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your mom will have more rent money coming in. Isn’t that good news?”
    I smiled. In light of the latest letter from Heartstrings Publishers that was good news. But additional rent money still wouldn’t be enough to cover the hospital bills.
    “Taste this and tell me what you think.” She held out a wooden spoon.
    “Taste this” was an alarming request when it came from Mrs. Bobot. She thought of her meals as craft projects unto themselves, where color was more important than flavor, texture more important than digestibility. She’d been known to melt milk chocolate in her chili, put celery seed in her waffles, and concoct one-pot meals from whatever needed to be used up in the refrigerator. Mr. Bobot had always enjoyed his wife’s cooking, but only because smoking had killed all his taste buds.
    “What is it?” I asked, taking a step back.
    “It’s a sort of stew.”
    Realm leaned against the windowsill. “Something’s burning,” she said.
    “Not again!” Heat blew across the kitchen as Mrs. Bobot opened the stove. Then, donning a pair of oven mitts, she lifted out a tray of singed rolls. “I’ll just scrape off the burned bits.”
    Realm and I sat on opposite sides of the Formica table. Mrs. Bobot shook salt and pepper into the stew pot, then turned away and sneezed. “Oh, too much pepper,” she said with a little laugh. She filled our bowls with the mysterious stew, then sat down. I recognized most of the vegetables and it turned out it wasn’t half-bad. Realm picked at her meal, then went into the other room to watch TV.
    “I’m worried about her,” Mrs. Bobot whispered. “She barely eats anything. Don’t you think she looks too skinny?”
    “Well,” I said, “she’s definitely lost weight.” Which was true. In the days when Realm had been called Lily, she’d been chubby. Okay, she’d been fat. Real fat.
    Mrs. Bobot dabbed her mouth with an embroidered napkin. “How are you feeling, Alice? I know you’re missing your mother terribly.”
    I swallowed and looked away. That loving tone could coax tears from a rock. My tears, however, didn’t need any coaxing lately. They waited eagerly, like convicts, for any opportunity to escape.
    Mrs. Bobot put her hand over mine. “I know it’s taking a long time, but she’s got the best doctor there is. We just have to be patient. She’ll come out of it. She always does. Before you know it she’ll be sitting right here, eating dinner, talking about her next book.”
    The gentle squeeze, the kind smile, the hopeful words—gestures appreciated but it was getting harder and harder to gift wrap the truth.
    Mrs. Bobot pushed back her chair. “After we do the dishes, we’ll try my new deck of tarot cards. Maybe it will make us feel better.”
    I cleared the table and wiped down the counters while Mrs. Bobot loaded the dishwasher. Then we went out to the living room where Realm sat sideways in Mr. Bobot’s La-Z-Boy, channel surfing. I sat on the couch behind a stenciled coffee table. “I should have opened the deck before you came,” Mrs. Bobot said, peeling off the plastic wrapper. “It’s important to give tarot cards time to breathe.”
    “Card reading is bull—”
    “Lily!” Mrs. Bobot interrupted, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t approve of such language.”
    “For the millionth time, the name is Realm.” Realm punched the remote. “And tarot cards are a joke. Why don’t you tell Alice’s fortune from the bumps on her head, which is also total bull—”
    “REALM!”
    It was the rare occasion when I agreed with Realm. I didn’t believe that tarot cards needed to breathe, or that they could predict a person’s future. But it was something to do, something that didn’t involve sitting in my apartment worrying about the book deadline.
    Mrs. Bobot reached out and turned off the television. “Watching everything is exactly the same as watching nothing. Why don’t you join us?”
    “As if.” Realm wrapped her skinny arms around