“I started seeing beyond the kiss,” she answers. “And I saw you. And Jeffrey. And I got a glimpse of that happiest time.”

She looks again at the TV. The scene has shifted. Now we’re on the boardwalk at Santa Cruz. I am eating cotton candy, complaining about how sticky it is, licking my fingers. Mom demands a taste and the camera lunges in at the cotton candy. I catch a part of her face, her nose, chin, lips, as she bites off a piece.

“Yum,” I hear her say, smacking her lips for the sake of the camera.

Fourteen-year-old Clara rolls her eyes at her mother. But she smiles. Up the boardwalk, Jeffrey calls, “Look at me. Mom, look at me!” I can’t believe his voice was ever that high pitched.

The camera finds Jeffrey standing near the strong man game on the boardwalk. He’s twelve years old, scrawny as all get-out, like a stork wearing a Giant’s cap. His silver eyes are all lit up with excitement. He grins at us, then lifts the rubber mallet and brings it down hard. A ball shoots up from the base of the platform and rings a bell at the top. Lights flash. Music sounds.

My little brother just won the strong man prize.

The guy running the booth looks flabbergasted, suspicious, like Jeffrey must have cheated somehow. But he hands over the giant stuffed panda Jeffrey picks out.

“Here, Clara,” Jeffrey squeaks, running up to us with his chest all puffed out. “I won this for you.”

“Way to go, little man!” Mom says from behind the camera. “I’m so proud of you!”

“I’m little but I’m strong,” Jeffrey boasts. He never was one for being modest. “I’m Mr. Amazing!”

“How’d you do that?” Younger Clara seems as puzzled as the carny as she accepts the giant black-and-white bear. I still have that bear. It’s on the top shelf of my closet. I named him Mr. Amazing. Until now I’d forgotten why.

“Want to see me do it again?” Jeffrey asks.

“That’s okay, buddy,” Mom says gently. “We should give the other people a chance. Besides, we don’t want to show off.”

The camera tilts as she hugs him, up into the blue, cloudless sky. For a moment the noise of the boardwalk lulls, and you can hear the crash of the surf, the cries of the seagulls. Then the screen goes blank. Happy time over.

I turn to look at Mom. Her eyes are closed and her breath is deep and even. Fast asleep.

I pull the blankets up over her. I kiss her, lightly, on the cheek, breathe in her smell of rose and vanilla. I was her happiest time, I think. And it seems, after all that she’s lived, all that she’s experienced in a hundred and twenty years on earth, being her happiest time is a huge honor.

“I love you, Mom,” I whisper, and even in sleep she hears me.

I know, she answers in my head. I love you too.

Later Dad carries her out to the back porch to see the stars. It’s a warm night, crickets chirping their hearts out, light breeze blowing. Spring is about to give way into summer. Watching my parents together, the way they seem to speak to each other without words, the way his touch seems to strengthen her, it is undeniable that their love is a powerful, transcendent thing. This love will survive her death. But was it worth it? I can’t help but wonder. Was it worth all the hardship she mentioned, the suffering of their separation, the pain of having him for such a short time and then having to let him go?

Watching them, I think it must be. When he kisses her lightly on the lips, brushes a tendril of hair out of her face, adjusts the shawl around her shoulders, she gazes up at him with nothing but pure love in her midnight eyes. She’s happy.

You will be happy, she told me.

You will shine.

Mom asks to speak with Jeffrey. He comes out on the porch with her and they have a long talk. I watch them from the living room. Jeffrey is slumped in the Adirondack chair next to Mom’s, his hands folded in his lap, looking down. I can’t hear what they’re saying, and anyway it’s none of my business, but I think maybe it’s the same thing she told me earlier. My purpose, she said, is you.

Jeffrey keeps nodding, and then he kneels in front of her, leans in stiffly to hug her, and I turn away from the window. I’m startled to see Dad standing by the fireplace, a glass of red wine in his hand. His eyes are filled with knowledge.

“Now’s the time for you to be brave, Clara,” he says. “Very soon.”

I nod silently. Then I go to Dad and step into the circle of his joy, and try to let it fill me, push aside the sudden ache that’s growing in my chest.

Chapter 19

The D-Word

I wake up before dawn with this strange feeling, something like déjà vu. I sit up with a gasp, then tear out of bed and down the stairs and burst into Mom’s room as Carolyn is coming out. She nods at me. “Today,” she says.

Now we’re all assembled in there: Jeffrey, whose anger has deserted him for the moment, sitting in a kitchen chair by her bed, leaning forward onto his knees. His eyes never leaving her face. Billy stands in the corner and doesn’t say a word, but whenever Mom looks at her, she smiles. Carolyn flits in and out to take her pulse and try in vain to get her to drink something. Dad sits at the foot of the bed, passing the time cracking angel jokes.

“Do you know why angels can fly?” he asks us. We all kind of shake our heads. “Because we take ourselves so lightly.”

Killer, I know. But it’s comforting, him being there. He’s only been hanging around with us for a little more than a week, but already I feel used to him, his silent joy, his steadiness, his weird sense of humor that fits just perfectly with Mom’s.

And then there’s me. I’m holding her hand. Waiting. All of us waiting, like we are a wheel and Mom is the center of it, the hub. We rotate around her.

“Such serious faces,” she whispers. “Geez, is someone dying?”

But then she stops talking altogether. It takes too much effort. She sleeps, and we watch the rise and fall of her chest. I have to pee in the worst way, but I’m afraid to leave the room. What if she goes while I’m not there? What if I miss it?

I cross my legs and I wait. I examine her hand in mine. She’s wearing her wedding ring again, a simple slender silver band. She and I have the same hands, I realize. I’ve never noticed that before. Hers are frail now, light as the hollow bones of a bird’s, but the resemblance to mine is there. We have the same long nail beds. The same spacing of our knuckles, lengths of our fingers, the same vein that crosses the back of our left hand.

All I have to do to find my mother is to look at my hands.

Then she takes a deep, shuddering breath and opens her eyes, and I forget about having to pee.

She looks at Dad. He reaches for her free hand, the one I’m not squeezing on to for dear life, and he kisses her wrist.

She looks around without moving her head, just her wide blue eyes, but I can’t tell if she really sees any of us anymore. Her lips move.

“Beautiful,” I think she says.

Then I’m distracted for a minute because Dad disappears. Right in front of our eyes, he simply vanishes. One second he’s sitting on the bed, holding Mom’s hand, and the next, gone.

It takes me a moment to realize that Mom’s gone too. It’s so quiet, I should have known. We’re all holding our breath. Mom’s lying back on the pillows with her eyes closed again. But she’s not there. Her chest isn’t moving. Her heart has stopped beating. Her body is here, but she’s gone.

“Amen,” Billy says.

Jeffrey jumps up. The noise of his chair clattering back against the wall seems unbearably loud. His face looks like a mask to me, stretched at the lips, eyebrows drawn low over his red-rimmed eyes. A single tear makes its way down his cheek, hovers on his chin. Furiously he dashes it away and flees the room.