Then Nora holds out the third life vest to Mia—and hesitates. Their girl somehow seems to stand perfectly still, despite the roll of the boat. In the middle of her pallid face, her eyes are black and watchful. She is familiar and she is a stranger. She is their daughter and she is something else. “Mia?” she says. “Just in case something happens . . .”

But she never finishes the sentence, because Mia holds out her hand. The fingers are curled into her palm, gripping something.

“What is it, Mia?” Nora says. “Do you want to show me something?”

When the fingers open, mushrooms spring from her palm.

So many years ago, after Nora’s water broke and Jack drove her to the hospital and tried to guide her breathing, when the contractions made her ribs feel like they were going to break, Nora asked for an epidural. It wasn’t part of her pregnancy plan; she had hoped for a natural birth. But the pain owned her more fully than she could have imagined. The anesthesiologist rolled her onto her side, inserted the needle between two vertebrae, and said everything would be fine soon, soon—but he was wrong. The warm numbness he promised never came. The treatment failed. When they realized this, she was already dilated eight centimeters, so there was no point in attempting a second epidural. She reached a threshold then. A threshold of pain and endurance. There was no way out except to push, so that’s where she focused all her mental and physical energy. Something like that is happening now. It began when her phone rang with the news her daughter had been found—and it continued through the moment when Mia hardened her arm into a kind of bludgeon. Nora has passed a threshold of uncertainty and belief. There is nothing she doesn’t believe in anymore. Anything is possible. Everything could happen.

She reaches out—hesitantly—and plucks one of the pink, hatted mushrooms from her daughter’s hand. It is cold and damp and spongy in her grip.

“Okay,” she says. “Now what?”

Mia opens her mouth. Wide enough that Nora can see the shadow inside it.

“No.” Nora is someone who always carries hand sanitizer in her purse and uses a paper towel to open bathroom doors. “Absolutely not. That’s not safe. That’s—” But she stops herself. What feels like a lifetime ago, she stripped off her mask. At this point, what does it really matter?

She brings her palm to her mouth and licks the mushroom from it. Her teeth grind it down and she swallows the sour paste. She fans a hand at her face, fighting off a gag, then says, “I did it. Now what?”