“You’re craftier than I realized,” Kit said next, eyeing the long yarn snake I’d been making.

“I’m craftier than I realized,” I said with a shrug.

It was here, among all this chaos and peace, that Kit decided to give me two pieces of information.

One: She’d booked her flight back to New York. She was leaving on the morning of the same day I was getting discharged.

“You’re not going to come home with me?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “No.”

“Not even for a couple of hours? To help me get settled?”

“No. This was the cheapest flight, and I took it.”

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”

“It’s not for two weeks.”

‘Two and a half,” I corrected.

“That’s, like, ten years in hospital time.”

“Now I have to dread it.”

“I did everything I came here for,” she said then. “I cleared things up with you. I confronted Mom. I went on an erotic journey with Fat Benjamin.”

“Did you come here for that last one?”

She squinted. “I guess Fat Benjamin was a surprise.”

“And did you clear things up with Mom?” I asked.

“As much as I ever do,” she said.

“’Cause it seems like we haven’t talked about”—I didn’t know how to describe it—“your information since the day it all came out.”

Kit shrugged. “Yeah, well. We’ve all been kind of busy.”

True, we’d been busy. But this was also a classic Jacobsen-family technique for responding to big, earth-shattering news: pretending it didn’t exist.

There was probably a more delicate way to ask the question, but I said, “Don’t you want to know who your real dad is?”

Kit got quiet at the sound of the words out loud.

“Our dad is my real dad.”

Had I hurt her feelings? “Of course he is,” I corrected. “I just I meant your biological dad.”

She thought about it. “I’ve thought about it. I am curious. But as long as Dad doesn’t know, it feels disloyal to take it any further.”

“And Dad will never know.”

We agreed.

Two: Kit’s other piece of news was she had decided to throw a party on her last night here. In the rehab gym.

“They’ll never let you do that,” I said.

“It’s closed at night. No one has to know.”

It was a “Valentine’s Day party,” even though it would happen on the first of April.

“Details,” Kit said, making a pshaw motion. “Love can happen anytime.”

“Do you know that’s April Fools’?”

“Only you would notice that.”

“You realize what happened to me the last time it was Valentine’s Day,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

Of course she knew. We all knew. But I said it anyway. “I was in a plane crash.”

“Duh. I’m aware of that. I’m giving you a do-over.”

I shook my head. “No.”

But she had a fire in her eyes. “I’ll do everything. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll talk to the nurses, hang the decorations. I’ve got a vision! Little heart-shaped chocolates everywhere, punch that we’ll call ‘love potion,’ and Fat Benjamin’s got a chocolate fountain that he stole from a catering gig. Streamers, and karaoke with nothing but love songs, and I’ve got that old disco ball in my high school bedroom. I love stuff like this! Let me do something for you. Yes?”

Maybe it was because the kids’ craft fair was so unexpectedly charming, but I let out a long sigh, and as soon as my shoulders sank, she knew she’d won.

She held up her arms in victory.

“Who would you even invite?” I said. Then I pointed a warning at her: “Nobody from Facebook. No normal people, okay?”

“Just injured people. Just the folks on your floor. And the nurses. And anybody else good. Plus Fat Benjamin, of course.”

“Why do you have to do this?” I asked. “Let’s just eat tacos and watch TV.”

“I need to go out with a bang,” she said. “And guess what? So do you.”

That’s when it hit me. “You’ve already started planning this, haven’t you?”

She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but you know I can’t keep a secret.”

“You sneaky weasel!”

“I dare you to be mad,” she said, “when you’re drinking straight out of the chocolate fountain.”

Twenty

THE NEXT NIGHT, Kitty showed up with some astonishing information: I’d been granted a furlough.

She held out a box of spanakopita with a triumphant flourish and said, “Great news!”

I was knitting a new slug. “What?”

“We have an amazing birthday present for you.”

