Having reduced my friend to a mess, Bonnie and Molly turned to me.

They said a man was near me, standing just over my shoulder. He was, they both agreed, my murdered father.

Oh, please. My father. Here, let's just take a little break from the nonsense.

Anyone could know the details of my father's death. The strange, ironic circle. When he was 3 years old, his own father had shot his mother, then stalked my father around the house, trying to shoot him. My dad's first memories are of hiding under a bed, hearing his father call, and seeing his heavy boots walk past, the smoking barrel of the rifle hanging near the floor. While he hid, his father eventually shot himself. Then, my dad spent his life running from the scene. My siblings also say he spent his life trying to find his mother by marrying woman after woman. Always divorcing and remarrying. He'd been divorced from my mother for 20 years when he saw a personal ad in the newspaper. He started dating the author of the ad, not knowing she had a violent ex-husband. Coming home from their third date, the ex-husband shot them both in the woman's house. That was in April 1999.

Really, these details have been published everywhere. The whole mess has gone to trial, and the murderer is sentenced to death. Bonnie and Molly needed no gifts to know any of this.

But still they persisted. They said my father was very sorry for something he'd done to me when I was 4 years old. He knew it was cruel, but it was the only way he could think to teach me a lesson. Bonnie and Molly, they held hands and said they saw me as a small boy, kneeling beside a chopping block. My father was standing over me, holding something wooden.

"It's a stick," they said, then said, "No it's not. It's an ax..."

The rest of my friends were quiet; Ina's weeping had effectively silenced their giggling.

Bonnie and Molly said, "You're 4 years old, and you're deciding something very important. It's something that will shape the rest of your life..."