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“This is your home, Kira,” I explain. “You shouldn’t be scared in your own home.”

Her voice is so quiet I almost miss it: “But what if you’re the one I’m scared of?”

9

Kira

Ipull the chair closer to Mom’s bed until the metal legs scrape against the linoleum, a sound that feels too loud in the hushed room. Her hand lies still beneath mine, the skin cool and papery.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, trying to sound chipper for her sake.

She looks the same as she did yesterday, and the day before that, and before that, and, well, since she ended up here after my dad lost control of the car one and a half years ago. Her chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm is the only sign that she’s alive.

Her lips are dry today, and there’s a faint line between her eyebrows that hasn’t smoothed away. She looks like she’s concentrating on something just out of reach.

I fish out the chapstick in my jacket pocket and carefully apply some to Mom’s lips. “There we go,” I say as I smooth it across her skin.

Before the accident, Mom wasn’t the kind of person who cared if her lips were dry. But since she can’t make a decision and take care of the problem herself, I feel better doing it for her.

The room smells the way hospital rooms always smell: like antiseptic and industrial cleaner with something sweet underneath, like the air freshener they pump through the vents to mask the rest. Fluorescent lights hum overhead.

As I look around, I notice there’s a fake bouquet of wildflowers on the side table. The stems are plastic, the petals too perfectly shaped, a spray of purple and yellow that doesn’t belong in this beige room.

Even though I know it’s pointless, I ask Mom, “Do you have a secret admirer?” I swear her fingers twitch slightly at my question. “Oh, so you like the idea of that, do you?” I tease, hoping she’ll give another sign that she knows I’m here. But she doesn’t move again.

Next to the mystery flowers sits the get-well card I brought last week, the one with a watercolor sunset I thought she’d like. My handwriting inside is small and cramped, filling every inch of blank space because I had too much to say and nowhere else to put it.

I smooth the thin hospital blanket… wait, this is a different one. This isn’t the thin scrap she usually has. It’s plush and feels great. When I check the label at the bottom it even says it’s temperature regulating.

“Lucky you,” I mumble as I smooth it over her chest, tucking it under her arms the way she used to tuck me in. Her hair has gotten long—she’d hate that—and a loose strand falls across her forehead. I brush it back with my thumb, feeling the fine texture against my skin.

“Your hair is getting out of control,” I tell her. “You’d be so pissed.”

I can’t help wincing as I take a sip of the coffee I bought from the cafeteria downstairs. I tell Mom she needs to stay away from the cheap stuff when she wakes up. It tastes as if it were brewed yesterday and reheated this morning.

Luckily, it’s also strong enough that the yawn building in my chest gets swallowed back down. I need that. Three days of barely sleeping have left a fog in my head that caffeine is the only thing cutting through.

Three days.

It feels longer since I saw Greg kneeling and bloody in the penthouse. Since Domenico told me I was the reason Greg was still alive. Since… well, since I basically told my husband I fear him.

Despite saying he wouldn’t let me be alone, he left a few hours later, and he didn’t come to bed until after three in the morning. I know because I was still awake, staring at the wall, listening to the penthouse settle around me.

I pretended to be asleep when he finally slipped under the covers, pulling me close and wrapping his arms around me. That’s how he held me all night. Whenever I tried to move, he tightened his grip.

I don’t know whether he knew I was pretending or not. Maybe he really thought I was asleep. That would explain why he didn’t make me touch myself as he usually does. Which, yeah, I’m surprised by. And for reasons I really don’t want to examine, even a little disappointed.

Shaking my head, I abandon my thoughts and focus on Mom again.

“I’m singing at mass on Sunday,” I tell her. “The soprano section’s down two people since June, and you know how he gets about balance.”

I pause, waiting for the laugh that doesn’t come. Mom used to conduct the choir from the pews when she thought Father Joseph wasn’t looking, her hands moving in small, precise gestures that made the other parishioners smile.

She’d catch me watching and press her finger to her lips, her eyes crinkling at the corners. Now her face is still.

I finish the cold coffee and set the cup down. My throat feels tight, the way it always does when the hope I carried through the door thins and the reality of the room settles back in.

Leaning forward, I press my forehead to the back of her hand. Her skin smells like hospital soap and something underneath that’s still her. I close my eyes and breathe it in.