Rachel moved down the corridor, calling out again. There was no direct response, but she heard a quick intake of breath come from her father’s study. She moved through the door to find her mother rising from the desk where she’d been sitting behind a laptop. Allison was wearing a robe and looked completely disheveled, her normally finely coiffed hair all astray, and she was using the robe’s sleeve to dry her eyes.

Given the recent news courtesy of her doctors, Rachel wasn’t surprised. Even someone as stoic as her mother would have to be inhuman not to be shaken.

“Oh darling—I d-didn’t realize you were coming tonight . . .”

“I texted you the flight information before I left,” Rachel said as she crossed over and wrapped her arms around her mother.

“I-I never looked. It’s been a crazy d-day as you can only imagine,” Allison said, looking unsteady on her feet.

Rachel hugged her mother tight. And felt her actually shuddering in her arms. “Oh Mom—I’m so sorry . . .”

She kissed Allison and took her hand.

“Shhh, shhh,” hushed her mother. “We’ll all get through this.”

Leave it to her mother. She’s the one who just got diagnosed with stage three lung cancer and I’m letting her comfort me.

Rachel started to respond, then noticed blood on her hand—and that it wasn’t her own. “Mom! You’re bleeding!”

It was oozing through a bandage on her mother’s arm that wasn’t sturdy enough to staunch whatever had happened.

Allison shook her head. “It was a silly accident. I broke that unicorn you made in the living room . . .”

“I saw it—by the fireplace.” Fraught with concern, Rachel took a closer look at the wound. “We should take you to the emergency room.”

“Nonsense—it’s just a bad cut.”

“It’s a huge gash and should be looked at!”

A debate ensued, the sort Rachel never got an upper hand in. It ended with Allison agreeing to let Rachel remove the bandage, clean, and redress the wound.

She helped her mother straighten the living room and then, despite insisting she wasn’t hungry, Rachel allowed her mother to heat up some leftovers.

They sat in the kitchen for an hour. Every time Rachel tried to broach the reason she’d raced across the ocean, Allison would steer the subject in a different direction—wanting to know about Rachel’s job, if there was anyone new in her life, what they should do for the upcoming holidays now that she was home.

The closest thing to an acknowledgment of the elephant that had taken over every room in the Maida Vale house had been when her mother uttered the same sentiment she’d spoken on the phone. “There will be time to discuss all that later.”

Finally, Rachel just tried to convince herself to be content keeping the woman she loved unconditionally company.