“You don’t have to stay the whole time,” I say after she exhales in frustration at her overstuffed suitcase and takes everything back out to start again.

She pauses, her toiletry bag in one hand. “Where else would I be? It’s only a week. I’ll be with you every minute.”

I don’t doubt it. Cora rarely left my bedside in the months after the fire. She slept on couches and chairs, eating cafeteria food and peppering the nurses with questions every time they checked on me. No matter what, Cora stayed. Like both our lives depended on it.

And now we’re headed back in. Back to hoping. Back to crossing fingers that the graft “takes” so Dr. Sharp doesn’t have to rip it off and try again. Back to living in fear of the almighty infection we talk about in the same hushed tones as pubescent wizards at Hogwarts speak of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

She crams her slippers into the suitcase, which pops open as Cora throws her hands up like she’s just remembered something.

“Oh, I got you something!” She removes a square, wrapped present from her bedside drawer, and smiles as she hands it to me.

A DVD of The Wizard of Oz.

“And I downloaded all the songs for you to listen to in recovery. Help you get ready for the play,” she says.

I turn the case over in my hand, pretending to read the back, but actually thinking through all the things Cora has done for me. Taking me in. Selling the dolls. Working to pay off my bills. What have I ever given her?

I jump off the bed and run into my room to grab the piece of butterfly wallpaper.

“It’s not a big deal or anything.” I hand her the small square of Sara’s childhood. “And I need to get a frame so we can hang it on the wall. And I guess technically it was already yours and I’m just giving it back—”

Cora cuts off my rambling.

“Thank you, Ava.” She wipes her eyes, trying to laugh off her crying. “You’d think I’d be all out of tears by now, huh? But I just can’t get used to her being gone.”

She lays the butterfly paper on the bed.

“Like in the middle of the night, Sara used to squish between us, and we’d wake up with her feet up our noses. I always told Glenn we needed a bigger bed. We needed more space.” She runs her fingers across the top of the mattress. “Now all I have is space,” she says. “And it will never feel normal.”

I lean on the suitcase so Cora can zip it up.

“Dr. Layne says we have to find a new normal.”

“A new normal.” Cora says each word individually, as if she’s chewing them over, digesting them. “I like that.”