Chapter 3

The third visit was the one where Mara stayed in the cafeteria from the start.

She had not been asked to. Stephanie had not made it a condition. But Mara had walked her daughter to the door of room 314 and had said I’ll be downstairs, take your time, text me when you’re ready, and Kiya had nodded and had gone in alone, and Mara had walked back to the elevator with the careful tread of a woman who had decided something and was now going to do it without thinking about it any further.

In the cafeteria she bought a coffee she did not want and sat at a table by the window and opened a book she had brought, and she read three pages without absorbing any of them, and then she set the book down and looked out at the parking lot and let herself think.

She has not asked me what they talk about. I told her she did not have to and she has not. She comes home and she goes to her room and she is quiet and she is somewhere I cannot follow her. I have been her mother for eighteen years and there has not been a place I could not follow her until now.

I am all right with this. I am surprised that I am all right with this.

Steph is doing something. I do not know what it is. I trust her to do it because she is Steph and because she is dying and dying people do not waste themselves on things that do not matter. Whatever she is doing matters to her and so it will matter to my daughter and so I am going to drink this coffee and read this book and not go upstairs until my daughter texts me.

She drank the coffee. She read another three pages of the book. This time some of them stayed.

Upstairs, Kiya sat down in the chair by the bed without being told.

Stephanie was awake. Her color was a little better than it had been the week before. She had asked the nurse, before Kiya arrived, to raise the bed and to bring a fresh scarf, the cream one this time, and to set the second chair where she wanted it. The nurse had done these things without comment. The nurses on this floor had stopped commenting on much. They understood that the people in their rooms were arranging their last things and that the arranging was none of their business.

“Hello, Kiya.”

“Hello.”

“Your mother is in the cafeteria.”

“Yes.”

“She did not come up this time.”

“No.”

Stephanie smiled, very faintly. She is letting us alone. She has decided to. I will not forget that.

“How was your week,” Stephanie said.

Kiya thought about the question. She had thought about Stephanie’s questions, in the week between visits, and she had begun to notice that Stephanie did not ask things idly. How was your week in Stephanie’s mouth was not the small filler question it was in most mouths. It was an actual question. Stephanie wanted to know.

“I told my parents I wanted to defer college for a year,” Kiya said. “I told them last night.”

“How did they take it.”

“My father was unhappy. My mother said she had been expecting me to say it.”

“Had she.”

“She said she had.”

“What reason did you give them.”

“I said I wanted to work for a year. I said I wanted to be sure of what I was going there for before I spent the money.”

“Is that the true reason.”

Kiya was quiet for a moment.

She is asking me to say it. She is asking me to say out loud, to her, that I am deferring because of her. Because of this room. Because of whatever is going to happen in this room.

“Part of it,” Kiya said.

“What is the other part.”

“I want to be here. I do not want to be three states away starting freshman year while you are—” She stopped. She did not know what word to put at the end of that sentence. None of the available words were respectful enough.