Finley already misses the weekly meet-ups she used to have with her dad at the coffeehouse across the street from his condo downtown. Living full-time with her mom, Finley didn’t always see him every day, so they would order the featured coffee of the week before settling down on the comfy couch to catch up. The last time, her dad confessed to joining an online dating service. They browsed profiles together, and Finley talked him through his first contact with a pretty woman (his own age, thankfully) who looked nothing like her mom (also, thankfully). Now he visits Finley daily, just in case it’s the last day. Maybe, she thinks, she should ask her dad to break her out of home hospice for one last latte.

Finley will miss Decembers. She and her mom would pick a date, cue up a holiday playlist, and spend an entire day baking Christmas cookies. Finley’s favorites were the frosted cutouts. She loved rolling out the dough on the floured kitchen island and trying to cut as many cookies as she could with each pass. She loved smashing candy canes to make peppermint bark. She loved browning the butter for chocolate chip cookies. She loved the smell of the spices they used to make German lebkuchen for Grandma, since she was the only one who ever actually ate them. Finley and her mom would sing along with the Christmas songs and sample so many of their creations that they’d be sick of cookies before the holiday season had even really begun.

Finley will miss her sister starting high school. She worries about how Regan is going manage without someone to guide her. Finley considers leaving a list of things her sister should know, but Regan has spent the better part of a year in the shadow of cancer. Maybe she wants to forge her own path and make her own mistakes. Still, Finley makes a mental note to give Regan all her old World History exams. Mr. Rupp uses the same questions every year.

Finley will miss sailing. Pep rallies. Yellow roses. School dances. Blue raspberry slushies from the Dairy Frost. Her little green Fiat. And her unrequited crush on her best friend’s brother.

But most of all, Finley will miss Taylor and Willa.

Taylor, her very first friend. They bonded over the sand table on the first day kindergarten, and when Finley’s mother came to pick her up from school, the two girls were sitting together in the big claw-foot bathtub that their teacher had converted into a reading nook, sounding out the words in Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Over the years Finley has made so many friends, but she loves Taylor, who laughs with her whole body. Taylor, who won’t admit she cries when she watches Nicholas Sparks movies. Taylor, who makes her feel the most like home.