I run my finger over the charm that used to be Mom’s—a blue-and-white circle, smaller than a penny. It’s this Greek thing, supposed to be protection against the evil eye. Mae would never wear something superstitious, but it makes me feel closer to Mom. I don’t know why she didn’t wear it in Malaysia. Maybe she was afraid it’d get lost when she was swimming. Maybe it would have protected her somehow.

“Mae, I know you’re a scientist. I get that. But you can’t tell me you don’t believe there is something, anything, out there. People have pretty much proven the existence of ghosts. And Mom’s intuition—I mean, how could she know things were going to happen before they did? And remember how Yia-yia would always know she was going to get a letter in the mail and from who and then it would be there, in her mailbox? Or, like, how the cards are always right? Something is behind all that. I mean, look how complex we are. You can’t simply evolve into something that composes a symphony or choreographs a ballet.”

“You’re talking about ‘God.’”

“Not God with a capital G. But a knowing … presence. Something so much more evolved than us that we don’t even have words to describe it—you know?”

“Like colors?”

“Huh?”

She scoots closer. “There is so much we can’t view with the naked human eye. We can’t see infrared or ultraviolet—which means we only see a fraction of the colors in the universe, unless we have the aid of scientific instruments. But those colors—they’re there, even though we can’t see them.”

“I guess that’s what I mean. Yeah.”

Mae’s quiet for a moment. She’s got her thinking face on. “Sometimes I think about how there are billions of galaxies in the universe—maybe more. And my mind short-circuits, just trying to imagine that. We’ll only ever get to see the tiniest FRACTION of it. Or I think about how our individual lives seem so important, but we’re just blips on the timeline of human existence.”

“But blips matter. Think about the Butterfly Effect—how one tiny act somewhere on Earth can change the whole course of history.”

Mae smiles. “You sound like Mom.”

“You sound like Dad.”

These were the kinds of talks that we used to have around the dinner table—never arguing, just passionate conversation and lots of questions.

I lie down, stare at the ceiling. This one doesn’t have cracks.

“We’ll never see them again,” I whisper.

Mae lies down next to me and slips her fingers through mine. “No.”

And I think, with her here, with the possibility of Something Else: Maybe I don’t need the pills. After these ones, I mean. Maybe I can stop.