“Water?” Evie asked. Her mother nodded. Evie poured water from the plastic pitcher on the bedside table into a glass with a straw in it. Her mother sipped. The water level had barely receded before her mother made a face and pulled away.

Evie put the water back on the table.

Her mother held her gaze for a moment.

“How are you feeling?” Evie said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

Her mother shook her head and closed her eyes.

Evie said, “Your neighbor, the man from across the street? He stopped by the house.”

Her mother gave her a startled look.

“I didn’t know you were friendly with him. He offered to repair—”

“Did you let him in?” her mother asked, anxiety flaring in her eyes.

“No,” Evie said, glad that she hadn’t. “I told him thanks but no thanks.”

Her mother started to say something more, but a nurse came into the room. As the nurse wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around her arm, her mother said under her breath, “So he knows I’m here?”

“Mom, everyone in the neighborhood knows you’re here. The ambulance—remember?”

Her mother winced and let her head drop back on the pillow, her lips a thin tight line as the nurse pumped air into the cuff. The nurse released it slowly, gave the cuff a puzzled look, and pumped it a second time. This time she seemed satisfied. She checked the IV, wrote something in the chart hanging on the end of the bed, and left.

“God, what I wouldn’t give for a smoke,” her mother said.

Evie realized that the nurse had left a wake of cigarette-scented air in the small room.

“Mom, the health department is threatening to condemn the house.”

“The house?” Her mother blinked several times, like she was absorbing this information.

“It’s an awful mess. I’m going to need money to get the house cleaned up and repaired.”

“I can take care of it. There’s money,” her mother said with a vague wave. “Plenty of money. When I get home.”

“When you—?” Evie wondered if Ginger could have been wrong about how sick her mother was. “The doctor told you when you can go home?”

“Soon. When I’m ready.” With her good arm, her mother pushed herself up straighter. Her face turned pink. “I’m not a child, you know. So don’t think you can just move in and take over.”

Evie wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “What?” she asked. “Mom, I—”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Her mother’s face reddened some more. “Boss everyone around. Take charge. Oh yes, Evie knows what’s best for everyone. Everyone except herself. As if you care a twig about what happens to me.”

Whiplash. That’s what she and Ginger had called it when the switch flipped. Only she couldn’t be drinking. Not here in the hospital.

Her mother grabbed Evie’s wrist and squeezed so hard that it hurt. “Stop looking at me like that. I can’t stand it when you talk down to me. ”

Her mother’s breath was sour, but there was no alcohol on it, Evie thought in a disconnected corner of her brain as she tried to yank her arm free. But her mother’s grip had frozen like a vise. “I was only asking so—”

“I was only asking,” her mother mimicked.

Evie was speechless with fury and bottled-up hurt.

“I . . . don’t . . . need . . . you or anyone else,” her mother said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you even think—” The final word died on her lips as she shuddered. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her body went rigid with spasms.

“Mom?” Evie jumped up. “Mom? Mom! Help!”

She groped for the emergency call button. Over and over she pressed it. Her mother lay there quaking. Was anyone coming to help?

Evie ran out in the hall and headed for the nurses’ station. A nurse met her halfway. By the time they got back to the room, her mother had gone slack. Heart pounding, Evie watched the nurse take her mother’s pulse.

A moment later, her mother’s eyes blinked open. A sheen of sweat coated her forehead and her gaze wandered about the room, across the nurse, until it fastened on Evie.

“You came!” she said.

Chapter Fifteen

Going home from the hospital, Evie rode by herself in the back of the bus. She rubbed her wrist, trying to erase the sensation that she was still in her mother’s grip. She pushed up her sleeve, sure there’d be a mark, but there wasn’t. In the end, the damage her mother wrought was invisible.

She took out her phone. She’d promised to call Ginger.

“Evie?” Ginger said, picking up on the first ring.

“You were right. This time it’s different.”

“I know. So?”

“So.” Evie could see her mother’s face, all hope and innocence when she’d woken up after her seizure. “One minute she’s talking to me, normal, you know? The next minute she’s bat-shit crazy. Saying the meanest things.”

“Oh, Evie. Surely you know by now that you shouldn’t get upset by anything that she says. The doctors have her all doped up on loads of medication.”

“It was more than being doped up. She’s screaming at me. Telling me to stop trying to tell her what to do with her life. Then she shudders and goes blank. She’s not there. And she’s not there. And I’m starting to panic because she’s still not there. And then, just like that, she’s awake again. And she recognizes me. But”—Evie swallowed the lump in her throat—“she thinks I just showed up. It was like something out of Groundhog Day.”

“Oh, Evie,” Ginger said.

“Did you notice her belly?” Evie asked.

“I know, it’s awful. The nurse calls it ascites. It’s a symptom of late-stage liver disease.”

“Late stage? What does that mean?”

“Didn’t you talk to Dr. Foran?”

“Didn’t I—?” Evie stopped herself from biting back. Ginger never meant her Didn’t-yous to come out in the know-it-all, passive-aggressive way that they did. “There were no doctors around, and until this minute I didn’t even know her doctor’s name.”

“I’ll text you the phone number.”

“Thank you.”

“So what’s your plan?” Ginger asked.

“My plan?”

“Tonight? Tomorrow?”

Evie had assumed she’d sleep at the house, but she hadn’t bargained for the mess, not to mention the smell. But what was the alternative? It would take an hour and a half to get home to Brooklyn and another hour and a half back tomorrow morning.

“I’ll probably stay there tonight,” Evie said.

“You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. If not, I’ll go home.”

“See what you can figure out about her finances,” Ginger said. “If there are unpaid bills lying around. Maybe you can find a current bank statement?”

Evie yawned. The day was catching up with her. “I asked her about money.”

“And?”

“She says there’s plenty.”

“Really? Well, la-di-da.”

“It’s a good thing, too, because between fixing the house so she can live in it and getting her some help when they send her back home, it’s going to be expensive.” The bus was getting near her stop. Evie stood and walked to the front.

“Hey, I thought you had a date with Seth tonight,” Ginger said.

Evie held on to the grab bar overhead as the bus slowed and pulled to the curb. “I told him I couldn’t make it. Family emergency. He’s going to the basketball game.”

A pause. Then, “Oh.” Ginger’s oh was filled with understanding and tinged with regret, and Evie hated that one stinking syllable. Ginger was like a heat-seeking missile when it came to piercing Evie’s confidence and poking at her vulnerabilities.

Ginger quickly filled the silence with “Don’t worry. You’ll—”

“Worry?” Evie got off the bus. “I’m not worried.” She took a breath and coughed bus exhaust. “It’s really no big deal, and he’s not the one. He was never the one. Got to go.” She disconnected the call before Ginger could start in with her favorite platitudes.