She was only here because her doctor was worried she wasn’t taking it seriously enough.

“Why would I give it the satisfaction?” she said, waving a hand in irritation. “Cancer gets too much airtime as it is. I refuse to give it more.”

She was a breath of fresh air in a room stale with the fear of death.

Then one week she wasn’t there. Nor the next, nor the one after that. I hoped it meant she was in the clear, that she’d done what she kept saying she was going to do and kicked cancer to the curb, leaving it, and us, behind in her rearview mirror.

Then one day I walked in and she was back, slouched low in a chair, shoulders hunched, eyes on the floor. I don’t think I hid my shock very well at the sight of her, and when she looked up at me, the no-nonsense determination was gone, replaced by fear and disbelief.

“The bastard came back,” she told me, shaking her head. “It bloody came back.”

She died in the middle of April, as the first leaves were turning color on the trees. I went to her funeral and sat at the back of the church, weeping at the sight of the small heads in the front row, lined up like ducklings beside their father, so heavy with grief he nearly slipped to the floor. I watched the slideshow of photos of Lisa and her life and I thought: If this thing is ruthless enough to tear a mother away from her children, what hope is there for the rest of us? And it made me angry.

People speak of fate, destiny. How can this be mine? To have my life boil down to this, the one fact that people will most remember about me: She Died of Cancer.

Sure, they will also say, “Oh, Ava Green, yes she was nice, lovely girl. Good at quizzes. Quite pretty too, when she bothered to do her hair and slap on a bit of makeup. A generally happy girl, she was.” But they will also, always, end by saying, “She died of cancer. Very sad. Terrible tragedy.”

I don’t want to be remembered only for that, and it’s not a tragedy, because that implies some sense of random bad luck. That I stood on a crack in the pavement when I should have jumped over it. Spilled salt or broke a mirror. No. I didn’t bring this on myself. It has been brewing inside me since I was a cluster of cells floating in my mother’s uterus. It was always there, lurking within, just waiting to take over.

Chapter Twenty-Two

OK, now you’re just officially stalking me.”

I say it with one hand on my hip, looking at James pointedly. He is standing by the reception desk of the small motel I have checked in to myself around half an hour before.

He turns around, room key in hand, and looks at me sheepishly. “Hi, Ava.”