Hope is the last thing I feel.

Just two weeks ago, Jeb was perfectly healthy. Then, after a routine exam, our whole world turned upside down. Ugly words like malignant, aggressive, and inoperable ate away at our happy life, leaving it as crippled and depleted as Jeb’s body would soon be. The doctor said only six weeks at most . . . that to offer a chance for any longer would be impossible.

But he’s wrong, because he doesn’t know that my husband has a wish yet to be spent.

Clothing rustles and shoes clomp on the tile floor as part of the crowd leaves the room, headed to the cafeteria for dinner. All that remains are our three children, who—like me—have no appetite, and our two great-grandchildren, who’ve already eaten.

Jeb is being strong, making up silly stories about the bruised purple pinpricks in his arms. He won’t dare let the little ones know the truth: that they’re from his first bout of subcutaneous chemo treatments, which have only served to make him achy, nauseated, and miserable.

Our great-grandchildren, ages three and five years, take turns perching on the edge of his mattress, trying to be closest to him.

“No. Not beetle footprints, Pop-pop,” our blond and blue-eyed Alisia scolds as she pats the wrinkles on his face lovingly. The timeworn etches only serve to make him more distinguished and handsome—his almost eighty years in this world notwithstanding.

He smiles and kisses her plump fingertips. He loves both of our great-grandchildren, but Alisia holds a special place in his heart. She’s the spitting image of me as a toddler, with the same cynical and serious nature, which presents him with an irresistible challenge to make her smile and laugh.

“They most surely are footprints,” he teases. “They’ve been stepping in ink and trekking across me as I sleep. Drawing maps on my skin. They think there’s buried treasure in my hair. That’s because it’s made of magical silver thread.” Faint purple light streams through the window, dancing across his thick, silvery white waves. I dread to think of them falling out in clumps and leaving him bald.

Alisia giggles—a lovely, tinkling sound that echoes in the cold room and warms the ears—a wonderful reprieve from my morbid thoughts.

“Really, Pop-pop?” Scotty screeches, nudging his way into the conversation. The rough-and-tumble five-year-old tries to shove his younger sister aside to get a closer look at Jeb’s hair, nearly toppling her.

I spin, panicked, but our elder son catches her and settles her back into place by the pillow. “Scotty, I told you, no roughhousing around the bed. There’s too many wires and plugs. Be good, or you’ll get down.”

“Yes, Grandpa.” Scotty bows his dark head, his brown eyes penitent.

“Ah, he’s all boy, this one.” Jeb rubs Scotty’s head.

Lying beneath the blankets, pale and sallow, my husband seems so much smaller than I remember.

We both do.

I sigh and face the rain again.

The clock on the wall ticks out a dead man’s march. I wring my wrinkled hands.

How many hours do we have left? How many minutes and seconds to say our good-byes? I adore our family, but while they’re here, each private sentiment I want to share sits silent on my tongue—dormant thoughts, aborted whispers.

Lightning strikes and the walls blink with yellow illumination.

Our younger son—forty-four-year-old Jackson—sits in the corner chair not far from me, concentrating on the sketching tablet in his lap. He’s always been the most like me. Quiet, introspective, serious. He has a tendency to escape into his designs when he’s troubled or upset. He’s probably perfecting his latest assignment from the architectural firm.

“Mom, you have to see this one,” my daughter’s voice reaches out. I know that tone. She’s trying to pull us out of our emotional tailspins. She’s always been the family cheerleader and mediator.

I turn to face her and press my shoulders against the window, the chill numbing my dormant wing buds. Victoriana lifts a photo from the shoebox on the nightstand and holds it up. Across the bottom is a white sticker with black marker script that reads: David Nathanial Holt—fish out of water.

“Do you remember when Uncle Corb took this?” she asks.

I nod. It’s from forty-nine years ago. Jeb is thirty, and I’m twenty-eight. We’re laughing and wading in the ocean with our first child. My belly bulges with our second, and we’re totally unaware it’s a girl. The beach was one of our favorite haunts for family vacations. Mom and Dad would come, along with Jeb’s mom, Jenara and Corbin, and their two kids. I study the happy couple in the picture. It feels like a lifetime ago. Jeb and I hold two-year-old David’s dimpled hands between us, lifting him so his bare feet can skim the waves. He’s the only one of our three children who never liked to swim. He wasn’t afraid of water . . . he took baths and showers happily. He just didn’t like getting his swimsuit wet. It always “stuck to his skin” and made him grumpy.

Victoriana’s tear-streaked face begs silently for help as she looks at David where he’s still standing guard over his grandchildren. He scoops up Scotty and moves to the other side of the bed beside his sister, leaving Alisia to fuss over her pop-pop’s enchanted hair.

David taps the dimple in Victoriana’s chin reassuringly, then leans down to let Scotty dig through the pictures. David’s head almost touches his sister’s. They both inherited their father’s dark hair and green eyes. In fact, had it not been for the two years’ difference in their ages, and my daughter’s delicate loveliness—so different from her brother’s masculine, muscular features—people would’ve thought them twins.

Victoriana pokes his shoulder with the corner of the picture. “Ick, don’t get my clothes wet! It feels gwoss! You were such a wimp, bro.”

A bittersweet smile creeps over me. There are times she reminds me so much of her aunt Jenara, I ache from the nostalgia.

David snorts. “Well, at least there’s such a thing as nude beaches for people with my . . . sensitivities. On the other hand, there’s no escaping birds. They’re everywhere.” He finds a snapshot of his nine-year-old sister running from a chicken at a petting zoo and holds it up for everyone to see. Victoriana Violet Holt: learning to fly is written on the sticker. “Yeah, Vic.” David grins. “I was the wimp.”

“Hey,” she elbows her brother. “I don’t have ornithophobia, jerk. I like birds fine . . . just can’t stand for things to flap their wings around me. Especially bugs.” She shudders and turns to little Scotty where he’s propped on his grandfather’s waist. Joining her hands to form wings, she flutters them around the child’s chubby cheeks. He snickers and snorts, then grabs her hands and wrestles them.

David laughs again. “Right. All because a moth got stuck in the kitchen once. Most kids who live in the country survive that kind of trauma without any long-lasting effects. It didn’t affect Jack.”

Jackson sweeps a curtain of blond bangs from his forehead and pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, at last setting aside his sketch. Blue eyes like mine dance behind the round, brassy frames, and his mouth lifts to a wide smile with a crooked incisor that matches his dad’s. “Uh, I wasn’t born yet, Dave.” He stands and walks over to me, putting an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him, breathing in his cologne—a mature version of the little-boy scent of sweat and outdoors that used to cling to him in his skateboarding days.