Ashley squirmed. “So if you grew up here, you must still know people who live here. You’ll want to see them.”

“No.” Joanna looked away. “There’s no one I want to see.”

“Why? Are we hiding?”

“You can come and go as you please. You’re not a prisoner, Ashley, but I assumed you’d prefer some privacy while you rest and recuperate and figure out a plan.”

It sounded good, except she didn’t have a plan. She didn’t have a clue what to do next.

Joanna poured a glass of water from a jug by her side. “Do you have a job? Are you in college?”

“I’ve had a job since I was sixteen.” She thought about Luigi, the owner of the pizza restaurant. He’d always been kind to her. “The plan was to go to college, but my mom’s medical bills were huge. And that’s fine,” she added quickly, “because that was the priority, obviously. I worked when I could, and a neighbor came and sat with her.”

“Was her illness sudden?”

“Yes. She had pneumonia and then it turned to septicemia.” It still didn’t seem real to her. How could someone be fine one minute and then dead the next? “To begin with they thought she’d recover. We talked about things we’d never talked about before...” And she knew she’d never, ever forget that conversation. She had so many questions. So much still unresolved. “And then she got worse. She was in intensive care for a few weeks and then she died.” It was a relief to finally talk about it to someone. There was only so much a person could hold inside and she was already holding far too much.

“That’s so tough.” Joanna’s voice was gentle.

“They said she should have recovered, but she didn’t. The infection was too much and her body couldn’t handle it.” It was the thing she’d struggled with the most. The randomness of life. The fact that you could be doing fine one minute, and then dead the next. The shock had been disorientating. “It made me wonder what the point of planning is. I mean, my mom had plans. There was stuff she was going to do when I went off to college. We had our life all worked out, and it was nothing earthshaking—small things, you know?—but I was excited and she was excited.”

She probably shouldn’t say any of these things to Joanna but she needed to say them to someone. She’d been alone with her thoughts for too long and Joanna was a good listener. Or maybe it was because she understood how it felt to have life turned upside down.

“What were you hoping to study?”