For the first time she started to feel pangs of doubt and it confused her to suddenly question the correctness of her path. She returned to the kitchen, closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath but, never having tried to spark a house before, all she could smell was must and nail polish. She settled her mind and became so focused she could almost hear Barbara exhaling puffs of smoke in the other room. Still, there was nothing. She envisioned hiding places and secret phone calls and the many lies that had simply been absorbed into the walls. She waited, refocused, and three seconds before she was about to give up, she felt it. It wasn’t as clear as when it happened with a person, but there was no denying what she sensed. Beyond its shabby and dilapidated interior, it held secrets and there was no way she was going to turn back and give up now. Pushing her lingering doubts aside, she got into her car and drove to the hospital.

On her way in, she winked at Jim sitting at the front desk. He waved to her and she pretended not to notice the coffee cup he tipped over in the process. At the gift shop, she picked up a magazine and a pack of Wrigley’s Big Red. When she walked into his room, he was propped up in bed watching television. His selection might have differed from his mother’s, but his enthusiasm did not.

“C’mon, man! Mushrooms!! Mushrooms!!”

He tried to shake the remote control, which didn’t give him much satisfaction since it was tied to the arm of the bed. In the meantime, Richard Dawson stared hopefully at a clearly perplexed contestant and repeated, “Name a topping you eat on pizza.” The contestant looked dumbfounded and finally whispered, “Tomato sauce?” Richard Dawson snickered and shouted “Survey says . . .”

Therese never got to hear what the survey said because at that point Tim flung the remote so hard it slammed into the side of the bed and cracked. “Damn.”

“Rough day?” she asked, easing herself onto the side of his bed and rubbing his knee with her hand.

“I guess.” He slid himself up farther so that her hand now rested on his ankle.

She removed it and put it in her lap.

“I dropped my stuff off at your house and saw your mother.”

Perhaps it was just her imagination, but his face seemed to take on a grayish hue and then, as if on cue, the telephone rang. Tim reached over to the night table to answer it. “Hello? Yes, Ma. Yeah, okay. Uh huh. I don’t know. Bye, Ma.”

He tried to hang the phone back up, but the cord became twisted. After he pulled several times, the whole base fell to the floor. Therese slid off the bed to retrieve it.

“She wants cigarettes. Marlboro Lights.”