Many nights I had lain awake pondering this same question. As the days passed, weeks slipped by, months eroded, I felt like I was stuck in a fever dream, reminiscing about a girl who never existed. A happy girl. The more memories I collected, the more a portrait emerged of a girl who resented quickly, begrudged fiercely, and whose anger was too big for her body. Had Debra asked me six months ago if Vera would do anything for family, I would have wholeheartedly said yes. But now…after finding out more and more of who Vera truly was outside of our four walls, I realized I didn’t know anything about her.

“Was it too much to ask of her, to donate an organ to help her dying sister? Because if there was any other way, Mom, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would give up my own life to save Syd’s…but I suppose it’s unfair to expect Vera to do the same.”

“There’s no right or wrong here, Felicity. Whether or not that’s why Vera left, you did nothing wrong. You weren’t going to force her into anything, and she should have known that, not taken off.”

Except Debra wasn’t there the night I broached the subject with Oliver. Debra didn’t hear our heated conversation, didn’t know what I had said to Oliver in a weak, emotional moment. I had replayed the argument a million times since the night Vera left, memorized every word, wondering if there was any possible way Vera could have heard and how she might have interpreted it. Every time I came back to the same conclusion: it was enough to drive my daughter away.

My words echoed back at me: “The fact that Vera is a match is nearly impossible, Oliver, given her history. Clearly it’s a sign that she has to do it! Right now Syd’s life is more important, and if Vera can’t understand that, then maybe she’s not the daughter we thought she was.”

If only I could rewind to that night, to that conversation and delete it…but life didn’t have a rewind button.

We stepped into the cool October air and strolled along a covered walkway festooned with crisscrossing strings of LED ghosts flashing orange, green, and purple. Grinning jack-o’-lanterns, spooky in the gathering darkness, squatted atop artistic arrangements of hay bales, corn stalks, and friendly scarecrows. Paper bag luminaries adorned with witch and bat silhouettes lined the walkway. A ginormous inflatable archway in the form of a jolly Jack Skellington, natty in signature pinstripes, welcomed visitors at the mall entrance. It was about an hour before closing and only a few cars dotted the nearly empty parking lot.