Page 6 - It Ends with Us

Chapter One

As I sit here with one foot on ei ther side of the led ge, looking down
from twel ve stories above the street s of Boston, I can’t hel p but thi nk
about suicide.
Not my own. I like my life eno ugh to want to see it thro ugh.

I’m more focused on other peo ple, and ho w they ultimately come
to the dec ision to just end thei r own lives . Do the y ever regret it? In the
moment after let ting go and the sec ond bef ore they make impact,
there has to be a little bit of rem orse in tha t brief free fall. Do they
look at the ground as it rushes toward them and thi nk , “Well, crap .

Thi s was a bad ide a. ”
Someho w, I thi nk no t.
I thi nk about dea th a lot. Particularly today, cons ideri ng I just—
twel ve hours ea rlier—g ave one of the most ep ic eu logies the peo ple
of Plet hora, Maine, ha ve ev er witnes sed . Okay, maybe it wasn’t the
most ep ic. It ver y wel l could be cons idered the most disastrous. I gues s
tha t would dep end on whet her you were asking my mother or me. My

mothe r, who probab ly won’t speak to me for a solid year af ter today.
Don’t get me wrong ; the eu logy I del ivered wasn’t profound
eno ugh to make hi story, like the one Brooke Shi el ds del ivered at
Micha el Jackson’s funera l. Or the one del ivered by Stev e Jobs’s sister.
Or Pat Tillman’s brother. But it was ep ic in its own way.
I was ner vous at firs t. It was the funera l of the prodigious And rew

Bloom, after all. Adored mayor of my ho met own of Plet ho ra, Maine.
Owner of the most succes sful rea l-es tate agenc y withi n city limits.
Husband of the hi ghl y adored Jenny Bloom, the most rev ered
tea chi ng assistant in all of Plet ho ra. And father of Lily Bloom—t ha t
strang e girl with the erra tic red ha ir who onc e fel l in love with a
ho mel es s guy and brought great sha me upon her ent ire family.
Tha t would be me. I’m Lily Bloom, and And rew was my father.