“Well, you know how we auditioned for those chorus spots, right?”

“Yeah.”

“One of the secondaries bagged out . . . got offered something else off-Broadway, so they offered me her part!” She squeals the last word.

My heart leaps out of my chest. It’s what every one of us hopes for, some fluky thing that will be our lucky break. “Holy shit, Jess! That’s amazing.”

“I know! I have lines and everything!”

“Solos?”

“Only one small one as part of a bigger piece, but it’s something.”

I breathe out a breath and sink deeper into my seat. “That’s a hella lot more than something, Jess. That’s huge. Holy shit.”

“I know!” she shrieks, and I can almost see her jumping up and down, her ponytail swinging behind her.

If I were there, I’d be jumping with her. “So what’s the deal? When do rehearsals start?”

“After Christmas, and we open in February.”

“We’re going out this week to celebrate.”

“Definitely! I’ve got to go call my mom, but we’ll talk later, okay?”

Something in me warms at the realization she called me first, even before her mom. “Yeah, sweetie. Talk later. Congrats.”

“Bye, Hil!”

I take a breath as I lower the phone and hang up. “Break a leg.”

My mom has cancer.

Damn.

IT’S OVER TWO hours later, and I’ve made all the transfers and am standing at Mallory’s door, but now I find myself hesitating.

She doesn’t even know I’ve been going to see Mom. How am I going to do this?

But she needs to know. If Mom’s dying, Mallory needs to get over herself and go see her before it’s too late. I’ve been stalking my phone, hoping to hear from Mom, but so far, nothing. I don’t even know what the deal is. Maybe she’s fine. Maybe it’s, like, a mole or something that they hacked off.

. . . too weak from the chemo. . .

That sounds like more than a mole.

I press the bell. When no one answers, I pull out my key and let myself in. I’ve no sooner settled into the couch and turned on the TV than I hear the garage door. A minute later, Henri and Max come tumbling through the door into the kitchen, fighting over some Happy Meal toy, with Mallory just behind them.

“Auntie!” Henri squeals, running across the family room and tackling me.

“Hey, buddy. How was school?” I ask, ruffling his sable mop.

“Jeremy Timmons brought his tarantula and we watched it eat a cricket!” he says as Max disappears up the hall.

My stomach squirms a little and I lower myself back onto the couch. “Cool. Was it gross?”

“It ate the whole thing! No guts left over or anything!” he says, clamoring onto the couch next to me.

“I don’t know whether eating the whole thing, or left-over guts is grosser,” I tell him.

Max appears a minute later with a laptop and settles onto the floor on his stomach.

“To what do we owe the honor?” Mallory says, coming out of the kitchen with a sliced apple and peanut butter for the boys.

“We need to talk.”

She looks up at me as she set the plate on the coffee table, and concern flits over her face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mom, Mal—”

But that’s as far as I get before her hand goes up and her face turns to stone. Her whole posture changes at the mention of Mom, stiffening into something hard and unforgiving. “Henri,” she says, “take your snack and you and Max find something to play with in your room, okay?”

“Are you okay, Mom?” Henri asks.

She nods and tries to smile, but it’s pinched. “I just need to talk to your auntie for a minute, ’kay baby?”

“ ’Kay,” he says. He picks up the plate of apples and tugs at Max’s shoulder.

Max grabs his laptop and Henri gives me a concerned glance over his shoulder as they make their way down the hall.

“Is she trying to get ahold of you?” Mallory hisses the second their door closes. “Because if she is, don’t fall for it. Don’t call her back. She’ll tell you some fancy story to suck you in, but she’s a liar, Hilary. You can’t believe anything she says.”

“She’s sick. I think she may be dying.”

She barks out a bitter laugh and rolls her eyes. “Is that what she said? She so full of bullshit.”

“No, Mallory. She didn’t say it. I just came from Bedford Hills and they wouldn’t let me see her because she was too weak from the chemo.”

Her jaw tightens and I swear she stops breathing. I wait until she says something to know whether it’s me going there that she’s stuck on, or whether it’s that Mom really is sick.

“What were you doing in Bedford Hills?”

“Visiting Mom.”

“Why?”

I slouch back into the couch. “Because I just was, okay? I’ve gone on the first of every month for years—ever since I moved out of here.”

Mallory’s face blanches. “She’s poison, Hillary.”

“She’s sick, Mallory! She’s looked really bad over the last six or seven months, but I just thought . . . I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “I guess I just thought she was getting old and all the drinking and smoking was catching up with her.”

“I don’t want you going back there.”

I shove out of the couch. “Tough shit.”

For a full minute she doesn’t say anything, then, “You really think she’s dying?”

“Yes, Mallory. I’m pretty sure she’s dying.”

She sags into the door frame but hate still runs through her voice as she says, “So, what are we supposed to do, just pretend she didn’t abandon you to the system? Just pretend that everything that happened to you there wasn’t on her?”

“She’s dying,” I say, slumping back into the couch. “I think maybe it’s time to forgive and forget.”

“I will never forget,” she says low through gritted teeth, and that’s when I realize this isn’t about me.

I straighten up. “What did she do to you?”

She looks at me a long minute, then spins for the kitchen. “Don’t go back there.”

I pull myself up and follow her. She’s at the sink, peeling a potato when I walk in. “So we’re just going to let her die all alone.”

She keeps peeling.

I move to the counter and pick up a potato. “You have another peeler?” I ask, pulling open the utensil drawer, but when I look up at her expectantly, I see the tears tracking down her face and dripping onto the counter.

“Mal?”

She swallows hard and sniffles, but doesn’t look up from her potato.

“What’s going on?”

Her whole face pulls tight and she drops both the potato and the peeler into the sink. “Do you remember the day I left?”

I mostly remember the yelling. “Sort of.”

She looks up at me with sad eyes. “You were only ten.”

Mom and Mallory were always fighting about something. I don’t think they knew how to communicate at anything less than a yell, and it usually ended with Mom hitting Mallory. But I remember, at the end of that fight, Mallory was gone and never came back. When I asked Mom, she said Mallory had gone to college. End of story.

“You went to college.”

She shakes her head. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yeah . . . didn’t you?”

She scoops the potato out of the sink and puts it on the counter. “Eventually. But that was just after graduation, Hilary. I was in the city until August.”

“Why did you leave, then?”

She hauls a deep breath, then looks at me. “Do you remember Doug?”

My mind does a quick inventory of the string of Mom’s live-in men. “The big blond one with the gold tooth?”

She nods. “It was graduation night. I was drunk and Carrie and her boyfriend gave me a ride home. Doug was on the couch, watching some old horror flick when I came in. I guess Mom was already passed out in bed.” She lowers herself into a chair, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her face in her hands. “I don’t really remember much . . . just that I stumbled into that little table behind the couch in the family room and knocked some things off it. Doug helped me up and sort of carried me to our room.” She looks up at me. “I don’t remember why you weren’t there . . . probably sleeping over at McKenzie’s or something.”