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several sizes too big for her, having obviously come from someone else’s suitcase, but she carried it off like a princess whose crown had dislodged only slightly. I was painfully aware that I bore a strong resemblance to a family-size bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
    I cut a bagel in half and then took a quarter. They all watched as I pulled off a piece and let it dissolve in my mouth.
    â€œGirl, you eat like a bird,” Georgia said.
    â€œNot me.” Marnie loaded two blueberry muffins the size of small birthday cakes onto her plate. “Unless I’m a vulture.”
    I couldn’t argue with that.
    Georgia eschewed the buffet and brought her Starbucks cup over to sit beside me. “Can Sonia eat?” she said.
    I shook my head. “They’re feeding her through a nasogastric tube.” I pointed to my nostril and felt only slightly guilty when Georgia went green.
    â€œMarnie, honey, what is it?” Francesca said.
    Marnie pushed her mini-banquet away and dropped her face into her hands. Her winged shoulder blades shook, and Francesca pulled her head against her collarbone.
    â€œBless your heart.”
    â€œShe was so beautiful,” Marnie said. “I never saw anybody so beautiful.”
    Francesca nodded, her own face now draining tears.
    Georgia set her cup down decidedly and went to kneel in front of them. “Now, you listen to me, girl,” she said. “Sonia is still gon’ be beautiful. You know the Lord is with her, don’t you?” She gave Marnie’s shoulders a shake. “Don’t you?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œAnd besides that, they can do wonders with plastic surgery these days.”
    Francesca nodded so hard I was certain her head would topple to the floor. “A little burn isn’t going to change Sonia’s inner beauty, Marnie, honey,” she said.
    Did Chip realize he would have to raise this girl he was smitten with? The nibble of bagel turned to rubber in my mouth, and I started to make an exit from the Mary Kay Lounge—off to my sister with the “little burn” that had singed all the way to her bone and formed a cave in the side of her face.
    I stopped short at the door when Marnie said in her sob-voice, “I wish Chip was here.”
    â€œDidn’t he go to the airport to pick up Ivey and Nanette?” Francesca dabbed at Marnie’s eyes with a Kleenex. “We all gon’ need waterproof mascara to get through this, aren’t we?”
    â€œI’m sure he didn’t,” Marnie said.
    â€œIsn’t that his job?” Francesca said.
    Marnie shook her head. “He doesn’t work for ALM anymore. He quit. That’s why we were stopping here in Philadelphia. To drop him off.” Her face crumpled. “I’m so glad we did.”
    â€œYou knew that, Frannie,” Georgia said.
    I didn’t.
    I fled. The wall down the hall rose up to meet me, and I stood with my forehead pressed to it, because the chaotic pieces were collecting so fast and so high, I couldn’t move any further.
    Chip . . . what the Sam Hill? He couldn’t have told me he quit the only job that supported us? The job I’d never wanted him to take in the first place?
    I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to file the pieces away, one by one, shove them into places I couldn’t feel, but they wouldn’t go. They kept accumulating—betrayals on top of lies on top of burned-up dreams.
    Come on, Lucia Marie. Get out of this. Go back to ICU where you can hear the beeps and watch the blips.
    If I didn’t, the aches and the fears would burst me open.

    I saw my baby sister as much as the nurses would let me. They let me assist in cleansing her face and hands in the hydrotherapy room, where in spite of their assurances that Ketamine kept her out of pain, I shrieked inwardly at every meticulous picking-off of dead skin, every pull at the good that came off with the bad and left her bleeding. A little