“You know they’re not real,” Mina said.

“I know, I know.” Annabelle put a finger to her lips, shhh, and added in a stage whisper. “But they don’t.”

Mina had laughed, and then stopped laughing because it was clear that Annabelle didn’t get her own joke, and she wasn’t about to start laughing at her sister. Not then. Not ever.

Later, after Annabelle was back in bed, Brian had arrived at the nursing home. “Hello, Mother,” he’d said, standing in the doorway like a cigar store Indian.

“Hello, Gilbert,” Annabelle had said. She raised her eyebrows in Brian’s direction and asked Mina, “Is he imaginary, too?”

Fortunately Brian never heard that. He wouldn’t have found the comment amusing, not the slightest bit.

He came over to the bed and kissed Annabelle’s cheek.

Every once in a while, even then near the end, Annabelle had surprised Mina, as she did at that moment when her gaze sharpened. “Oh!” She pursed her lips, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. Then she licked her thumb and wiped his cheek. Annabelle never had been much of a doting mother, but she had liked her things spotless.

Brian had drawn back. “Mother, please.”

The familiar sound of her car engine turning over brought Mina back to the present. Apparently Evie needed to borrow her car after all.

Mina remembered the chicken she’d thawed. Chicken cacciatore was a simple recipe. Chicken, chopped green and sweet red pepper, a can of Hunt’s tomato sauce, plus an onion, which Mina left out. These days, onions of any kind gave her heartburn. She hoped the chicken, having been thawed and then refrigerated, wasn’t going to kill her.

A short time later Mina had put together the ingredients. She set the lid on the pot and turned the burner low to simmer. She could leave it there for hours because she liked her chicken well cooked, to the point where the meat was falling off the bone. With rice and a green salad, she’d have dinner for at least four nights.

Before she sat down again with the paper, she pulled her calendar from the kitchen wall. Three baby burrowing owls were pictured for May—not anything she was likely to see out her window. She wrote BRIAN in Monday’s block. She could hardly forget the reason he was coming back.

Annabelle’s had been a slow decline. In the early days, she’d felt her marbles slipping away. Then, even those were gone. If Mina hadn’t been there, she’d have forgotten to eat. Forgotten to clean herself. Eventually she completely lost track of what she’d lost track of.

Mina was determined not to let her present slip away. In today’s box in tiny printing she started a list.

1. Burned teakettle

2. Purse + oatmeal in icebox

3. Lost legal papers

4. Set off C’s alarm

To the last item she added a question: For the third time?

Chapter Twenty-seven

Evie had gratefully accepted Finn’s offer to call a local mechanic, a buddy of his, he said, and get the car towed. Once it was up on a lift, Finn assured her, they’d find the leak and patch the tank. It shouldn’t cost much at all.

Evie barely had to turn the key for Mrs. Yetner’s Mustang to roar to life. She shifted into reverse, released the emergency brake, and backed out of the driveway. In seconds she was past Sparkles and on her way.

Like the house, Mrs. Yetner’s car was in its own spotlessly clean time warp. Not even a corner of the faux wood laminate on the dash was curled or missing. But it wasn’t perfect: the springs in the driver seat were shot, and Evie needed three of the four cushions Mrs. Yetner had piled on the deep bucket seat to see over the leather-clad steering wheel. She hand-cranked the window down and reached out to adjust the side mirror.

A tow truck passed her, going the opposite way. She wondered if it could be heading over to pick up her mother’s car already. How long had it been, she wondered, since her mother had tried to drive it?

Evie was lucky that Mrs. Yetner had pressed her car keys on her. What would have taken forty minutes by bus took ten, and still she was going to get to the hospital barely in time to catch the doctor. Halfway there it started to drizzle, and by the time she pulled into the parking lot, rain was coming down hard. She parked and ran into the building.

When she got to her mother’s room, wet and out of breath from running, she found the curtain drawn around her mother’s bed. From within, she heard voices. She backed out of the room and waited in the open doorway.

Finally the curtain drew back. A woman in a white lab coat turned around. Beyond her, Evie’s mother lay propped up in bed, unblinking, staring off into space. Her skin was tinged yellow against the white linen.

“Dr. Foran?” Evie said.

“You must be Sandra’s daughter.” Dr. Foran offered her hand. Her nails were cut short, polished clear, and she wore a thin gold wedding band. She had a file folder tucked under her other arm.

“Evie Ferrante,” Evie said, shaking the doctor’s cool strong hand.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Dr. Foran’s voice was low and her direct look unnerving. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Evie followed her down the hall, anchoring her gaze on the long dark ponytail that snaked down the back of the doctor’s white lab coat.

Dr. Foran led Evie to a visitors’ lounge and pulled up two chairs opposite each other in a corner. Evie sat in one. Dr. Foran sat in the other and leaned forward. She looked very young, no older than Evie. In the harsh artificial light, the dark circles under her eyes grew even darker.

“You know, of course, that your mother has late-stage liver disease.”

Late stage. That was what Ginger had said. Evie’s pulse pounded in her ears, and she wished Ginger were there.

“It’s cirrhosis,” Dr. Foran continued. “Her liver function is very compromised. The liver detoxifies the body, and your mother’s is no longer doing its job. That’s what’s causing the fluid buildup in her abdomen. Her mood swings and agitation. Weight loss. Jaundice. Fatigue. Nausea.”

Jaundice. Fatigue. Nausea. The words seemed to float in front of Evie. She opened her bag and found a little notebook and a pen. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I need to write this down.”

As Dr. Foran repeated the symptoms, Evie copied them down. Dr. Foran added, “She shows signs of chronic malnutrition, that much is obvious. But her liver function tests turned up additional abnormalities. Whenever a patient presents with liver failure, we compare the levels of two liver enzymes, AST and ALT.”

“AST. ALT.” Evie wrote the acronyms.

“Aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase.”

Evie didn’t even try to write that down.

“Her AST and ALT would be between two hundred and four hundred if she had liver failure from alcohol alone. But they’re over a thousand.”

Evie wrote down > 1000 and circled it. “What does that mean?”

“It’s an indication of paracetamol overdose.”

“Paracetamol.”

“Acetaminophen. Same thing. It’s in a lot of over-the-counter drugs. People take a Tylenol and a Nyquil and a Coricidin, not realizing they all have acetaminophen. More than two grams a day can be lethal for someone with a compromised liver. That’s just three Extra Strength Tylenol. You can see how easy it is to overdose.”

“Especially if you’re drinking and losing track of time.”

“Especially. Acetaminophen toxicity is the second-most-common cause of acute liver failure requiring transplantation.”

A liver transplant? “Would my mother be a candidate for that?”

“We do many of them here. But your mother is so weak she might not survive the operation. More than that, she’d have to really want to stop drinking. Make a serious commitment.” Dr. Foran tilted her head and gave a tired smile.