Mom had been sick for almost two years, and we’d known the end was coming, and that terrible summer had been one long, agonizing goodbye. When the Twin Towers fell that September, it felt as though the world were literally ending, as though the safe life I’d always taken for granted was going up in a cloud of smoke. In early October the doctors finally said Mom’s time had come. She only had a few hours.

Dad had my brother and me get dressed, and I watched the tears slide down his cheeks as we rode to the hospital in silence. He was so broken at that point—we all were. People who told us we were strong simply didn’t know what else to say.

In her hospital bed Mom was a sliver of herself, a speck of the beautiful, vibrant woman who’d raised me. Her thick hair was gone, replaced by a blue head scarf that I hated, that I was sure Mom hated, too. Her body was a tiny bundle of bones, her face hard and jagged in the places where it had once been the softest skin I knew. Mom squeezed my hand, her eyes barely open. Dad had warned us that she was going to be really, really out of it. I told her I would always love her more than anyone else in the world, and even though she didn’t say anything back, a smile struggled against the edges of her pale lips, and I knew she loved me, too.

Dad said it was best we not be in the room when Mom passed, and he sent my brother and me to the waiting room down the hall. He said it could be thirty minutes, or maybe a few hours, but that he’d come get us when it was over. My brother sat with his head hung between his knees. It was silent except for the distant music coming from his headphones. I hated the room. It was a perfect square, with rows of chairs lining three of the four walls, but we were the only ones there. A small window overlooked the parking lot, and the carpet was a hideous pattern of maroon and gray swirls. On one of the walls hung a framed print of a grassy landscape, as if some picture of a pretty field might make you feel better if your mom was down the hall, dying of cancer, on the precipice of leaving the world and never coming back.

I will never see my mother again. The thought lodged itself in the center of my mind, and it filled me with so much fear and sadness that I couldn’t breathe. Panic seized me, tears coating my face as I tried to catch my breath. I glanced over at my brother, my protector, but he was bent so far over that I could only see the back of his blond head. I desperately needed his help, but he was always mad these days, and even though we were going through the same thing and Mom had made us promise to stick together, I was too afraid to touch him.

I closed my eyes and imagined Mom dying—struggling for a breath that wasn’t there and then being gone forever. I knew I’d never feel the back of her soft hand against my forehead again. The panic bolted through me, an electrical charge. In the blackness behind my eyes I looked for her because that was where she’d said I could find her.

I remembered when I was eight years old and curled up in my bed, my pillow sticky from crying as my mother stroked my hair. It was a cold weekend in January, and I was in the throes of a meltdown. We’d woken up that morning to sixteen inches of snow, and the kids on the block had decided to have a snowman-building contest, which our next-door neighbor Christopher would judge. After nearly two hours we’d completed our snowmen, and Christopher had deemed mine the winner. This sent a boy from down the street into a rage, and he’d smashed my snowman to pieces, leaving nothing but a pile of snow strewn with sticks and a bright orange carrot.

Mom rubbed my back as I sobbed and told me that the boy was wrong to do what he’d done, and that she was going to help me make a new snowman.

“But first, I want you to do something, Skye. Something that will help you calm down. I want you to breathe, just like this.” She helped me sit up in the bed and took my small hands in hers. She had the longest, most elegant fingers.

“Breathe in for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” Mom had said, demonstrating. “Breathe out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Just like that. Let’s do it together.”

And we had. One two three four five six seven eight; eight seven six five four three two one.

Mom explained that anytime she was feeling upset or angry or out of control, she breathed this way to calm herself back down. She’d do it over and over until she felt relaxed. “And eight is my lucky number, so that’s why I count to eight. But if you want, you can count to and from a smaller number. That might make it easier for your breath.”

I shook my head. “I want my number to be eight, too.”

From that day on, I used Mom’s breathing technique whenever I needed it. Whenever I was fighting with one of my friends, whenever I felt that familiar surge of anxiety in anticipation of a test or a class presentation, I breathed. I breathed up to eight and down from eight, again and again, and I would make it through.

And as I waited for my mother to die, that’s what I did.

Breathe in for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; breathe out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Except this time, something charged me to my feet; drove me to the door of the waiting room. I couldn’t just sit there; I had to be with her while she died. My hand gripped the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. My hand wouldn’t move. My head spun, a rushing spiral of black. I couldn’t leave her alone; I couldn’t watch her die. I was trapped in between. I dropped to my knees and rested my forehead against the wood; the reality that existed on the other side of the door was unbearable.

But the irony in unbearable things is that they actually are bearable. They force you to endure what you cannot comprehend enduring. They demand that you sit in unimaginable pain.

I made myself return to my breath. I don’t know why I started knocking in the same methodic order I was breathing, but doing so calmed something in my central nervous system. I couldn’t stop. Knock for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; knock for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. As long as I didn’t stop knocking, as long as I stayed on my side of the door, my mother wouldn’t die. Our lucky number eight was keeping her alive. I knocked until my knuckles were raw, but there wasn’t any pain. My brother finally picked his head up and slid his headphones down around his neck, peering at me through blotchy eyes.

“Skye.” He said my name only once, but his voice was small and powerless against whatever had overcome me. He closed his eyes and put his headphones back over his ears, grief swallowing him whole.

I kept breathing and knocking.

12345678–87654321.

12345678–87654321.

12345678–87654321.

12345678–87654321.

12345678–87654321.

12345678–87654321.

I think it was hours, but I don’t know how much time passed before my arm collapsed along with the rest of me, a crumpled flower on the floor. My father found me there, half-asleep on that ugly carpet, when he told us Mom was gone.

By the time I stopped talking, I’d almost forgotten it was Burke to whom I was explaining all of this, and I was momentarily stunned to find him sitting across from me. His blue eyes rested softly on mine, sorrow flickering in his irises.

I took a sip of my negroni, which I’d hardly touched.

“Anyway,” I said, the gin a warm glow against my chest, carrying me to the finish line, “this is who I am and what I’ve been through. OCD is still, unfortunately, a daily part of my life, and I thought I should tell you before we started spending more time together.” My heart pounded behind my rib cage as I thought about how much I liked Burke; how badly I wanted him to stay despite what I’d just told him. But it wasn’t going to be enough, and Dr. Salam was right: I should never have slept with him. The damn oxytocin was going to make all of this so much harder. The pit in my stomach burrowed deeper.

But Burke’s hand slid across the table and he linked his fingers with mine. “Oh, Skye.” His expression softened. “Thank you for telling me. For opening up to me about this. It means—it means a lot.”

“So you don’t…” Hope bubbled toward the surface. “I mean, some people … it can be jarring to be around … if you’re not used to it. The knocking isn’t my only compulsion; there are others, too. If you spend the night, and we spend all day together tomorrow…”

“You have OCD.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“And I’m in recovery, sober for twenty-two years.”