Her body wilts, and for the first time I notice how old she looks. My favorite picture of my mother is from her wedding day. Her long, golden hair slightly blown back. Her eyes—narrow and green like mine—shine as she stares at my dad. They’re dancing. One hand covers her mouth like she’s laughing at something he said. I love the picture because I don’t know my mom that way. She never speaks about my sister, Annie, but my dad once admitted that my mom smiled less after Annie died.

When my dad died, it sucked away any remaining happiness. I can’t even imagine what she’d do if something happened to me.

“What were you thinking?”

Something in me softens, and I consider giving her an honest response. I’m searching for the right words when she sees the neb cylinder isn’t completely drained. “You didn’t finish your meds!” she accuses, like she caught me snorting drugs.

Any emotion she’d stirred up inside me flattens. I sweep a pile of lettuce and cheese into the dustpan and brace myself.

“You can’t stop a treatment halfway through.”

I squeeze the pan’s handle, dumping another pile into the trash. “They gave me two at the hospital.”

“This isn’t something to mess with. If your lungs stop working . . .”

It’s always about my lungs. My breathing. My body that doesn’t work right. “I hardly think—”

“Exactly! You never think—that’s the problem. You just run around doing whatever pleases you in the moment without thinking about what’s going to happen next.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and stare at the granite countertop, the broom and dustpan clutched in my hands.

My mom rips off a paper towel and begins frantically wiping the kitchen sink until every drop of excess water has been rubbed away. She balls the paper towel, clenching it in her fist. “Do you have a death wish, Lia?”

“No.” She doesn’t care that her insinuation hurts.

“Your father was a smart man who planned everything out to the last detail, and he died investigating this.”

It isn’t the first time she’s thrown in my face that I’m not the brainchild she hoped I’d be. Or the first time I’ve wondered if Annie would have been the prodigy expected from the offspring of the great Margaret and Steven Finch.

She throws the paper towel into the trash. “You’re all I have. Remember that.”