fan, smart guy, got to the point where, and he still was, we talk on the phone and laugh, but every you can say anything without IT going back .

to the vaccine.

Sandy, like Rachel distance, ced herself from pete sh'd, known him for forty three years, and in the months before he died, he was barely talking to him because the carbon conversations were unbearable, and he wouldn't talk for long about anything else. Like Rachel SHE figured SHE impede, the father would go back to talking more and seen each other once the covered cover had run its course.

When sane, I got the text from Peter that his father was dead, SHE had the same reaction Rachel did, oh my god, car accident. Because just like Rachel SHE had had no idea he'd been. Sandy says her knees buckled when SHE grasp the pete, the father was gone.

Peter told her he had asked his dad if he wanted to go to the hospital, and his dad said, no, he didn't have insurance because he was in between jobs. Sandy wanted to scream, but he did have medical coverage. His father was sixty seven and covered by medicare. And SHE remembered when .

pete signed up for IT.

Peter told Sandy he was sorry he didn't call her when his dad was sick. Sandy was so angry at Peter, but now he was sick. SHE put off her anger and worried about him. Peter texted her from the hospital, the one Rachel had talked him into going to. Two days later, he told Sandy what he didn't tell Rachel that he was leaving the hospital against medical advice.

Peter's phone is full .

of texts from Sandy in the last weeks of his life checking on him, suggesting different clinics and urgent care places he could go to. Since he knew he wouldn't back the hospital, he could not budge him. Neither could her niece, who known Peter since they were kids.

And Peter was lying to Rachel this whole time, the fact that they were all women, and that we here are all women sitting around talking about men who were no longer alive, men. Rachel in Sandy had tried to keep our live in this pandemic. It's stuck out.

Rachel said that .

when he thought about IT her brother's covered views and her fathers had always stewed in the same gender direction in her conversations with them, the women in their lives were pleading with them to get vaccinated. They were all a bit hysterically about IT. Her father and Peter both used the word hysterically, a bit simple, brain washed. One of Peter's last texts to Sandy was, you really need to stop talking or mentioning the word covered, or anything remotely related to covered.

Listen, much snow and massage ini helped assisted my brother's death as much as of many other things. They thought that we were dumb women. I mean, they did. They, they were patronizing and would be Peter nal tic at times.

like arki, the S. R was worse.

He was very bad. But like, you learn that that's the learned behavior. There was a time in my life, I didn't imagine that would be me, a new left at the table. Can you imagine my who knew this shit is shocking.

is just shocking. I'm still shocked.

like we've had lived a lot alongside each other. And in spite of the men in our lives to who just couldn't get IT right right.

You know, when he was the worst .

was anytime I know .

he was drinking more .

than what? why? I wonder that third grade?

No, that could been because I haven't got a lac.

Maybe lacy is the theo lacy corrections facility in orange, california. Rachel remembers hearing that her dad had go there on weekends for a while. I asked why?

Because he assaulted me if we kept IT quiet from the kids. And he would tell them, I thought .

I was for me.

No.

I thought I was. So far, lacy was because of you. Yeah.

they began to have this conversation the'd never had. Gingerly, they didn't get into the incident between them or Rachel hood, Sandy, but they talked about pete, the father, and his violence. One of them would mention an incident, and the other would remember part of IT also.

Rachel murmured, i'm so sorry that happened to you. Sandy told me later that he had been many years since pete, the father, had hit her. The memories are vivid and painful and mixed in with good memories, SHE said.

Pete never stabbed, asking her to marry him. SHE never wanted to, lots of reasons. IT took cna a few tries to move out of peace place for good and settled into an apartment that was separate but close by.

And I know, however, forgive him.

but you had to forgive a lot.

Bob.

i'm shocked at myself.

a an, I only me. Now I wouldn't forgive you this stage of my life. But you know, you, I loved Rachel and Peter so much.

