The other side of the bed sank down as Vera sat beside her. “I’m not making a pass at you,” she said. “I just feel awful and I need a place to hide from my relatives.” She groaned. “Everything in me hurts. My head, my stomach, my ankles. All of it.” She adjusted the pillows. “You can’t tell anyone that I’m not well. Not Kelly, not Miguel, nobody. They’ll think it’s some foreign disease and tell me I can’t leave again. Kelly will decide I have leprosy. Or the black plague. Smallpox, for sure. Then she’ll tell me I have to stay here, that I can’t ever leave. You know Kelly, right?”

Cait was still curled up, her back to the woman. “Yes.”

“But I bet you don’t know the real Kelly! She’s capable of locking me in a room. I’ll die if I have to stay here. I can’t breathe here. But my sister is worse than Mom was. If she thought I was sick, she’d have me put in jail.”

Cait rolled onto her back. “My dad...?”

“Miguel! Don’t get me started on him! He wants to wrap me in a quilt and put me in front of a TV so he always knows where I am. Safe is the only word those people know. I know words like adventure and life.” Vera gave a sigh of exasperation.

Cait turned her head to look at her, but she didn’t say anything.

Vera put her hand to her forehead. “Getting Miguel to leave with me is going to be hard enough, but if I don’t feel well—” She stopped, then looked at Cait in shock. “Oh, hell! I didn’t mean to say that. Pretend I didn’t.”

“Dad wants to leave with you?”

“Yes.”

“He wants to travel the world and...do what? Just follow along behind you?”

“He’s taking photography classes at KCAI.”

Cait lifted on her elbow. “That’s what he’s been hiding. I saw the papers but I didn’t know what they were. I’ve been so wrapped up in myself that I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I gave him a camera.” She was looking at Caitlyn hard. “You don’t mind if he leaves here? Leaves you?”

“I think it’s wonderful. He’s stayed here because of me. If I hadn’t been on the way, I think he would have eventually gone to you. But he couldn’t leave because he had to take care of me.”

“Isn’t having the responsibility for other people’s lives the pits?” Vera said.

“Yes, it is.”