I don’t think we talked enough about your mother’s death. Maybe that was because we were kids, or maybe it was because you were so traumatized. But we should have talked about it later, when we were older. I should have told you I would listen to your pain forever. I should have asked you for memories.

I see now how grief becomes thin ice. I haven’t lost my mom yet, but a single word has pushed her away from me, created a barrier between us that never existed before. For the first time ever, we are lying to each other. I can feel it. Lying to protect each other.

But there’s no protection, is there?

She has lung cancer.

God. I wish you were here.

Leni put down her pen. This time, the act of writing to Matthew was no comfort at all.

It made her feel worse, in fact. More alone.

How pathetic, that she had no one to talk to about this. That her best friend had no idea who she was.

She folded the letter up and put it in the shoe box with all the others she’d written over the years and never sent.

*   *   *

THAT SUMMER, Leni watched cancer erase her mother. First to go was her hair, then her eyebrows. Next was the firm line of her shoulders; they began to droop. Then she lost her posture and her stride. Finally, cancer took away movement altogether.

By late July, after cancer had erased so much, the truth was revealed by her latest CT scan. Nothing they had done had helped.

Leni sat quietly beside her mother, holding her hand when they learned that the treatment had failed. The cancer was everywhere, an enemy on the move, hacking through bones, destroying organs. There was no discussion about trying again or fighting it.

Instead, they moved back into the Golliher house, set up a hospital bed in the sunroom, where light flowed through the windows, and contacted hospice care.

Mama had fought for her life, fought harder than she had fought for anything, but cancer did not care about effort.

Now Mama slowly, slowly angled up in the bed to a slouchy sitting position. An unlit cigarette trembled in her veiny hand. She could no longer smoke, of course, but she liked to hold them. There were a few strands of hair on the pillow, running like gold veins on white cotton. An oxygen tank stood by the bed; clear tubes inserted into Mama’s nostrils helped her breathe.