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do,” Ruth says. Her voice is reedy with sudden rage. “I’m going to walk into the—”
    She trips on the fringe of the carpet and goes down. Her body hardly makes a noise as it hits the floor. “I’m okay,” she says, even as she’s falling. “I’m okay. Help me up.”
    Clara reaches down and grabs Ruth under both her arms. She hoists her back up—she is light as a child—and half drags, half carries her back to the wheelchair. She’s trying not to think, just to act. She can keep doing the next thing, whatever the next thing might be. Put one foot in front of the other. That, she can handle. Anything but talking. She just doesn’t want to talk.
    “Thank you,” Ruth says. “That damn rug keeps getting in my way.”
    Her head scarf has been dislodged. Her hair—that black, wavy, waist-length hair—is gone. She’s bald, the bony conical shape of her skull like something obscene, something not meant to be witnessed. Tufts of downy fuzz cover the top of her head. She looks new, like she has just been born. But no. The blue-black circles under her eyes, the skin so papery it might crumble to the touch. She is not new. She is—Clara does a quick calculation—fifty-seven years old. The last time they saw each other, Clara was eighteen and Ruth forty-three. She rests for a moment on the tide of numbers—infallible, controllable numbers—until the numbers start turning on her. Fourteen years: a lifetime. Samantha’s lifetime, and then some. So much has been lost. So much has always been lost.
    “Well, don’t just stand there and stare.” Ruth waves her hand in the air—the same gesture Clara used just a few minutes ago with the girl, Peony.
    “I’m sorry,” Clara says. “I just…”
    “I know. I’m quite a sight.” Ruth tries to replace the head scarf.
    “What’s happened to you?” Clara forces herself to ask. She leans against the bed again. She can just about make out the labels on some of the prescription bottles from here: morphine, lorazepam. She wants to reach over, grab a bottle, shake its contents into her open palm. Stop it. Oblivion is not an option. She can’t soften the edges of this thing—a pain beyond dulling.
    “Didn’t Robin brief you? It appears that I have adenocarcinoma of the lung. Stage IIIB,” Ruth says. “Which is a bad thing. Very bad.” An attempt to keep her voice light. As if it hasn’t been more than a decade. As if the thirty-two-year-old woman standing before her is no different from the eighteen-year-old girl who left.
    Peony has slipped into the room, carrying a tray with a cup of something steaming—soup, tea—and some toast.
    “You two have met?” Ruth asks, as if they’re at a cocktail party. “Peony has been an absolute godsend.”
    Of course, they’re all godsends, the girls and boys who worship at Ruth’s feet. And Clara—ungrateful, terrible disappointment that she is—had fled. She had broken every pact and even one of the Ten Commandments.
    “It’s time for you to eat,” says Peony. She sets the tray down on a rolling table, a piece of hospital furniture. “Can I get you anything else?”
    Clara bets this isn’t what she had in mind when she got the internship with Ruth Dunne.
    “No, thanks,” says Ruth. “I just want to be left alone with my daughter.”
    “Call if you need me,” says Peony. And just as quickly, she slips back out.
    My daughter. The phrase is not lost on Clara. Ruth has always used Clara’s given name—the name Ruth gave her—sparingly. She’d much prefer to claim her as her own. My daughter. So many years since Clara has heard it, but still—it doesn’t matter. Her mother’s eyes are upon her. Boring into her. Darting back and forth, up and down. As a very little girl, Clara used to examine herself—each limb, every finger and toe—before going to sleep at night and again upon waking in the morning. She was deathly afraid that Ruth might have stolen away a piece of her. Once she knew about internal