Living like for good killed me, you know, being away from from the kids and me, they really felt like my children. I guess that's probably why I was stupid. And coming back sometimes, you know. He was a lot Better when he wasn't drinking .

oh yeah .

but even even then, yeah I attempt, didn't know and he said he's dad used to be the show, the five boys and just that .

they were a live ready.

I know I felt like I like sometimes he took he would just maybe be frustrated over tired night of feeling. He took more of IT when I was there, more of his anger out on me. And I used to think, hopefully it's saving you guys.

It's true, it's true. And I hated that, i'll be honest, like that tells me up that we would be relieved that at least there is a third body now that would take hits.

Well, yes, because that's so sad, scary to my god, be loved. My dad is the same to me. I remember being terrified as a kid, even being alone with my data in the evening was the same thing. The alcohol, when you would drink, you know, when you're little, and you got this man, man, chasing fear.

The conversation moved on. Sandy waited until the very end of a cigarette at the table methow. God, I miss smoking. I loved everything about IT, the ritual, the repetition, the enforced pause of just taking one out in letting IT I could go on. Sandy told us about a couple of quiet evenings with pete, the father, from the early days of covered. I could picture IT a different kind of pause, two people who've known each other forever in a country at the beginning of a terrible time, full of uncertainty. And they sit outside near each other, but apart, talking, listening, afraid of the same thing.

He came a couple times, like by himself, you know, after work, and we just sound out the yard here. and. He, you know, he had me and then before he left, he kissed me.

He was like, oh my god, i'm sorry because he could. I know we shouldn't, you know, yeah, because he was, I know I shouldn't be doing that at this time. I, you know, I hope I didn't freak you out, because I I always said, you know, not necessarily six beach apart, but maybe we shall kissing.

Rachel lin, Sandy are the two who are left to their continued surprise, but they're also the two who get to talk, or at least start to talk about what happened. Rachel spent her whole life saying in different ways, can we just talk about what happened? SHE couldn't do IT with her dad.

SHE thought after her dad dad o Peter and I are gonna some conversations now, real conversations that never happened. And maybe IT wouldn't have happened. Even if you lived when we were driving to see Sandy, Rachel had no idea what SHE would be willing to talk about that here. Sandy is grieving the same to people with her own heavy load of memories. And SHE was up for excavating some .

of the past with Rachel coming up.

And finally we start excavating the house. Or Peter, his dad died. That's after the break.

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I check out retails last .

conversation with her father was a few months before he died. He was an email exchange about our decision to vaccinate her kids against COVID. IT started out okay, then got very bad. IT ended with Rachel .

rating each shit you corning massage ist. And he responds minutes later. I would tell you to each shit too, but you're already putting something worse inside you and that's the last draw. That's when I say you're .

making a face like you. I really going to read a lot what I said, but all cap like .

you are yeah because I L L L L die lonely dude, die without the family you massacred and be into a pope every chance you got reach IT little creature. Guess what was the worst thing for my health? Pedro, you all caps.

And then I walked in.

In my family, I sometimes fancy myself the blunt one, except for maybe my beloved and Frankie. And this email is so far out of my league, maybe because to me, IT seems final like relationship over, but Rachel has no doubt SHE and her father would have come back from this.

In the months before her father died, SHE was preparing herself for how her dad and her brother would make fun of her down the road, for how overcautious she's been about this covet thing. How gradually now, instead of arguing with them, she's going to the house they died in. SHE needs to .

start clearing IT out.

We pull up into the driveway, a small ranch house with an attached garage closed. Rachel hasn't been here for a few weeks since that day. He went up to .

northern california. stickers. These are new.

There are stickers in the front windows.

agents, contracts, inspectors, please know this property has been winter ized. Yeah, they turned my water off and I kept IT off those fucking and which .

the bank could do that?

Please leave breakers in their current position, except for items, winter rise rituals.

wrangling with the bank over this house.

Worried about what it's going to smell like in here.

哇， madness. Rachel told .

me a lot about this place, how much he hates IT. In fact, it's so prominent in some of our memories of growing up. I pictured, the inside is bigger, I guess, to contain all the unhappiness.

