She closed her eyes and concentrated on taking slow sips, willing things to settle down, to go back to normal. Her surroundings were beginning to come back. The sun from the big window fell warm on her shoulders.

“How often has it happened?”

She swallowed, savoring the sweetness that was seeping into her bloodstream, and opened her eyes.

“Four times, before now. At Ocracoke, then again the next night. We were camping, on the road.” She flinched at the memory; lying rigid on the ground next to Roger, the children asleep between them. Her heart racing, fists clenched not to grab Roger’s arm and shake him awake. “That was bad—it went on for hours. Or at least it seemed like hours. It stopped finally, just before dawn.” She’d felt wrung out, limp as the dew-damp clothes that wrapped her limbs; she still remembered the terrible effort needed to rise, to put one foot in front of the other …

The next time had been a week later, on a barge in the Yadkin River, and the last before this on the road from Cross Creek to Salisbury.

“Those weren’t so bad. Just a few minutes—like this one.” She took another sip, held it in her mouth, then swallowed and looked up at her mother. “Do you know what it is?”

Her mother was wiping up the last of the vomit from the raw floorboards, lips compressed, a pair of vertical lines visible between her soft brows.

“There’s a limit to what I can say for certain, lacking an EKG,” Claire said, eyes on the cloth she was using. “But speaking very generally—it sounds as though you’re exhibiting something called atrial fibrillation. It’s not life threatening,” she added quickly, looking up and seeing the alarm on Bree’s face.

Her heart had given a sort of flopping leap at her mother’s words, and was beating now in what seemed a tentative fashion. Her knees were quivering and she sat down, quite suddenly. Her mother dropped the cloth, got down beside her, and pulled her close. Her face was half buried in her mother’s coarse gray apron, smelling of grease and rosemary, soft soap and cider. The smell of the cloth, of Mama’s body, brought helpless tears to her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t life threatening, but she could tell that it wasn’t nothing, either.

“It’s going to be all right,” her mother whispered into her hair. “It’ll be all right, baby.”

She was clutching her mother’s arm, hard, the slender bone a life raft.

“If—if anything happens—you’ll take care of the kids for me.” It wasn’t a question and her mother didn’t take it as one.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation, and the quivering sensation eased in Bree’s chest. She was breathing hard, but there didn’t seem room for enough air.

“Okay,” she said. She could feel her fingers trembling on her mother’s arm, and with an effort let go. “Okay,” she said again, and sitting up straight, pushed her hair out of her face. “Okay. Now what?”