“Please think about it,” she says. “Sometimes you doubt yourself, but you’re strong as hell. And I know May will be strong too if you teach her how.”

To prove her point, May starts marching in place in tiny little steps atop my thighs. My need to hold tightly to her right now for my own comfort is overwhelming, but I resist the desire to crush her small body against me.

“What if I mess it up?” I ask, my voice breaking pathetically on the end.

April smiles at me, and for a moment, I imagine she’s not sick. She’s just my best friend, and we’re talking about something silly, like whether that cute guy in my economics class was flirting with me or not. “As long as you love her,” she assures me, “you can’t mess it up.”

My mind is racing with thoughts of what I’d need to do. If I could stay in school, do I have enough money from my parents’ estate to hire a nanny, would I trust anyone else with May, is Philadelphia the safest place to raise a child... And under all this is the horrible thought that I’d be doing everything alone. Because April would be gone.

A choked sob escapes me, startling May. I gently hug her to my chest before she starts to cry, and I stare at April, struggling to hold back my own tears. “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I know,” she says softly.

And fuck, I’m a piece of shit, making this about me. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not. She should be the one who gets to cry, not me.

But she’s not crying. She looks calm, her eyes moving gently between her daughter’s face and mine. And then she says, “I’ve had time to think about this. There’s not much to do in this bed besides think. So if you need time too, I understand. But Brenden. I don’t only want you to have May because I know she’ll need you. I want you to have her because I know you’ll need her. Once I’m gone, I don’t want you to be alone.”

Oh god. The fact that she’s thinking about me at a time like this, that she’s worrying about me when she’s the one going through something terrible, is why I love her so damn much. It’s why I don’t know what I’ll do or how I’ll make it without her.

But then I look at the baby in my lap who has brought me so much joy since the day she was born. And with a sudden clarity, I realize what I’m seeing right in front of me.

My future.