Rachel and Peter spent a lot of time here as kids, and he did not see IT as a refuge. IT was her grandparents place, and Rachel remembers both her grandparents, her father's parents, as cruel. SHE says they teased Peter about his list pit family members against one another.

Swap the kids with fly swatters throw stuff at them. SHE remembers an uncle overdosing in the living room, another uncle punting her in the face. And on and on. SHE calls IT hillhouse from the novel the haunting of hill house by sheri Jackson, a very creepy book.

SHE was horrified when Peter .

moved in here at seventeen years old. After the wine and roses fight, Rachel says he had to put a padlock on his bedroom door to make sure no one in the family stole from him. Being here now, Rachel s overwhelmed. Every room is crammed with stuff on shelves. And all over.

they started acquiring shit and then never made room for new things. Instead, they just started stacking. And like, oh, one day this will be worth something. Or if I hold the onto this for forty years, it'll be worth quite a its value. Like that town they Operated.

SHE walks down the hall and goes into her dad's bedroom. Start .

opening draws in .

the what you .

looking for? I don't know. I just wants to see .

stuff sucks.

She's looking for clues, details about the life for dad and brother were living in these years. He didn't even see them. interesting. What were they doing?

So my brother thought my dad was sober. This is evidence he was not.

That's a beer can hidden in his.

in his out close drawer.

We each wander separately for a while. I was also trying to imagine the life Peter in his dad had built in here. What was the house for them? The most startling aspect of the house is how dark IT is inside. It's bright southern california sunshine outside. And then you step into this bunker, the windows are completely covered with fabric or curtains that aren't just closed their clip together so no eye can peak through the curtains were to keep Rachel and Peter's mother from seeing inside if he came by their mom and dad divorced in one thousand nine hundred and seventy seven.

But Rachel mother has been a factor, Rachel's entire life, Rachel members being on the phone with Peter years ago, their mother was outside, knocking on the door, and Peter was army, crawling on his stomach, using his elbows to get from the kitchen to his bedroom to stay below any possible site line. Neighbors were unnoticed to let Peter and his dad know if they saw her after texting with Rachel and Peter's mother, talking to people who've known her and encountered her over the years and reading court documents that include statements she's made. I believe she's someone who's been failed by multiple systems in this country and is also someone whose behavior has had a sustained, devastating effect on Rachel in her family.

The darkness made the house to me feel somewhere between a trap and a cocoon. Rachel found stacks of papers in the house, and let me look through them from these. I finally get a sense of her dad in his own words. I found an application her father filled out for relief under the dad, Frank, making home affordable program. There's a handwritten statement in neat blue, all caps writing called a hardship after for David.

From october twenty sixteen, her dad wrote, quote, since one thousand nine hundred and seventy five, I have been employed as a professional in the petroleum engineering industry that has fAllen on hard times due to collapsing oil Prices, causing me loss of employment and income. I'm currently receiving eighteen hundred dollars per month in unemployment benefits, and that is my only current income. I've depleted all of my cash reserves in order to help keep a roof over the heads of my daughter and five grandchildren.

I have no stacks I R A for a one k or pension planned to fall back on. The second mortgage on my primary residence increased from seven hundred fifty one dollars per month to two thousand and seven hundred sixty eight dollars per month recently, and i'm in danger of losing my home of fifty two years. As the statement is written and quote, Rachel sister, father was always mysterious about money, and he says he didn't know about any of this, didn't know he was unemployed backbend, didn't know about the ballooning second mortgage, didn't know how worried he'd been about money one before code peak.

Commodo was an intelligent man with a college degree who made decent money when he was working and worked most of his life. He also fully supported his adult son, and IT helped his daughter get and keep her family's home in register. Peter told Rachel after their dad died that the last job their dad had gotten, he'd been let go the first day because he couldn't provide proof of vaccination. Peter said their dad had cashed out his life insurance policy a few weeks before dying because he was behind on mortgage payments for the santana house. A cocoon and a trap, like many people's homes are.

