Chapter 11

The week between the introduction of the second list and Tuesday was the longest week of Kiya’s life so far.

Stephanie had told her not to prepare. Not to read. Not to anticipate. Kiya had taken the instruction seriously for the first three days and then had failed at it on the fourth, when she had been driving home from her shift at the bookstore and had passed the library and had pulled into the parking lot without deciding to and had walked in and had stood in front of the section where the books on this kind of thing lived, and had reached for one, and had then stopped with her hand on the spine and had taken her hand back and had walked out.

She drove home and felt vaguely guilty. She had not actually read anything. She had not pulled the book off the shelf. But she had wanted to, and she had been told not to, and she had come closer to disobedience than she had been comfortable with.

She wrote in the notebook that night: I tried to prepare. I almost did. I stopped. Stephanie said the list works best cold. I do not know what cold means yet. I will find out on Tuesday.

She had her own car. A 2009 Honda Civic her father had given her at sixteen when she got her full license, which had been his commuter car before he traded it in for something newer. It was silver and it had a small dent in the rear passenger door from a parking lot at some point in its earlier life, and it ran well. She had been driving it for two years. On Tuesday morning she told her mother she would meet her at the hospice.

Mara was at the kitchen counter pouring coffee. She turned around slowly.

“Why.”

“I have a bookstore shift before the visit. I’ll come directly from there. It will be easier.”

“You did not mention a shift.”

“I picked it up yesterday. Someone called out.”

Mara looked at her. Mara had spent two months becoming an expert reader of her daughter’s face. She did not say what she was reading. She said, “All right. I’ll see you there.”

Kiya did not have a bookstore shift. She had decided, in the night, that she wanted to drive to the hospice alone today. She did not have a clear reason for it. She thought it might be that she wanted the time in the car before and after to think, and she did not want to think next to her mother. She also thought it might be the first small private piece of the practice—taking herself somewhere her mother had been taking her, on her own steam. The kind of small autonomy she was going to spend the rest of her life losing on purpose. She wanted to use one of the last of them well.

She drove to the hospice the long way. She parked in the visitor lot rather than the garage. She walked in through the main entrance instead of the one her mother always used. The small differences were not lost on her. She filed them.

Stephanie was waiting with a new envelope.

This one was a different color than the first. Black, instead of manila. Kiya noticed and did not comment.

“You drove yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

Kiya sat. She put her tote on the floor.

“I wanted the time alone. I do not have a cleaner reason.”