Her sweet words wash over me; warm, pure, like a tropical rain as we lie on our backs treading water.

“Emme is my nickname, by the way. I gave it to myself in high school. I hated my name. Just like you hated yours. Em. Me. Get it? I used to write it in my notebook. Emme Donner.

Emme. Emme Donner and I drift closer to the waterfall where soon it will gently take me under.

Emme looks at the clock, frowns, and wipes her brow with the back of her arm. “Once, when I was about sixteen, I tried tracking you down.”

Emme’s words grow fainter, swallowed by the roar of the falls.

“I called your agent but they probably never gave you the message. My dad sent me here to the mainland for nursing school. You met him once. He always talks about it. Makes it seem as if you and he got to be best friends. I bet that happens to you a lot. Anyway, I finished school and worked in a convalescent hospital in the Valley, and then I got hired here.

“And I want you to know, I never went around telling people we were sisters.”

Sisters.

“I didn’t think you would like it if I did, and besides, the way I look, who would have believed me?”

My sister’s eyes, dark green, like wet grass.

“I didn’t say it before, I was afraid to disturb your rest. I thought you would wake up and that’s when I would tell you. But I can’t just say goodbye to you and have you think I’m just some stranger or a fan, or just doing this because it’s my job. And if I’d known back in Hawaii that you were going away forever and that I would never see you again, I would have hidden in your suitcase. But I can’t do that now.”

Tears spill over the curve of her cheeks down the sides of her neck.

“And one more thing. It wasn’t Mom who sold those pictures to the magazines. It was me. I’m sorry, but I had to. Mom had been evicted. She didn’t have any money for food. She was desperate. It was all I could think of to do.”

Mirabelle.

“Mirabelle, is it time?” my mother cries from behind the door.

Emme continues to cry as she takes my pulse and holds two fingers in front of my nose. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and clears her throat.

“Not yet,” she calls back. “Soon very soon.” She takes my hands in her own.