Chapter 18: Press Play

Shelby's room was on the third floor of Buffalo General, at the end of a corridor that smelled of floor wax.

Dolores sat in the chair beside the bed with her green coat still buttoned.

She stood the moment my mother and I came through the door.

"Out," she said. "Both of you."

"No," Shelby said.

Her voice was thin. She lay propped against the pillows with an IV in her hand and a monitor beside her, and her hair had come loose on one side.

"She's here because I asked."

"You're not well, baby."

"Mama. Sit down."

Dolores sat, slowly, with her mouth in a line.

A steady sound filled the quiet.

It was a fast, soft whooshing, quick and regular.

I stopped breathing.

"That's her heartbeat," Shelby said. "Or his. They don't know yet."

I had sat through five appointments in rooms like this one, waiting for a sound like that.

I had never heard it.

My throat closed, and I turned my face toward the window, because I would not cry in front of my sister.

"She's strong," Shelby said, more quietly.

"I'm glad," I said. "I mean it."

My mother took the chair by the tray table and set her handbag on her knee.

"Shelby," she said. "I'd like you to hear something. You can send me away after."

"What is it?"

"What your mother said to mine, twenty-six years ago, in my kitchen. You were a year old."

Dolores's head came up fast.

"Joan, no."

My mother took the gray recorder out of her bag and set it on the tray table, beside the plastic water cup.

"Press play, Shelby," she said. "Or tell me not to."