I had to think about it. Sure enough, my birthday was coming up on Sunday. “I forgot about my birthday,” I said.

“You are not going to believe how great your present is.”

“My face is back to normal?”

Kit frowned and then squinted at me. “Not quite,” she said. “But close.”

“What, then?”

Kit stretched up taller. “We are about to blow your mind.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Mom and me.”

“Since when are you and Mom a ‘we’?”

Kitty’s expression darkened. “It’s a fragile, don’t-ask-don’t-tell truce.”

I frowned. How was that possible?

“Never underestimate Linda’s ability to compartmentalize,” Kit said. “Or mine, either.”

“So you’re not talking about anything?”

“Nothing but you.”

“Okay.”

“She hates everything about how I look, though.”

“Of course she does.”

“Especially the tattoos.”

I gave Kit a look. Of course she does.

“It was her idea, actually. This whole thing.”

“What whole thing?”

Kit pretended to blow a trumpet. “Announcing the greatest birthday news ever!” she announced. “We are giving you a night out.”

“A night out?”

Kit dropped her voice back to normal. “Mom thought you might like to have spaghetti and cake at home.”

Our traditional birthday dinner. Spaghetti and cake. The thought of it made me sad. “I don’t want to go home.”

“I know.” Kitty looked pleased with herself. “I told her that! And Dad backed me up.”

“I don’t have to go to Mom’s?”

“No. Better.”

“Where?”

Kit did a little shimmy. “The lake.”

“The lake? Our lake?”

She clapped.

But it was no good. “I can’t go to the lake,” I said. It was my grandparents’ old fishing cabin. Rustic, to say the least. Hardly wheelchair accessible.

“You can! It’s all set up!”

“They’ll never let me out of here for that.”

“Mom got them to okay it. It’s all official. I was waiting to tell you until it was certain. We’ll spend Saturday night at the lake. Which means you will wake up on your birthday not in the hospital.”

“But…” I wasn’t sure what to think. Kit wanted me to be excited, but it just seemed like such a terrible, awful, exhausting idea.

“We figured it all out. Mom’s been down there all week, cleaning so it shines. Fresh sheets, dust-free: the works. Plus a ton of groceries to stock the kitchen.”

“Is Mom coming, too?”

“No! That’s just it! I said, ‘Mom, Margaret is a young person! She wants to spend her birthday with young people!’ And Dad backed me up.”

“So who am I spending it with?”

“Me!”

This sounded worse and worse. “Kit, you can’t take care of me. You can barely take care of yourself.”

“Rude. And untrue. And I can take care of you, because I talked your boyfriend into coming with us—and he’s going to do all the hard stuff.”

My boyfriend? “Who—Chip?” I hadn’t seen or heard from him—absolutely nothing—since the night we’d ended it. It was like he never existed.

Kit shook her head. “No. Your Scottish boyfriend.”

I put my hand over my mouth. “You didn’t.”

“I did!”

“You asked him?”

She nodded.

“And he said yes?”

“I might’ve implied I could accidentally kill you.”

I leaned back against the pillow. “No.”

“Anyway, that’s your real present. Now you can have forbidden sex with your secret love.” Then she frowned and leaned in to whisper, “Your vagina still works, right?”

I put my hand over my eyes. “No secret love. No forbidden sex. Come on, Kit!”

“You think I’m an amateur? You think I can’t read that sexual tension? Sexual tension is my primary language!”

“Kit, look at me. Look at my life.”

“So?”

“This is not junior high. I’m a month into a total shit-storm of utter devastation.”

“All the more reason to have a little fun.”

“I hate fun. I don’t even believe in fun anymore.”

“You do when you’re with Ian.”

“We are not doing this.”

“It’s all arranged. He’s taking a personal day and everything.”

“So me, you, and my physical therapist are going to the lake for my birthday?”

Kit nodded. “And Fat Benjamin, too. For a little forbidden sex of my own.”

“What about the Moustache?”