“Then she can die at home.”

Linnea startled. “Emmi, no.”

Cara went poker-faced. “And if she can’t breathe? She starts choking? Are you prepared to watch her suffer?”

“Mom…” said John.

The sound of an ambulance pierced the air.

Emmi’s eyes flashed as she confronted Cara. “You called the ambulance?”

“No, I did,” said John.

Emmi turned on him. “Who gave you the authority?”

“Flo did.”

Emmi’s shoulders sagged as she tried to make sense of what he’d said. “Wait. What? When? She wasn’t conscious. Or lucid.”

“Yes. She was.” John paused. “I was taking my turn sitting with her. It was early, just before dawn. She opened her eyes, and she knew it was me. She looked right at me and said, ‘John, I want you to take me to the hospital.’ When I asked her if she was sure, she said she was. She said she didn’t want to die in this house. She said…” He swallowed hard, trying to form the words. “She said she only wanted good memories in this house.”

Emmi stepped into John’s arms as Cara put her hand over her mouth and turned her back, trying to hold back her choking sobs.

A SHORT TIME later, Cara held Emmi’s hand as they watched two paramedics in full protective gear carry Flo’s stretcher into the ambulance. At the hospital, Flo went directly into intensive care. For three days, all three houses were shrouded in the silence of waiting. Cara cooked meals, watered plants, allowed Hope to watch far too much television. Emmi didn’t call. She didn’t respond to Cara’s messages. Not because she was angry, but because she couldn’t. Cara knew it was especially hard on her to think of Flo in the hospital, sick and alone, not aware where she was.

Then the news came.

Cara heard an insistent knocking on the door. She opened it to see Emmi, her face grief-stricken, her eyes rimmed red. Cara didn’t have to ask. Flo was not coming back to Isle of Palms.

Emmi walked into Cara’s arms and the two women hugged and wept openly.

“We never got to say good-bye,” Emmi wailed.

“We did say good-bye.”

“No,” Emmi said harshly, pulling back. “No, we didn’t. Calling out a good-bye at the ambulance, watching the doors shut and the van drive away… that’s not saying good-bye.”

“We all knew that family wasn’t allowed into the hospitals.”

“But the reality of it is still hard,” Emmi said in a broken voice. “Knowing that at the end of her life Flo might’ve been scared and we couldn’t be there. After all the time I spent with her, not to be there when she most needed me.” She choked back a sob. “I’m sorry, but that feels to me like I failed her.”

“Oh, Em, no. She knew that we loved her,” Cara said, trying to be strong for Emmi.

She settled Emmi on the sofa and prepared two mugs of steaming tea with milk and honey. It was a hot July day outdoors, but inside both women needed the comfort of something warm and sweet.