He peered at me, something gentle on his face. “You are a remarkable woman, Vanessa Price, you know that?” he said quietly.

I smiled a little. “We should probably go inside,” I said. “Dad’s waiting.” I grabbed my purse. “Remember, it’s easier if you breathe through your mouth.”

Adrian gave me a reassuring smile and got out of the car.

We stood on the front porch while I knocked and the door opened a few seconds later.

Dad beamed at us with a smiling Sonja right behind him. “Welcome to my humble abode,” Dad said with a flourish. “Please, enter.”

He moved from the mouth of the doorway, and my jaw fell open.

The first thing that hit me was the light. Dad’s house was always dim. It reminded me of the Upside Down in Stranger Things, all eerie and gray. But the entry was lit. Warm. And when I stepped inside, I saw why.

The house was spotless. The cleanest I’d ever seen it. I peered around the living room from the entry in total shock. “Dad…” I breathed.

The piles were gone. All the trash and clutter were gone. I could see carpet—and it was clean. New, actually. I think he’d even painted. The flat-screen TV that had been propped against a wall had been mounted. Someone had framed and hung a painting that Melanie had done in grade school that used to be stuck to the wall with a thumbtack. There was a new-looking playpen next to the sofa with a crocheted baby blanket carefully folded and draped over the side. And the smell—there wasn’t one. Not a bad one anyway. The house smelled like simmering tomato sauce.

I grabbed Adrian’s arm and clutched it like my legs might give out.

Dad stood rocking back on his heels, beaming at the house.

Sonja smiled at me. “We talked a lot about goals. And do you want to know what your dad’s number one goal is, Vanessa?”

I looked at Dad, so overwhelmed I felt out of breath.

He nodded at the playpen. “I want Grace to have sleepovers at her grandpappy’s house.”

I started to laugh. And then, just as quickly, I started to cry.

I don’t think I ever really believed that my family was capable of being okay. In any sense. It’s the thing that terrified me most about being sick, the thing that kept me from being at peace with dying. But maybe Dad could change. And if he could change, maybe Annabel and Brent could too. And if they were okay, Grace would be okay. Then I could go. I could focus on me and what time I had left, if that’s what was happening, and ALS would take one less thing. It would take my life, but maybe it wouldn’t take my family with me when I went.

Adrian leaned down and whispered in my ear. “I thought you said this place was a shithole…”

I did a laugh-cry, and he gave me a sideways hug.

Dad hung up my purse. “I made goulash for dinner, just like old times.”

I blinked at my dad through the tears, standing there in his clean house. And then I cleared the space between us and hugged him.

We weren’t really an affectionate family. I didn’t see the hug coming and neither did he. But we were both happy to be in it and for a flicker of a second, I was a little girl again.

I broke away from him, wiping under my eyes as Brent came around the corner with Joel, holding a martini. “Oh my God. Oh my GOD.” Brent gestured dramatically to the house. “I mean, I saw the dump trucks outside, but I thought they were bringing things in.”

I laughed.

Brent put a hand up. “Dad, you should be very proud of yourself.”

Dad beamed, looking a little misty-eyed. “I have a special surprise. To the living room, chop-chop.” He clapped his hands.

He herded us over to the sofa and when I saw what he was leading us to, I gasped.

On the coffee table were our family photo albums. The ones Dad said he couldn’t find. The ones I was worried were lost in the hoard, never to be seen again.

“You found them?” I breathed, picking one up.

“I did,” Dad said proudly. “With the help of this lovely lady, of course.”

Sonja smiled, sitting on a chair that used to be stacked with board games. “He’s the one who put in the work. I’ve been very impressed with him.”

Dad practically glowed.

Dad was always a hundred times prouder of himself than he should be. Delusions of grandeur abounded. But this time he deserved to be proud.

I sat on the sofa and opened a photo album with reverence. This was the one with pictures of Mom. My eyes started to tear up again as I flipped through the pages. Mom sitting in a lawn chair, and me and Mel playing in a kiddie pool on the grass. Halloween, Mom dressed like a biker chick, smiling with a jack-o’-lantern. Birthdays with the Baskin-Robbins ice cream cakes she always liked to get us. The house was clean back then too.

There were pictures of Dad, twenty-five years younger. He had sideburns and clear eyes.

He wasn’t broken yet.

I wondered how long the ripple effect lasted after someone died. Maybe until everyone who knew them was dead too? Or was it something that went on for generation after generation because the damage was handed down, touching each new person and changing them, even if they don’t know why?

Something told me it was that one.

Grace would never know her aunt Melanie, but the loss of her would ruin her just the same—because that loss ruined her mother.

Annabel used drugs to dull the memory of what she witnessed at the hands of ALS. She couldn’t do what I did—live a good life in spite of it. She needed something to take the edge off the pain and devastation she’d endured. And so her loss was now Grace’s loss too. Grace would ride the ripple of it her whole life unless Annabel got clean—or unless I took Grace out of the pool. Got her adopted by another family who didn’t share this tragedy.

I shook it off.

There was no point in thinking about it. I’d spent enough time dwelling on things I couldn’t change today. I didn’t want to look at the sun again.

Adrian sat down next to me, so close his thigh pressed into mine. He peered down at the album. “She looks just like you,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah. She did,” I said quietly.

And just like me, her disease was invisible—but it was there, lying in wait inside of her, ready to spring its trap.

Mom had been a dancer. She taught at an academy. Losing her ability to do the one thing she’d loved the most, one muscle-withering day at a time, would have been extra cruel. It was a reminder that some things are worse than death—losing the things worth living for are worse than death.