Her favorite book, a novel about an Irish immigrant searching for a better life in America in the 1930s, usually helped her to escape to another world. But today she just couldn’t concentrate on Frank McCourt and his story, so she put the book into her bag.

She stood, giving in to her nervousness, and marched up and down the almost empty waiting room.

“Have you heard anything from Madison?” Rita Mae asked.

Sherry reached one end of the room and turned. When she came closer again, she asked, “Do we really have to talk about that right now?” That woman and their agreement was the last thing on her mind.

“Why not?”

Sherry opened her mouth to say, “Because some doctor is cutting inside my son’s throat right now,” but talking about something—anything—to keep her mind occupied probably wasn’t such a bad idea. “No, I haven’t heard a thing. I guess she’s busy with the moving preparations. But yesterday her interior designer called. Can you imagine? An interior designer. Anyway, she wanted to know what kind of bed and wallpaper Jake wants to have in his room.” A smile formed on her lips. “He was so excited.”

“And?” Rita Mae giggled, but she sobered when the only other people in the waiting room, a couple, glared at her disapprovingly. “Will you in the future be sleeping in a room full of airplanes on the walls or what?”

Sherry sat down beside Rita Mae so that she didn’t need to shout through half of the waiting room. “Spiderwebs. He wants to have Spiderman wallpaper and a racing car bed.”

Before Rita Mae could answer, the doors to the operating theater opened and someone in scrubs emerged.

The man passed without taking notice of them.

Sherry looked to the closed door again. Behind it, Jake was lying on an operating table somewhere.

“It’s gonna be all right.” Rita Mae covered Sherry’s hand with her own. “All over the world, kids get their tonsils out every day.”

“But those kids are not my baby.”

Rita Mae caressed the back of Sherry’s hand with her thumb.

Sherry took Rita Mae’s rough one in hers. When her mother had kicked her out back when she had found out Sherry was pregnant, she never would have thought to have something like a family helping her. But Rita Mae was more than a friend to her. And even though she was much older than Sherry’s mother, she felt closer to her than she had ever to the woman who had given birth to her. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

Sherry leaned her head against Rita Mae’s shoulder. “For everything.”

They were silent for a few minutes until Rita Mae said, “You haven’t told me how Jake reacted to the news that we’re moving.”