She smiled. “Maybe. When I woke up, I couldn’t see any baby and I got scared, so I started talking to God. We came to an agreement that if I lived and my baby lived, I would devote my life to Him.”

“But how did you know someone was there to talk to in the first place?”

“He spoke first.”

I opened my eyes. Grandma was sitting on my bed in her yellow cardigan, the ginger ale glass forgotten in her hands.

“Not the usual way of speaking,” she said. “It’s mental.”

“Sounds mental.”

“Spiritual, then. But that’s not a word your generation uses.”

“Mental,” I said, “means it’s in the mind. The mind comes from the brain.”

“Mmm,” said Grandma.

“So if the brain stops, there’s no more mind.”

“That’s why we say spiritual.”

“Spiritual’s not in the brain? Then where is it, exactly?”

Long silence. “Do you wonder about these things, Maddy?”

“Sometimes.”

“Of course,” said Grandma, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Maddy,” she went on, “do you suppose that everything around us . . .” Her knobby hand took in my lavender walls, my Snarky Puppy posters, my dresser with its jewelry stand in the shape of a ball gown and its rows of Muji candles, down to my blue fleece blanket, on which Cloud was curled up acting out her name: all the fixtures of my life that I didn’t under any circumstances want to leave. “Not to mention where we come from, where we’re going, what makes you you, is all figured out already? Already known?”

“Someone must know.”

“How would they?”

“Have you ever heard of science?”

Grandma wrinkled her forehead but decided to overlook it. If you have cancer you can get away with lots of the lowest form of humor.

I turned over with difficulty. Either my muscles were going soft from disuse or the chemo was attacking them too. Grandma helped settle me on my other side and put her hand on my cheek. Where she touched me was the only part of me that didn’t hurt.

“Science is certainly a powerful way of understanding the world. Never underestimate science. But it’s not all there is.”

“How do you know?”

After a long pause, she said: “I don’t.”

“Oh, great.” I turned my head away.

“Do you want to come to church with us sometime, Maddy? Your grandpa and I would love it. Remember you used to go to Sunday school when you were little? To our other church?”