Grandma’s frail, veined hand grasped the walker as Darcy led her to the bathroom. Darcy remembered being a little girl and Grandma guiding the handlebars of her first bicycle. Grandma was vigorous then. She was strong and full of life until that stroke a year ago.

Darcy got Grandma back to bed and sat in the rocking chair next to her until she fell asleep. Sometimes Mom and Darcy moved the rocker to the living room so Grandma could be with them. But it was hard for her to sit up for long. On good days, she sat there and rocked and looked out into the small garden in the window box. Sometimes Grandma would remember the names of her favorite flowers: black and yellow pansies and bright blue lobelias. Sometimes she would recall planting them in the window box, and other times she would say her own mother had planted them. Now, with dwindling white hair like sparse cotton on her dark scalp, she lay on her pillow, her brown eyes opening again, looking alert.

“Angelcake, you’re so good to me,” Grandma declared, smiling. When she smiled, she almost looked as she had years earlier. Darcy had seen photographs of her grandmother when she was young. She was a beautiful, browneyed girl with thick, braided hair and a sweet little mouth. Now, smiling at Darcy, she did not look more than sixty, though she was seventy-seven.

“Grandma, I love you,” Darcy said.

“Angelcake, your Daddy has to take you girls hiking again. Maybe tomorrow. When he comes home, we must tell him it’s time to go hiking,” Grandma said.

In the summer, before Dad left, the whole family would go hiking in the Laguna Mountains—not an exhausting hike, just one long enough to be fun. Mom would pack a lunch and leave it in the car. At the end of a hike, they would return to the same spot each time, and the girls would pounce on the mouthwatering goodies: crispy fried chicken, potato salad, iced tea, juicy peaches, and the best treat of all, Grandma’s sweet potato pie. When there was a full moon, the Willses and Grandma would sometimes drive up at night. They would ooh and ahh over the moon, and Dad would point out constellations to Darcy and Jamee—the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, the Seven Sisters, Orion. Then Mom would tell scary ghost stories right before it was time to head home. She was so good at telling them. Her favorite was called “The Tale of the Moon Monster. ” As the girls stared up at the full moon, so clear and bright you could see the dark shadows of the mountains, Mom would spin the creepy tale.

“Your mother has to tell her ghost stories,” Grandma said, remembering too. “I told her ghost stories when she was little. Now she has to tell them to you. ”