It’d been her secure relationship with Amanda she lost tonight, she realized numbly. The loss of a lackluster romance with Colin Atwater was nothing in comparison to that wound.

Death rarely followed a smooth downward decline. Emma was reminded of that the next day at work when Cristina joked with her tiredly when she woke up at around six in the evening, telling Emma she looked like something the cat had dragged in.

“Out partying last night with that boyfriend of yours, were you?” Cristina asked as Emma poured out her pain medication.

“No. I just couldn’t sleep,” Emma replied honestly. How could she rest with all the disturbing images she had swirling around her head? Colin’s hand moving along the side of her sister’s body, skimming her breast; the message in Montand’s stare as he’d stood in the headlights of her car; the silent, somehow miserable climax of that man—Vanni.

Yes. Her voyeuristic incident was still bothering her deeply, and she was doing everything in her power to repress it. It felt like her whole world had been toppled over.

“I understand from Margie that you had a good appetite today,” she said, changing the subject.

“A yogurt and half a supplement shake. Good if you’re an anorexic or a dying woman, maybe,” Cristina replied dryly. Neither of them spoke as Emma administered the medication and held up a glass with a straw while her patient laboriously drank a few mouthfuls of water.

“That was some storm last night,” Cristina gasped as she resettled on her pillows. “Maybe that’s what kept you awake?”

“Maybe it was the storm,” Emma said dubiously, setting the water glass on the table. What did she know about what she was feeling, after all? She’d briefly told an equally bewildered, tearful Amanda that this morning when her sister finally confronted her in the kitchen.

“It only happened that one time, Emma. I want you to know that.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better, that it happened once?”

“No! God, what you must be thinking and feeling—”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, to be honest,” Emma said honestly.

“What do you mean you don’t know how you feel?” Amanda asked wildly. “You must be furious at me. At Colin, too.”

“I don’t care about Colin, Amanda,” she seethed.

She’d only been telling the truth about her bewilderment, though. Nothing and no one felt certain to Emma anymore. Even she herself had become a mystery in this past week. One thing of which she was certain: she felt no flaming jealousy when she thought of Amanda and Colin together, which seemed pitiful more than anything. Mostly, she felt a scoring sense of loss. She didn’t want to feel betrayed by her sister, given the fact that she now realized it’d been a mistake to stay with Colin.

But she did.

And she felt lonely, she realized. She’d never felt so alone in her life, even after her mother had died. It suddenly seemed that everyone was capable of entering a world of forbidden passion, while she herself was left behind, an outsider, too afraid to enter that complicated, bewildering place.

She’d been honest with Amanda about the lack of jealousy. It was Amanda she worried she’d lost, more than her safe relationship with Colin. Exactly what had gone through her sister’s head when she came to the conclusion that being with Colin was more important than her relationship with Emma?

Things were still rattling around precariously in Emma’s world later that evening as she spoke to Cristina.

“Would you like me to turn on the television?” she asked Cristina. She could use a little mindless distraction. Between lack of sleep and the most disturbing dreams when she finally had gone under for a meager few hours, she was feeling less than her sharp, feisty self.

“No. There’s been something I’ve been meaning to speak with you about,” Cristina said. “Remember when I asked you if you were going to preach to me about God and repentance and fire and brimstone?”

Emma grinned as she sat in the upholstered chair next to Cristina’s bed.

“Well, I don’t remember it precisely that way, but yeah . . . in general.”

“And you said you never preached to people because you don’t like to be preached to,” Cristina recalled. Emma nodded. “You sidestepped the issue.”

“What issue?”

“Of whether or not you believe in God. Are you religious?” Cristina inquired. Her thicker than usual accent informed Emma she was growing tired.

“I don’t think so, not in the classic sense. I’m very spiritual, though.”

“Why?” Cristina demanded.

“I’ve seen things. Experienced them.”

“You’ve experienced a lot of death,” Cristina filled in for her. “Because your mother was a nurse in that old folks’ home and you used to spend a lot of time with all those—what’s that charming word you Americans use—geezers,” Cristina recalled what Emma had told her when they conversed a few days ago.

“They weren’t just old people. Many were my friends.”

Cristina shook her head on the pillow. “It wasn’t right, for such a young girl to be exposed to so much disease and death. There’s something twisted about it. It was wrong of your mother to allow it to happen.”

“You say it was twisted because you’re afraid,” Emma said quietly.

Cristina glanced at her incredulously. “How can you sit there, a girl of twenty some odd years, fresh and dewy as a bud still on the rosebush, and say something like that to me?” she demanded hoarsely.

“I can say it because I know. There’s nothing to fear, Cristina.”

For a few seconds Cristina just stared at her in openmouthed awe. Emma saw the doubt slink back into her expression.

“Look at me,” Cristina demanded bitterly, glancing at her frail body beneath the sheets. “I’m skin and bones and seeping sores. My insides are being eaten away by cancer. How can you say death isn’t twisted and awful?”

“It is awful at times. Painful. Scary. But one never sees life more clearly than when death approaches. And maybe that’s the biggest gift of death—life’s final gift—if we can accept it.”

A shudder went through Cristina. “You say you’re not religious, but you certainly sound like you want me to repent of my sins before I go.”

Emma smiled. “I don’t know if I’d call them sins, necessarily, but if you have something you want to talk about, I’ll listen.”

“And not judge?” Cristina wondered skeptically.

“And not judge,” Emma repeated calmly. “You brought this up, Cristina. There must be something you want to get off your chest.”

Cristina stared at the closed curtains across the room, a faraway look in her eyes. “There are so many things,” she whispered, sounding uncharacteristically sad. Wistful. After a moment, she focused on Emma again. She looked very tired. “But I still don’t think it’s right.”

“What?” Emma asked, confused.

“For a young girl like you, so full of life, to surround herself with death. Maybe you’re the one who is afraid.”

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

“Maybe you’re such an expert on death because you’re afraid to live,” Cristina said in a thready whisper. Her eyelids closed. She didn’t speak again for several seconds. Emma thought she slept, and grew lost in reflecting on Cristina’s words.

“You really do believe it, don’t you?” Cristina asked in a quavering voice after a minute. She opened her eyes. “That dying isn’t frightening?”

“No,” Emma said quietly. “I know it.”

Cristina studied her searchingly for several seconds, and then closed her eyes again. Emma watched over her as she sunk into a comfortable sleep.

Was there any truth to what she’d said about her being afraid of life? Her relationship with Colin for the past two years had kept her comfortable. Safe. That seemed glaringly obvious now. She’d clung to the familiarity. She’d needed security after the death of her mother. Maybe Colin was tired of being her security blanket and longed for something more risky. More passionate.