She sat down on the molded plastic chair by the bed. Now she had a genuine question for her mother, and she intended to get an answer.

Sometime around four o’clock, she slumped in her chair and fell asleep.

The trilling of her cell phone wakened her. She unfolded slowly, painfully, rubbing the crick in her neck. It took her a moment to realize where she was.

The hospital.

Harborview.

She stood up. Her mother’s bed was empty. She wrenched open the closet doors.

Empty. The bag was crumpled into a ball and left behind.

“Shit.”

Her cell phone rang again. She glanced at the incoming number. “Hey, Edna,” she said, sinking back into the chair.

“You sound awful.”

“Bad night.” She wished she’d touched the necklace now; already it was taking on the blurry edges of a dream. “What time is it?”

“Six, your time. Are you sitting down?”

“Coincidentally, I am.”

“Do you still take off part of November and all of December?”

“So that my crew can enjoy the holidays with their families?” she said bitterly. “I do.”

“I know you’re usually busy with that friend of yours—”

“Not this year.”

“Good. Then maybe you’d like to come to the Antarctic with me. I’m doing a documentary on global warming. I think it’s an important story, Tully. Someone of your stature would get it watched.”

The offer was a Godsend. A moment before she’d been wanting to get away from her own life. You couldn’t get much farther than Antarctica. “How long will we be gone?”

“Six weeks; seven at the most. You could fly back and forth, but it’s a hell of a trip.”

“Sounds perfect. I need to get away. How soon can we leave?”

Naked, Kate stood in front of the mirror in her bathroom, studying her body. All her life she’d been engaged in a guerrilla-type war with her reflection. Her thighs had always been too fleshy, no matter how much weight she lost, and her tummy pooched out after three kids. She did sit-ups at the gym, but still her middle sagged. She’d stopped wearing sleeveless shirts about three years ago—arm jiggle. And her breasts . . . Since the boys’ births, she’d started wearing heavier-molded, less sexy bras, that was for sure, and she tightened the straps to pull her boobs into place.

Now, though, when she looked at herself, she saw how little all of that mattered, what a waste of time it had been.

She stepped closer, practicing the words she’d chosen, rehearsing. If ever there was a moment in her life that required strength, this was it.