Out in the parking lot, Drue smoothed the crumpled-up wads of bills on the front seat of the Bronco. The total came to exactly two hundred. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the steering wheel. The sobs came from deep down in her chest, wracking, choking, gasping, uncontrollable sobs. After what seemed like a long time, she sat back up, pulled the Bozo’s tank top over her head, wiped her eyes and blew her nose on it. Then she tossed it out the window onto the parking lot pavement and drove home in her sports bra, which was more than a lot of women wore in Fort Lauderdale that time of year.

When she got home she sat alone in the dark for a long time in Sherri’s nearly bare condo. Her mother had sold the furnished condo at the onset of her diagnosis to help pay her medical expenses, but the new owners, snowbirds from Michigan, had allowed the two women to stay on until the end of the month, which was fast approaching.

She’d donated all Sherri’s personal effects to charity, and her own belongings were packed up too, awaiting the now-aborted move to Trey’s place. Drue stretched out on the sofa, swallowed three Advil, and eventually drifted off to a troubled sleep.

She was skimming along the surface of the water, the sun at her back, her red-and-white-striped kite high in the air, her boots firmly planted on the board beneath her feet. When the moment came, she bent her knees, leaned back on her heels and suddenly, gloriously, she was aloft. She felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, heard her own heart pounding, the blood humming in her veins. In midair she looked around and then down, saw the bright blue curve of the ocean meeting sugary sand, tiny specks she knew to be people, toy-size cars in the parking lot.

Time and life stood still and she was flying—soaring past seagulls and pelicans and jet airplanes and billowing clouds. The wind was perfect and the kite kept her aloft, the longest hang-time ever. She closed her eyes, and then, in a split second, it happened. An arrow, a lightning bolt, a bullet, a knife blade, slashed at her right knee.

And then she was falling, endlessly spiraling down and down. She worked her feet out of the boots, feeling the board fall away. Frantically she thumbed the quick-release button on her harness again and again as the surface of the water grew nearer. She heard the splash of her body hitting the water, felt the impact on her chest and back and knees, the still-inflated kite dragging her face-first through the water, filling her eyes and nose and mouth and lungs with the burning salt water. Her body was broken and she was drowning …