you’re going to die just because God decided that we shouldn’t live too long?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she says. “But essentially, that’s the gist.”
“But it’s not fair. You’re still young.”
“Jeffrey,” Mom says. “Please sit down.”
He sits in the chair next to mine and now she can turn and address us both. I watch her face as she tries to collect her thoughts.
“How does it happen?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. It varies for all of us. But I’ve been getting progressively weaker since last winter. Markedly so these past few weeks.”
The headaches she keeps having. The fatigue she blamed on work problems. The coldness in her hands and feet, the way her normal warmth seemed to leave her. The new wrinkles. The shadows under her eyes. The way she’s always sitting down these days, always resting. I can’t believe I didn’t put it all together before.
“So you’re getting weaker,” I say. “And then what, you’ll just fade away?”
“My spirit will leave this body.”
“When?” Jeffrey asks.
She gives us that sad, thoughtful look I’m so familiar with by now. “I don’t know.”
“Spring,” I say, because that’s one thing I do know. My dream has shown me.
Something hot and heavy starts to rise up in my chest, so powerful it roars in my ears, squeezes the air out of my lungs. I gasp for breath. “When were you planning to tell us?” Her midnight eyes flash with sympathy, which I find ironic, since she’s the one who’s dying. “You needed to focus on your purpose, not on me.” She shakes her head. “And I suppose I was also being selfish. I didn’t want to be dying yet. I was going to tell you today,” she says with another weary sigh. “I tried to tell you this morning—”
“But there’s something we can do,” interrupts Jeffrey. “Some higher power we can appeal to, right?”
“No, honey,” she answers gently.
“We can pray or something,” he insists.
“We all die, even angel-bloods.” She gets up and goes to kneel in front of Jeffrey’s chair, putting her hands over his. “It’s my turn now.”
“But we need you,” he chokes out. “What will happen to us?”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought,” she says. “I think what’s best for you might be to stay here, complete the school year. So I will transfer guardianship to Billy, who’s agreed to take you.
If that’s all right with you.”
“Not Dad?” Jeffrey asks with a quiver in his voice. “Does Dad even know?”
“Your father, he’s not. . He doesn’t really have the resources to take care of you.”
“He doesn’t have the time, you mean,” I add woodenly.
“You can’t die, Mom,” Jeffrey says. “You can’t.”
She hugs him. For a split second he resists, tries to pull away, but then he gives in, his shoulders shaking as she holds him, a terrible rough sob rumbling out of his chest. I hear that hurt-animal noise come out of my brother and part of me starts to split in half. But I don’t cry. I want to be mad at her, accuse her of being a big fat liar my whole life, shout that she’s abandoning us, maybe punch a hole in the wall myself, but I don’t do that either. I remember what she told me this morning, about death. I thought she was talking about me and Tucker, but now I know she was talking about me and her.
I find myself sliding out of my chair, moving on my knees over to Jeffrey’s chair. Mom pulls back and looks at me, her eyes shining with tears. She opens up the hug to let me in, and I snuggle against her, enveloped in a mix of her rose and vanilla perfume and Jeffrey’s cologne. I can’t feel anything — it’s like I’m floating out of my body, somehow, disconnected. I still can’t breathe.
“I love you both so much,” she says against my hair. “You have made my life into something so extraordinary, you can’t even know.”
Jeffrey sobs. Big, macho Jeffrey, crying like his heart will break.
“We’re going to make it through this together,” Mom says fiercely, pulling back again to look into our faces. “We’re going to be all right.”
She’s different at dinner. It’s just her and me at the table, since Jeffrey has a wrestling match, and she insisted he go. She doesn’t say much, but there’s something lighter about her, something in the way she sits up so straight that makes me realize that lately she’s been slumping, something in the way that she eats every last bite of her meal that makes me see that lately she’s been picking at her food. She’s acting so much stronger all of a sudden, like it hasn’t been the sickness that’s been weighing her down, but the secret. Now we know, and it’s like that secret’s been lifted off her, and momentarily she feels like herself again. It will not last. She knows it will not last. But she’s determined to enjoy the moment of normalcy.
She puts her fork down with a sigh, then looks at me across the table and raises her eyebrows. It takes me a second to realize that I’m reading her emotions.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Didn’t feel like spaghetti?”
I glance down at my plate. I’ve hardly touched my food. “It’s good. I’m just—” You’re dying, I think. How can I eat when I know you’re dying and there’s nothing we can do to stop it?
“Can I be excused?” I’m out of my chair before she has a chance to answer the question.
