"Tell me, why did you do it Mary?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "A pull to create something noticeable in my final moments?"

"What about your family? Your children, what will they do without their mother?"

"They'll live and hopefully forget me – a sudden gone existence, a coward not worth remembering."

"You can't truly believe that - you brought them into this world, right? They will think back on their faint memory of you and wonder what could have been. Wonder why they didn't have both parents at their art shows."

She shrugged. "The beauty of uncertainty, I suppose. They'll think of me fondly, without the sting of soured expectations. I surely couldn't have given them the life they deserved; there was something broken in me in this life, I think."

"But now, you'll never know."

Mary took the outstretched hand and agreed, "Now, I'll never know."