“My darling girl.” She smiled through what I could see was great pain.

Gingerly, I stepped into her realm, forcing myself to return a beaming smile. I was so wrapped inside my own heartbreak, I hadn’t fully considered what Knight had had to deal with in my absence.

His mother was dying. That was the blunt, awful truth.

Rosie patted the space at the foot of her bed, and I perched on it, my eyes never leaving hers. She had all kinds of machines hooked up on her nightstand, and an emergency button installed on the wall.

You have a nurse, I wanted to scream, to sob and collapse into her arms. You never had a nurse before.

But I’d die before making it more difficult for her.

“How are you?” I asked instead.

“I’m going through menopause.” She stared skyward. Tears began to pool in her eyes.

I didn’t know what to do. What to say. I hadn’t been expecting that to come out of her mouth. Foolish and self-centered as I was, I thought she wanted to talk to me about Knight, about our obviously strained relationship.

“I’m too young for menopause.”

Rosie wasn’t one to dwell in self-pity, and she’d never once complained about her illness, so I wondered why menopause was the tipping point.

I put my hand on hers. Squeezed. “It’s okay.” Was it, though? “Does Dean know?” I searched her soft eyes.

She shuddered in a breath, nodding and wiping her tears with the tattered tissue, leaving clouds of it on her damp face. “Yes, but I don’t talk to him about it. I don’t talk to any of them about those things. I’m strong for my boys. But sometimes…” She bit her lower lip, her teeth shaking against it to the rhythm of her sobs. “Sometimes I need to break, too.”

“You can always break with me.” I held myself together with everything I had, willing myself not to cry. “Tell me how I can help.”

I meant it with a ferocity I didn’t know I could feel. I wanted Rosie to get better, even if it was obvious she couldn’t. She’d always been there for me—taking Knight and me on playdates and getting me out of my out-of-his-wits, then-single, father’s hands. She’d gifted me special editions of her favorite books on my birthdays—the number of books equal to the age I was celebrating—because she knew I valued her literary opinion. Growing up, when I’d had no clue what to do with my hair, she and Emilia—Vaughn’s mother—had learned how to braid it because they knew how much I hated going in for an appointment with a stranger.

When Edie had stepped into the picture and took over, Rosie still came to braid my hair every few weeks, just to keep seeing me. “Havana Twist or Cornrows?” she’d ask. I’d always signed cornrows. “Good girl. That’s the only thing I know how to do.”

“Luna…” Rosie held my hand now. She stared at our laced fingers like she was committing the image to memory, before it was too late.

I tried stopping the shudders rippling through my body, the tears that demanded to come out. How come my parents hadn’t told me it was this bad? But of course they hadn’t. I’d been so busy on me-me-me island, I never bothered to sail to other territories and check in on her. Sure, I’d asked. But why hadn’t I called? Why hadn’t I done more?

“I’m not sure how long I have,” she admitted, “and I need your help regarding a few crucial matters.”

I already hated the sound of this, because I knew whatever she was going to ask me to do would break my heart, and that I was going to do it without fail. Because she wasn’t being melodramatic. She was dying.

I nodded.

“I need you to be there for Knight, even when he pushes you away. And he will push you away. He will do anything he can to make sure you don’t see him break. But he will break—in outstanding fashion, as he does everything else,” she chuckled the words.

Yes. I rubbed my thumb along her hand, back and forth. This one was easy. “Even if he pushes me away. Even if he refuses it. I will always be here for him.”

“When the time comes,” she said, flipping my hand over and staring at my palm contemplatively, “I want you to give him and Lev something very important. Something I want us to make together. Paid work, of course. And we don’t have much time. It will require some writing from you.”

“Writing?”

“You are a writer, are you not?” She smirked.

I wanted to be. I didn’t know if I had it in me. But what better excuse to try—and to fail—than honoring Rosie’s request?

“Anything,” I stressed. “I’ll do anything for you.”

“It will require some back and forth emails. We don’t have much time. It will be intense. Will it interrupt your studies?” Her expression turned cloudy.