All the old dolls will click their tongues and say, “Yes, poor Crow Fortune. Deathly ill with the tumours smack dab in the middle of her brains. What a sin. So young. What, thirty-­something was she? Makes ya wonder, don’t it. About them Fortunes and the . . . you know.”

Because nobody will come right out and say it. It’s always whispered every time something terrible happens to one of us. The . . . you know. The thing that makes us lunatics, or criminals, or both. The thing that cuts us down in the prime of our lives. The curse of the Poor Unfortunate Fortunes. They say it goes back generations. I say it’s a convenient cover for people who are prone to poor life choices, bad luck, and bouts of lunacy. Either way there’s a story here about me, about my people, about this place, and I need to be the one to tell it. If only to myself. Get this life of mine down on paper while I still can. That’s item number one on my bucket list. Or, my Fuck It List. Because fuck it, I’m dying, so I’ll say and do whatever I want now. But first, I better get those towels out on the clothesline before Mama has a conniption fit.

My feet are barely planted on the worn vinyl of my bedroom floor when my phone buzzes. A text message from my best friend, Allie, reads simply: Mom’s gone.

Allie’s mother, Reenie, is dead.

Reenie Walker had been dying in fits and starts ever since she was diagnosed with ALS when Allie was in tenth grade. One year later, the woman who built her family’s log cabin home with her own two hands couldn’t hold a teacup. Allie sold her beloved Shaggin’ Wagon to buy her mother a wheelchair van just before graduation. And while I was gallivanting around Toronto, pissing away my blueberry juice money on napkin rings to match the seasonal centrepieces on my dining-room table, Allie was a decade deep into being her mother’s full-time caregiver in a tiny Halifax apartment decorated with tubes, monitors, and forgotten dreams. Reenie lived far longer than anyone expected. I can’t tell if that was a blessing or a curse.

Oh honey. I’m so sorry. R U ok? I text back.

Which is stupid. Of course she’s okay. Allie Walker is always okay. She’s been preparing for her mother’s passing for years. Talking about it openly. Looking forward to the kind of freedom that would inevitably come once this hard, sad chapter of her life closed. Of course there will be grief. Guilt, too. It so happened that Reenie died on the only night in ten years Allie was away from her bedside. It was a quick jaunt to Boston, for her first real job interview since her mother got sick. A big medical research company was looking to hire a patient and family coordinator for a project in Nova Scotia. Allie applied on a whim and was shocked when they called her back. Even more shocked that the position came with flexibility, benefits, training, and a paycheque well beyond the pittance of her mother’s disability pension. So, Allie missed out on the last act of unflinching love that she’d been dutifully rehearsing in her head for years. The moment where she would hold her mother’s hand, kiss her on the forehead, and whisper, “I love you, Mom. You can let go now.” Instead, it was a home care nurse who didn’t know that everyone called her Reenie, and not Irene. But Allie is and will be okay. The woman’s a rock.