Aaron Tracy

It happened so swiftly that one didn't have time to prepare for it, Dahl writes.

I was in a kind of daze, I suppose, and morbid thoughts kept after me.

That kind of thought can run you down, you know, worrying about fate and the meaning of things.

I couldn't do any writing.

And that went on for about a year and a half.

According to Dennison, Dahl's only recourse is to try to figure out exactly what happened to Olivia.

Maybe he can invent something that will help others in the same situation, like the medical tube he made for Theo.

He remembers that Olivia, strangely, hadn't had a reaction to her smallpox vaccinations years before, meaning she seemed naturally immune to that disease.

Huh, maybe there was a connection between that and her measles reaction.

He begins writing letters to specialists around the globe.

He is desperate for answers.

Still, Dahl seems hellbent on blaming himself for Olivia's death.

After Theo's accident on the Upper East Side, Dahl and Neil had decided to get the hell out of Manhattan.

Neil's strategy to deal with all this grief is through religion, finding solace in her southern Protestant upbringing.

But Dahl is dismissive of nearly all religious beliefs, comparing them to superstition.

I don't have those feelings at all, he writes, though he does confess to having moments of wondering how so much misfortune could befall one family.

But Dahl doesn't see it as a curse, or as he puts it, a doom coming down on us.

He just thought, how odd.

I don't think I'm capable of taking it beyond that.

Superstition is something one grows out of.