“Not hungry,” my mother mumbled. And then, “Meg?”

I swallowed hard. “It’s Jo, Momma.”

“I have to listen to your heart now, Abby,” Keisha said. “Then you and your daughter can have a nice visit.”

My mother nodded obediently, like a child. I stood back as Keisha moved the stethoscope over my mother’s thin chest.

“Still beating,” my mother joked when the aide was done.

Keisha smiled. “Yes, your heart is good and strong. Do you think you can sit up now?”

My mother pressed her lips together. Nodded. A grimace flickered across her face as the aide raised the head of her hospital bed. I winced in sympathy.

“Thank you.” My mother shifted, trying to get comfortable. “I think . . . A pill?”

“It’s not time yet, hon. After lunch, when I come in with the IV, okay?” Keisha looked at me. “You see if you can get her to eat something.”

It felt rude—wrong—talking over my mother’s head, as if she wasn’t there. “I brought biscuits,” I said.

“Whatever tempts her appetite. Fruit would be good,” Keisha added. “Those pain meds stop her up something awful.”

I sat beside my mother’s bed. Took her hand. An empty IV port ran into her arm, the skin around it purple with bruising.

“Jo.” Her fingers squeezed my hand with none of my mother’s strength. “Love you, honey.”

“Love you, too, Momma.”

She used to pester me with questions. How was your day . . . your date . . . your doctor’s appointment? Are you finished with your homework . . . your college applications . . . your taxes yet? In high school and later, coming home from college, I’d tended to brush her concerns away, saving my stories for a more appreciative audience. Saving them for my father.

I’d originally planned to fly home on Christmas Eve. Changing my ticket so close to the holidays had pretty much emptied my checking account. But she never asked me what I was doing at her bedside. Maybe she didn’t have the breath or the energy. Maybe she’d lost track of time. Or maybe, in some bone-deep, heartfelt, drug-induced place, she simply accepted I was where I belonged. I didn’t need a messy breakup to justify my presence at her side. She was sick. I was her daughter. Where else should I be?

My phone buzzed. A text from Eric. Where the hell are you?

Right. I was scheduled to work today. Well, screw him. Aaron was covering my shifts for the next two weeks. He didn’t need me.

I was suddenly, fiercely glad I’d come home.

After lunch, another aide—not Keisha—came to take my mother to physical therapy. She couldn’t get out of bed.

“Abby, you have to try,” the aide said with barely veiled impatience.

She’d been trying, without success, for almost twenty minutes.

My mother closed her eyes. The small gesture—of defeat, of resignation—terrified me. My mother never gave up.

“Listen, she didn’t choose to feel like this,” I snapped. “She’s in pain.”