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make it right. You’re paying for my misdeeds. Rejection hurts, and I know that more than anybody. Henry’s in-laws offered me more money than you can imagine to leave Glory when I got pregnant. I told them I was ashamed of my relationship with him but never of you and that you weren’t something to hide. I told them I loved you more than I had ever loved anything in this entire world, more than my own life. Still do. But I remember one day, when you were about five or six, you asked me how come you didn’t have a daddy like the other kids. I told you who he was, and you have been so focused on him ever since, even though—”
    “Ma—”
    “Let me finish. You better never let yourself be defined by who decides to love you, you hear me? Don’t you ever define yourself by the way people treat you.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly, hearing the tremble of sadness just below my own words.
    “ You need to give love in this world, in spite of the people who don’t love you back. You must love without expecting it in return. It will be hard and it will hurt, but that’s how you must define yourself, by your ability and willingness to give love in this cruel world, no matter what, because it will try to tell you not to love. And that includes love for yourself, Jesse Richard Chance. You better walk with your head held high and your heart full. Am I making myself clear, son?”
    I nodded and touched her face. I was crying too hard to see her. “Yes, Mom.” I dropped my head to her lap and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Please don’t go. Please. I need you. You can’t die.” A choking sensation seized my chest, and panic overwhelmed me to the point that I was bawling into her nightgown. Why her? Why us? Why me? I didn’t have a father and I wouldn’t have a mother. The feeling of helplessness sparked my rage, and without any answers, all I wanted to do was punch something. It wasn’t like I could fight her cancer or her death. “Please don’t die, Mom. You can’t die. You just can’t.”
    Mom rubbed my head before she lifted it to kiss me between the eyebrows. “I don’t want to, Jesse.” Her voice came out weak, like she was wrestling with her own tears. “I don’t want to take anything else from you…but it will happen. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. But when I go, you call up Diane Kimble immediately. She’s an attorney and she came to visit when you were very young, so you probably don’t remember her. She’s in my address book; she has things for you.”
    “Okay, I will,” I mumble d, still sniffling, still filled with the unrelenting urge to beg her for the impossible.
    “Well…” Mom sighed into a smile. She was already upbeat again. “Tell me which colleges you’re applying to and which one you want to go to the most.” The three of us talked for a while, and Drew even went and got her guitar from her car to play Mom’s favorite song, “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley. I knew Mom was using up too much energy trying to stay awake, so eventually, I made an excuse about Miss Madison needing me to track down Kingston, her golden retriever. When I was sure she was asleep I went back to her room to pull the covers over her. I lay next to her for a few minutes, listening to her breaths, memorizing the rhythm like it was a song, listening and knowing the music would stop soon.
    “I so need a cigarette right now,” Drew said, dabbing her red eyes when I returned to Miss Madison’s living room. When she found one in her bag, she signaled for me to join her on the back patio, and we settled into the porch swing.
    “I thought you were quitting…”
    “Hey, you have your vice, and I have mine…” she mumbled defensively as she lit the cigarette with shaky hands, but a calm fell over her as soon as she exhaled a puff of smoke. She had convinced herself that a stimulant relaxed her, and I wished I could find some sort of peace right now, too. My head was clogged with