“My girl!” she says in a still-lovely voice. “My baby girl! You’re here! You’re here.”

Kat has stopped next to me, still some distance from her mother, and she is staring at the figure on the lounge. I cannot read Kat’s thoughts, but I am sure she is wondering how this withered waif can be her mother, how the voice she still remembers could be coming from a skeleton of a woman who has stolen her mother’s body. Despite the talk we had, Kat is unprepared to see her mother like this. How could any child not be?

I take Kat’s hand and we take a step forward before she stops again.

“Kat!” Candace says wearily, unable to keep her arm aloft. “It’s me, darling. It’s me. It’s Mama.”

Kat looks up at me and then at her mother. Candace tips her head to study me for a moment, as if seeing me for the first time.

“’Twill be all right, love,” I murmur to the child. “Remember what I told you?”

Kat’s grip on my hand tightens as we take another step toward the lounge chair. Candace reaches out again with one hand. The child is close enough now that if she just takes one more step, her mother could touch her. But she turns to me instead and leans in close to my body. Candace looks up at me again, her lovely eyes pools of sadness.

I look into those eyes, which are full of mother-love, and I say the same thing to Candace that I said to Kat. “’Twill be all right,” I say. “Give her just a moment.”

Candace seems to hang on to my words as she brings her gaze back to her daughter. She lets her hand rest again on her abdomen. “I’m so glad you came, Kat,” she says, injecting artificial calm into her tone. I can hear the falseness clear as day. “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve prayed every day since I came here to see you. I’m so sorry it has been so long. I . . . I didn’t know where you were. I kept hoping I would get well enough to come looking for you. But I . . . I’m so sorry that I didn’t. I’m so sorry, Kitty Kat.”

It is when Candace says this pet name, a name that surely she’s called her daughter many times before, that Kat’s grasp on my fingers lessens and I feel her edge away from me. God, it feels all wrong and all right, how she is leaning away from me now and toward her mother.

Candace sees the shift and lifts her hand wearily again. This time, Kat takes it, and when she does Candace starts to pull her close.

The nurse who showed us to the patio and who has been standing next to me the whole time also moves forward. “That’s close enough, Mrs. Hocking. We don’t want your little girl to get sick, do we?”