Elin says she called Margaux back but she sounded upbeat, engaging Elin in a discussion of her very favorite subject—"over there." Elin had just been released from the hospital after a life-threatening infection and Margaux presumed she had had a near-death experience. "Isn't it wonderful over there," Margaux exclaimed. Elin says they spoke for half an hour about life and death and reincarnation. "I could sense that Margaux did not want to hang up. Maybe she wanted reassurance."
She also wanted Elin to use her contacts as a chiropractor to get her a couple of months' supply of phenobarbital. "She told me she was going to be away for a few months and needed it for her epilepsy," Elin says. "Until then I didn't even know she had epilepsy." Elin didn't furnish the phenobarbital; her contacts were out of town.
Denne Petitclerc is a writer who knew Ernest Hemingway, visited him in Havana, and first met Margaux there when she was a toddler. Over the years, they had had many discussions about "this great mystery she was passing through." They disagreed about reincarnation. But in Ketchum on the morning of Margaux's funeral, he was up before dawn, looking at the mountains. "What came to my mind was a vision of a cheetah in the Serengeti Plain stretching in the sun. And when she turned to look at me she had Margaux's eyes."
