She took it from my hand, not bothering to look, and put it down beside her. I wished she would eat something. I wished she would say something. I wished she would see that I was still right here.

“Mom,” I said.

She jerked her head a little, answered with a noise in the back of her throat.

And I asked her the thing I’d been planning to ask that old woman before Troy showed up. “If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”

She shrunk away from me, shook her head to clear the words from her mind. “Don’t say that,” she hissed.

I put my hand on her arm, so she knew I wasn’t going anywhere. And I said, “What would you do?”

Her eyes skittered frantically, searching for answers, and she mumbled, “Lots of things. Like not letting you play on that lake.”

I squeezed her arm. “You can’t change that. I mean now. If this was it. What would you do today?” I wondered what that old woman would’ve done if I’d given her the chance. I wondered what I would’ve done differently before I fell through the ice. What I would’ve said.

I watched Mom’s eyes scan the sky, and when they settled on something, I strained to see what it was, but it was just a wisp of cloud. Nothing unusual about it. But her mouth opened and a breath escaped and she didn’t take her eyes off the cloud. And she said, “This.”

The cloud floated with the wind, but Mom’s eyes stayed fixed. I tilted my head and looked harder. Clear blue sky, nothing more. I didn’t understand, so I said, “Mom?”

But she didn’t answer. She kept rocking, propelling herself back and forth with her toes, like she hadn’t even heard me. I turned to face her. Her head was back against the wood, and her eyes were closed. But she wasn’t sad or angry or frustrated. She was something else entirely. Something here and not here. Her face was turned toward the sun, soaking it in, like it was the hottest day of summer.

And when she moved her hand to cover mine, I gripped her tight. Because I realized what she meant by this.

Me. She meant me.

We rocked. Mom kept her eyes closed, and I kept watching the sky, wondering if it would tell me something, too. Then I cleared my throat and said, “After you eat, I was wondering. Can we go buy supplies for next semester?”

“Yes, Delaney. Yes, we can.”

Ordinary teenager. That’s what I was today. Sleeping in. Lunch with Dad. School shopping with Mom. I could be salutatorian if I pulled up the math grade next semester. If not, I’d still probably finish in the top 5 percent of my class. No valedictorian, but I had great college essay material. I could still get into a good college, have a solid future.

Except when we left the office-supply store that feeling started, that pull at my body, the one that reminded me that I wasn’t an ordinary teenager. We were on the road, getting closer and closer. And while we were at a stoplight I looked over to my right, where the pull was leading me, and saw Troy’s car parked at the far end of the gas station lot. I bent over and pretended to look through my bags.

“We forgot batteries,” I said. “For my calculator.”

“We probably have some lying around at home.” And then she smiled at me, like she was glad I was worried about school, like she thought I was the old Delaney Maxwell. She didn’t know I was faking it.

“Let’s pick some up here, just in case.”

The pull was strong, tugging me toward the convenience store attached to the garage. It was strong, but there was no itch yet, no shaking fingers, no imminent death. To be fair, I didn’t know how imminent death was. It was faster than expected with Carson. Slower with the old woman in the assisted-living facility, who still wasn’t dead last I checked. My death took eleven minutes. Troy’s took three days. It was supposed to, anyway.

But someone here was sick. Definitely sick. Definitely dying.

Mom eased the car into the spot directly in front of the entrance. We entered the store and I headed toward the counter. The batteries were stacked behind the register, where the cigarettes should’ve been. I guess they were more valuable. I drummed my fingers on the countertop and left a clean handprint on the dirty surface.

Nobody was behind the counter. The clerk was probably in the single bathroom in the back corner of the store. Because that’s where I felt the pull. Someone sat on the single folding chair outside the restroom, coffee cup at his feet, newspaper in front of his face. “Hi, Troy,” I called from the front of the store.

Troy lowered the paper. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. He seemed curious. But then Mom walked up behind me and his eyes grew wide.