“Get together for a picture,” I said. Leah edged closer to the bed, holding tight to my mom’s hand. “Closer.” I waved. She hunched down beside the bed, tried to put her free arm around my mom, thought otherwise and placed an elbow on the mattress. I touched the shutter, looked to see the image: Leah, bone where the baby fat had been; my mom, pale and oddly childlike. Something about her mouth, the drugs, made her look like a kid with a retainer, lips puffed up over wire and bulk.

“No pain,” she murmured.

“That’s good,” I said. Leah sat and I hid my phone. We asked questions, waited for answers my mother couldn’t manage. I opened my phone again to read to the room, a news bulletin about special counsels and abuses of power, political stories I didn’t follow but felt now that I should.

“Don’t even get me started,” Leah said.

My mother looked back and forth at each of us then closed her eyes. Normally, any mention of politics set her off, her voice picking up, fevered by certainty, causes she was certain were good and true and right. She was loud about what she believed in a way that made me want to temper her energy. My realism provided moderation. I had realistic assumptions about people and politics, men and power, women and what they’d do to stay close to men and power. My mother assumed all women were on her side, and she was shocked when this turned out to be untrue, as it often did. Mostly, she picked political fights with men, anyway. Doctors, post-office clerks, and dog-sitting clients; NA leaders, any man she could find, really. It was a test, to see if they’d admit their privilege and promise to do better. But it also appeared to be a sort of flirting, like she wanted to change their minds, not just about politics, but about her personal worth, which was also in question, though she wouldn’t admit it. She focused on her chronic ailments instead. Excuses I had thought. And how wrong I’d been.

I finished reading the story and my voice trailed off, but I stayed inside my phone, the screen. From the corner of my vision, I saw Leah move to her bag, find her own phone, sit back down. When I looked up next, she was scrolling.

“TRY AGAIN TOMORROW, girls,” Nancy the nurse said when she kicked us out. I wrote my number on the whiteboard, turned my ringer up. It was late, almost eleven, and Leah’s flight was in the morning.

“I assumed they’d let us stay all night,” she said.

I hadn’t thought about how long we could visit, hadn’t considered Leah had come for my mother only, and not at all for me. I drove us back toward the cottage. But I could tell she didn’t want to see it.