“If this isn’t a disaster, I don’t know what is,” she said to Buttons, who wagged his tail excitedly, using his body to help prop her up.

She looked over at the panting creature. A weeping scab the size of her fist took up the entire left side of its head. Strands of stained fur fell like dirty snowflakes onto the ground.

It turned a jaundiced eye toward her, and she saw hate.

“You are becoming your own…thing, aren’t you?” she said.

It grunted in reply, a bloody line of drool spilling over its bottom lip.

“You hate what you’ve inherited from me, don’t you?”

It turned away from her and she could see the knobs of its spine, flesh mottled and gray, so much of its hair sloughing off.

“The doctors told me that if I’d ever been able to have children, they would more than likely have come down with some of the same diseases I have. In a way, that made me glad I couldn’t conceive.” The fact that she was talking to the monster as if they were chatting over dinner didn’t faze her. Maybe she was out of her mind, but a dying woman had every right to do and say anything she wanted without fear of judgment. “But now that I did – and believe me, I’d love to know how the hell you came out of me, so to speak – I’m glad you got it all and then some. It hurts, doesn’t it? That never-ending burning. The way your bones feel like shattered glass. How every muscle feels as if it’s being torn and sewn back, only to be torn again seconds later. Did you get mad and desperate when I stopped taking my meds? Did the pain suddenly seem like it was too much to bear? Are you scared?” She put her good hand to her chest. “I know I’m scared. I hope you choke on that fear.”

It swiped a paw at her, knocking her onto her side. Buttons went into a barking frenzy.

Kate saw down the path. Pearls of sunshine sparkled on the swath of lake visible through the trees. Oh, how she’d envisioned herself and Andrew spending hour after hour on that lake. In a just world, they would be there now, enjoying an afternoon swim before lying on their towels at the shore, feeling the sun kiss their dripping bodies and reveling in one another’s company.

The world had never been just, and the lake was a constant reminder of the life denied them.

She was so tired.

The sound of Buttons barking began to fade.

Rough hands tugged her off the ground.

The awful smell covered her nose and mouth like a rag of chloroform.

There was the faint impression of movement, but all she could hear was the lunatic thrum of her heart, all rhythm lost.