My dad looked at the sandwich.

“I hate to ask, but would you mind going back and getting me a Caesar salad instead?”

My dad had just taken his first bite of his own sandwich. He looked back and forth between it and my mother for a second. “You want me to drive back to the sandwich shop?”

My mother nodded, then gestured at me with her head. “We could use a little just-us-girls time anyway.”

My dad looked at me. Then he nodded and stood up with his sandwich in one hand and his keys in the other and left the room.

My mom leaned closer to me once the door closed, and kept her voice low. “I read an article last night called ‘Sexual Functioning After a Spinal Cord Injury.’”

“Mom! Don’t read that!”

“Because if Chip’s enthusiasm is like his father’s—or any man, really—that’s going to be important to him.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Please don’t talk to me about Jim Dunbar’s ‘enthusiasm.’”

“I’ve been best friends with Evelyn for years, sweetheart. I know everything.”

I was shaking my head. “Nope. Please. No.”

“The great news is,” she pushed on, “even though men in your situation often lose sexual abilities, women typically don’t. Which means even if you don’t walk again—which, of course, you will—you’ll still be good to go in that arena.”

Was it worse to talk about Chip’s father’s sexual functioning with my mom—or to talk about mine? Words cannot express how much I did not want to discuss “that arena.” But she had momentum now.

She went on. “You can have babies and everything—typically. In fact, the only trouble most women in your situation have is finding somebody who’s willing to—”

She stopped herself.

“Somebody who’s willing to what?”

But she turned her attention back to her sandwich, wrapping it up like she might save it for later.

“Willing to what?”

She started again, more carefully. “Women’s level of sexual activity does typically go down, but it’s not that the injury prevents it. It’s that nobody…”

She paused, like she couldn’t say it.

“It’s that nobody wants to fuck them anymore?”

She closed her eyes. “You know I hate that language.”

If I could have walked out, I would have.

Instead, with no other option, I banged my head back against the pillow. “Is that the inspiring message you came with today?”

She did have enough self-awareness to be a tiny bit cowed. She folded her napkin and smoothed it on her leg. “I just read the article, and it seemed like information you should have.”

“Why?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do with that? Root even harder for a miracle? Defy the laws of human physiology?”

“I’m trying to help,” she insisted.

“By freaking me the hell out?”

“The point is,” my mother said, “we have to be proactive. We have to face this thing head-on. All the healing and recovery you’re going to do takes place in the first six to eight weeks after the accident—and you’re already two weeks in.”

“Are you saying I’m a slacker?”

“I’m saying you need to get your head in the game.”

There was always a kind of backward logic to my mom’s crazy. I got it now. She hadn’t accidentally revealed to me that I was facing a possible lifetime of being unfuckable. She was doing it on purpose. She was attempting to motivate me. To get me focused. To rouse some unsinkable part of my soul that would stand up in outrage and simply refuse to give in.

The worst part was, it was working.

This was how she’d motivated me my whole life: fear of the worst-case scenario. She was trying to scare me into action. She was trying to generate a Rocky moment, trying to cue the music and shift me into a training montage.

Did I think that I could beat my spinal cord into submission? Of course not. Could sheer willpower overcome anything? Of course not. Was there a hazy line between determination and denial? Absolutely.

But what choice did I have? Sure, she was playing dirty. Sure, she was acting like a terrorist. But her heart was in the right place—and she wasn’t wrong. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I didn’t want to give up everything I’d hoped for. I didn’t want to lose Chip.

Wait—was that right? The old me didn’t want to lose the old Chip. But now, thinking about it, I wasn’t totally clear on how the current me felt about the current Chip. Of course, in the face of my mom’s hyperbole, how I specifically felt about Chip was not exactly relevant. According to her, if I didn’t pull it together I would lose all guys, period.

This was one of her signature moves. If a little teaspoonful of ice-cold terror could burn off the fog and inspire me to try, was that so bad?

My mother sensed me cratering from across the room. For a lady so tone-deaf to others’ emotions, she could be remarkably astute. She put her half-eaten lunch back in its sack and came to stand by the bed and take my hand. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve had a shock.”

I waited.

“We all have.”

I waited again.

“Even Chip.”

There it was.

“I’m worried about him. He seems to be—” She glanced up to find the word. “Faltering.”

“Faltering how?” I asked.

“I think he’s lost his way. His mother says he’s been out drinking, coming in at all hours, not showering.”

Chip always showered. He took three showers a day.

My mom squeezed my hand. “What the two of you had was special.”

“I agree.”

“Don’t you want it back?”

“Have I lost it?”

“No,” she said, so emphatically she almost sang it. “Of course not. But—has he been to visit you?”

“Some,” I said. Not really.

“I’m just saying, it’s time to get better and put things right.”

Why was this all on my shoulders? Why wasn’t it Chip’s job to get better and start visiting me? “By ‘get better,’” I asked, “do you mean ‘walk again’?”

She pretended the idea had never occurred to her. “Well, wouldn’t that be ideal? Isn’t that worth a try?”

Worth a try? I felt like my eyeballs were going to start spinning. What did she think I was doing over here? Playing Xbox and drinking beer? I was trying. Every morning that I woke up and remembered the wreckage of my life, I was trying. Every breath I took, I was trying. Every second of being conscious all day long, I was trying.

I took a slow breath and held it. Then I said, “I’m just glad I can shit on the toilet.”

My mother’s eyes widened, but before she could respond, someone knocked on the door.

“Come in!” my mother and I both said at the same time, not dropping each other’s gaze.

The door pushed open, and it was Kitty. Looking mad.

*

MY MOTHER HADN’T seen Kitty in three years. Hadn’t seen the spiky-blond new hair, or the tattoos, or the piercings. I’m not even sure she recognized her at first.

But when she did, she went very still.

Kitty held her gaze and walked straight in, stopping on the other side of my bed. She was a little out of breath. From below, I watched them eyeing each other.

When my mom finally spoke, her voice was low. “I thought you only came here in the evenings.”

“I wanted to see you,” Kit said.

My mother lifted an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine that’s true.”

“I have something to say.”

“I think we’ve said it all.”

“I haven’t.”

With that, Kitty raised my curiosity—but not my mother’s.

“As you can see,” my mother said, “I’m pretty busy right now.”

“I want you to tell Margaret why I went away.”

My mom looked at Kit dead-on. “No.”

“She deserves to know.”

“I disagree.”

“She is angry at me for leaving. At me!”

“I can’t tell her how to feel.”

“But you can tell her why I had to go.”

This was how they always were together—Kit pushing until my mother snapped. This time, it didn’t take long. My mother leaned closer, her voice like a hiss. “Hasn’t she been through enough?”

The tone right there would have shut me right up. But Kit was always the braver one. “I don’t think it’s her you’re worried about. I think it’s you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” my mother said, looking away. In that moment, I knew that whatever it was they were talking about, Kit was right.

“Tell her,” Kit pressed. “Tell her right now. This has gone on too long.”

“I won’t.”

“Tell her—or I will.”

My mother’s eyes looked wild. She had not expected this moment to rise up so fast—out of nowhere, really, like a flash flood: Kit showing up and making these sudden demands. One minute, my mother was trying to manipulate me—solid, comfortable ground for her—and the next, Kitty was manipulating her. I could see my mom’s mind spinning, trying to come up with a way to stop her.

Kit turned to me. “On the night I left, it was because Mom and I fought.”

“Stop it,” my mother said, her whole body tense.

“I remember,” I said to Kit. “You pushed her into the pool.”

“I pushed her into the pool because she wouldn’t answer a question.”