Finally the cough subsided.

“Okay?” Louisa asked.

Maggie nodded and wiped her cheeks dry, handing Louisa the water glass. “That’s what I get for cracking myself up.”

“Why don’t you get up off the floor?” Louisa set the glass on the table and knelt down beside Maggie, bracing her underneath her arm.

Maggie shifted, and Cody knelt at her other side. Together, he and Louisa helped Maggie up onto the love seat.

“We aren’t done,” Maggie said.

“We can take a break.” Louisa perched on the sofa beside the old woman. “I’m tired of looking through all this junk anyway.”

Maggie cackled again.

The old woman wasn’t sentimental, so in spite of her own sadness, Louisa purposed to stay upbeat. She could cry later. And she knew she would.

Louisa glanced at Cody, who stood awkwardly, staring at them. She’d told him Maggie was dying, but seeing it firsthand was something else altogether. Concern had spread across his face, and Louisa’s stomach ached at the sight of it.

He’d always been so good. So caring. So kind. Never mind that he now treated her like a pariah—at this moment, he reminded her of the boy she’d known all those years ago. The size of her heart doubled just thinking about that boy.

“Cody, can I talk to you in the kitchen for a minute?” Louisa asked.

He nodded, but before they could leave, Maggie grabbed both of their hands. “She’s going to tell you that I’m dying.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Louisa said. She was simply going to give him an out—a way to avoid having to watch any of this.

Cody looked from Maggie to Louisa and back again.

“I’m an old lady,” Maggie said. “This is what happens when you get old.”

“You’re not that old,” Cody said.

“Do you know that for sure?” Maggie winked at him. “I might be 102.”

“Are you?”

“Feels like it today,” she said.

“She might’ve mentioned something already,” Cody said. “What do you mean, though, by ‘dying’?”

Maggie let their hands go and tossed him an incredulous look. “Dying. Dead. Going to walk through the pearly gates. Do I really have to explain this to you?”

Cody sat in the chair next to the love seat, that line of concern still knit across his brow. He glanced at Louisa again, and she sank back down onto the sofa. The pause doubled in length, and Louisa shifted where she sat. Maggie draped a blanket over her lap and sighed.

“You really think they’re going to let you into heaven?” Cody asked dryly.

Maggie and Louisa both glanced at him, and then the old woman let out a loud burst of laughter.