Tears fill her throat. Terror freezes them. The lump is so big, it is painful when Rose swallows it. Had she been alone she would have wept or raged, torn her hair and rent her clothing. Because of Melanie, she wraps herself in a forced calm. Whatever has happened, however she’s been brought to the brink, it is over, she tells herself.

“Now it’s your turn to tell me what’s going on,” Rose says. “What led up to my—to your dad putting me in Longwood’s MCU.”

With the innate flexibility of youth, Melanie curls down over her folded legs, her forehead touching the floor. From this pod-like posture, she begins her tale, her voice so low, Rose has to concentrate to hear the words. “After Granddad was killed, you started acting kind of odd—I mean, we were all shocky and miserable, but it was like it went way deeper with you, changed you. No big surprise, but you got weirder and weirder.”

“Granddad was killed?” Part of Rose’s brain knows her husband is dead. Part of her brain does not. “As in murdered?”

“You don’t remember?”

Rose can only shake her head.

“Do you want me to tell you? You totally refused to talk about it back then. You would practically run out of the room when people asked.”

Rose doesn’t know if she wants to remember or not, so she just shakes her head again.

Mel looks up, a pale oval in the supple crumple she’s made of her body. “You told Grandma Nancy you were having trouble sleeping, that you’d wake up drenched in sweat. Your legs would kick out sometimes like you were spastic. A couple times you said you saw people walk by in the hall when there weren’t any people there.

“Then you just stopped calling or coming over. You didn’t answer your phone or your doorbell.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Rose admits.

“Then you tanked. The cops called. They’d got Dad’s cell number from your phone. They’d found you in your car, just sitting stopped in the middle of an intersection, traffic honking and whizzing all around. You didn’t know where you were.”

Rose bites back a sob. She sits at the edge of a midnight sea; the receding wave drags sand from beneath her.

“You quit talking. You just stared. It was totally creepy. That’s when Dad and the doctors decided you should be put someplace they could take care of you. He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t have to. We wanted you here, but I’m a kid, and Uncle Daniel isn’t all that grown up, and running trade shows keeps Dad on the road a lot.”

It warms Rose that they had wanted her.