Rachel doesn't blame Peter for talking her father into his cover beliefs.

No, I matter, my dad, for creating a person who could talk into that. I mean, it's .

Frankincense .

monsters as mary Shelley's are going to get .

like you .

did this, you couple together the pieces of a person you broke. And you did your best to keeps them animated. But in the end, like you didn't you just did, there just wasn't enough effort on your part to sort of do the damage that you caused.

For years she's been Carrying in her head visions of alternate futures for her dad and her brother in everyone. They are out of this house and away from each other SHE. Imagine Peter possibly married a father transformed by parent hood in wonderful ways.

If he was lucky, he was only forty four when he died. Plenty of time for even big changes, if you'd wanted that. Here in the house, I saw a way to more in these lost futures won by one, and begin laying eat to rest alongside the people her father and brother had actually been SHE SAT down on a chair in Peter's room.

a singing other day, how how close he was to a world. Dad wasn't in IT or our dad wasn't there.

You mean if your dad had died, and then Peter had survived.

ter had survived, like the night I said, Peter, we have to sell that house knowing he was gna deny IT. And when he said, I know that changed everything for me, I understood, he understood the way of this house like the true weight of IT, how physically demanding to craw through all of this, you know, like mountains of casein fucking nonsense. He understood in that moment, even when he was dying, that this house had to go. And I think of.

like who he could have been without this house.

and who he could have been without my dad, like he could have. And maybe this is just my own rewriting, but I really believe that he could have been free. Like, like, I felt like, are dad dying? I was getting a new brother.

I was skinning out petless Peter. And what was that? Gonna be like, I had hope, I hope.

What's left in the winning days, but we hope are the winning days of a pandemic. Just us, the country we were before, we lost over a million people to covered the country.

We still are a place with a non system of health care and mental health care, with sixty seven year old who are running out of money and forty four years old driven to paranoia by lies and isolation, and poets slogging their way through death paperwork while raising children and trying to make sense of their losses. After spending months talking to Rachel, I thought about how often grief has questioned at its core, what have I lost here? How much is what's left enough?

A lot of reaches poems are answers to those questions. Different answers at different times. SHE has a love poem that has no title.

I asked her to read the end of IT out loud. It's about loving someone after you've loved a bunch of other people. It's about the overwhelming feeling of finding home after having .

wondered for .

a very long time glass love, I once vowed my heart to another forgive me last love. I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room and come out empty. Forgive me last love, I have cursed the woman you loved before me.

Forgive me .

last love, I envy your mother's body where you resided first. Forgive me last love, I am all that is left. Forgive me, I did not see you coming.

Forgive me, last love every day without you was a life I crawled out of. amen. Last love.

You are my last love and last laugh. I am all that is left. amen. I am all that is left. amen.

We were three was produced by gene pifer and me and edited by executive editor Julie snyder, editing help from meal drummer ira glass, jana hana, jf ewalt and Sarah ic editorial consulting by k sa laman ive in a resky and sark vado research in fact checking by ben fAiling original score by sophie Allison of soccer mommy, with additional original music by maggi I sound design and music supervision by Michael comedie.

The supervising producer is in day to bo july whittaker is digital manager sam don't ic is an assistant managing editor of the new york times. At the new york times, thanks to Jordan cohen, Kelly do, linsey Fisher, Jason fujii, Green desire, A B. Laun Jackson, nala m.

Jerey, maranda, anisim uni, Megan shepard, Julia Simon, alumina, suma chemistry and Susan westling. Special thanks to Anthony almada, rn a audition, tyson bell, travel bedford, Rachel bender, ignatio, Daniel Elliott, jeremy fost, Derek law, Christian manzoni, Jason salemi, mark supo and tim tremble. I'm grateful to everyone who talked to me about Rachel, Peter and pete, and thank you to Rachel into her family. They let me into their home at inconvenient times and answered every question we were. Three is from serial productions and the new york times.