Chapter 10: One More Day

Cal pulled his jeans on in the dark and was gone across the hall before Maisie reached the top step.

I took her coat, and she let me.

She weighed almost nothing under it.

"I couldn't stay there," she said. "Mom keeps coming in to look at me. She thinks I'm the one who needs watching."

"You are the one who needs watching."

"Not by her."

I put her in my bed and covered her with every blanket I owned.

She held the grocery bag against her stomach, and when I reached for it she shifted so it stayed under her arm.

"It's only my things," she said.

"Okay."

I sat on the edge of the mattress.

She turned her face toward me on the pillow.

In the glow of the street lamp the whites of her eyes had gone a deeper yellow.

"Shanna, can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Whatever you're planning for tomorrow, can I be next to you when you do it?"

My hand stopped on the blanket.

"What am I planning?"

"You've had the same face since Sunday."

She smiled a little.

"It's Dad's face. The one he gets before he says something that can't be taken back."

"I do not have Dad's face."

"You have it right now."

I laughed, and she laughed, and then she closed her eyes.

"Can I?" she asked again.

"Yes."

"Thank you."

She was asleep in four minutes.

I sat there for a long time, watching her breathe.

Her breaths were shallow and quick, and each one caught at the top.

I had thought about my sister for twenty-two years as a girl on the other side of a door.

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