Chapter 7: Goodbye

They wheeled me into the consultation room and parked me facing the door.

The same table. The same box of tissues.

Yesterday Matthew had leaned on that door and called me Del.

Today Stewart held it open with one hand and his phone up in the other.

The camera was already recording. I could see the red dot.

"Go on in, girls," he said. "Remember what we talked about."

Flora came first.

She was in her strawberry dress and her light-up sneakers, and her curls had been brushed into a ponytail that was already falling out.

She stopped dead in the doorway.

She stared at me.

Then she hid behind Stewart's leg.

Edie came in after her, small and straight, holding a sheet of paper rolled into a tube.

She was wearing her purple school sweatshirt. There was marker on the cuffs.

There had been marker on the cuffs of every sweatshirt she'd owned since she was three.

She didn't run to me.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked at me.

I made my eyes stay on the wall above her head.

I made my mouth stay open.

My whole body was screaming at me to put my arms out.

"Say hello to Mommy," Stewart said.

"Hello, Mommy," said Edie.

Flora said nothing.

"Mommy's very sick," Stewart said.

He was talking to the girls, but he was angled toward the phone.

"Her mind went away. She can't hear us. She doesn't know who we are."

"Aunt Alicia said she went to heaven," Edie said.

"That's right. Her mind went to heaven. Her body has to go to a hospital far away now."

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