“This is ridiculous,” Zenny says. “And bad for the environment.”

It’s the next morning and I’m driving Zenny to class. I glance over at her, eyebrow raised. “I know you’re not referring to my beautiful German car.”

“I’m referring to this insane plan of you driving me to class and having someone drive my car down to my dorm room parking lot for me…after you have them drop off those supplies at the shelter.”

“I was running out of things for my assistant to do anyway.”

She sighs, but when I sneak another glance, I see the reflection of the smile she’s fighting off in the window.

I don’t bother to fight off my own smile.

“We decided it’s real, remember? This is what happens when it’s real. I don’t want to be away from you a minute more than I fucking have to.”

Now she can’t hide her smile, although she keeps her head ducked away. “You’re ridiculous,” she repeats.

“I am. And you know what you are?”

“What is that?”

“Mine, Zenny-bug. All mine.”

Now she looks at me, her eyes more copper than usual in the August morning light. “Yes,” she says softly. “I am that.”

This morning, we woke up and made out for a solid forty-five minutes, grinding like teenagers until she came against my thigh. And then she watched me with huge, sleepy eyes as I peeled off her fuzzy pajama shorts, wrapped them around my fist, and fucked my aching cock into them. After I shot thick ropes of ejaculate all over Winnie the Pooh and his hunny pot, she begged me to put my fingers inside of her, and she came like a champ after only a minute.

And then with my fingers still coated in her, I handed her a pen and paper and sternly ordered her to write down her schedule, along with a list of what she needed from her dorm room so she could stay the month with me.

“You’re being bossy again, aren’t you?” she’d said as she’d taken the pen. She was naked from the waist down, her nipples hard and her thighs quivering from her last orgasm.

“Would you like to call me an asshole right now? Would you like me to stop? I will the moment you say so, darling.”

She’d shaken her head, her expression full of disbelief. “God help me for saying it, but keep going, Sean. I like it. And consider me your new roommate.”

* * *

Even Charles Northcutt sitting in my office when I walk in can’t ruin my mood, although it gets pretty fucking close. I really hate him.

“Happy Friday,” he says. He’s sitting behind my desk, just to be a jackass. “I just wanted to let you know that my assistant heard from Trent that you were sniffing around my schedule.”

Goddammit, Trent. Loose lips sink ships.

Northcutt gives me the kind of smile I imagine a logging executive gives a stand of redwoods before ordering them sawed down. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with a pretty little nun, now would it?”

I drop my leather satchel on the short client sofa across from my desk and then walk over to Northcutt. “You’re in my seat,” I say calmly.

“Valdman already put me in charge of the nuns, Sean. You can’t control that.”

I regret ever showing him an ounce of interest in the sisters; it’s the only reason he wants to work with them, with Zenny. Just to fuck with me. Just to prove that I’m not made of the right stuff to sit in Valdman’s office after he retires from day-to-day.

“You’re in my seat,” I repeat, and into my voice, I pour every schoolyard match, every drunken Irish boy brawl, every fight I’ve ever won. Northcutt is the kind of man who thinks holding someone’s head down a toilet in fourth grade has acquitted him as some kind of badass, and I would welcome the chance to show him his mistake by smashing his teeth in.

Unfortunately, Northcutt seems to sense I’m past the point of playing, and he gets out of my seat.

“I’ll let you know how my meeting goes with them next week.”

“You’re not meeting with them next week,” I say through gritted teeth.

“It’s not up to you,” he answers with an evil smile, and finally leaves me the fuck alone.

I stare at my hands for several minutes afterward, willing them to unclench, and then once they do, I shoot off a quick email to Valdman, asking him if he got my earlier message about Northcutt and the Keegan deal, and then I calm down by sending my assistant an email asking him to buy five or six sets of satin sheets by tonight. All that taken care of, I finally get to work.

* * *

The day passes quickly, although I’m beginning to feel Zenny’s absence like a palpable thing, physical and awful. But I’ve got several contracts, memos, and client calls to catch up on, plus several returned inquiries for new shelter properties, and by the end of the day, I’ve done a hell of a lot and I’m ready to drive to the shelter and scoop up my sort-of virgin and bring her home where I can spend the evening with my face between her legs.

Sadly, she won’t be done with her shift at the shelter until after ten o’clock tonight, so instead I gather my things and drive to Mom and Dad’s house in Brookside.

The family house is a modest cream-colored Colonial from the 1920s with sage-green shutters and a giant oak tree in the front yard. The shutters have changed colors at least eight times in my life; the tree has changed not at all. It’s not a big house—at least it never felt big with five of us Bell kids jostling for space inside—but it’s well maintained and it’s got all the stuff people like in older houses—the wood floors and big staircases and big fireplaces. So obviously, a plumber and a social worker could never have afforded it on their own. It came to my parents after my father’s mom passed away when I was a baby, and it never escaped my notice as a kid that my parents felt slightly ill-at-ease in the upper-middle-class neighborhood.

Even now, at thirty-six and several years after acquiring some substantial wealth, I can’t suppress my habitual satisfaction at driving to their house in my R8, at pulling into the driveway that I paid to replace, seeing the fresh siding and roofing that I pay to maintain. For so long, the Bells were the poorest family in the neighborhood, but now Mom has the kitchen of her dreams and my father has the best television money can buy to nap in front of. And maybe it makes me a materialistic dick that I noticed being poorer than my peers growing up, maybe it makes me a dick that I still care now, but making enough for Mom and Dad to never worry about money again is the best fucking feeling in the world and I refuse to give it up.

I pull into the driveway, averting my eyes from the garage out of habit as I walk to the front door and let myself inside. Dad doesn’t seem to be home yet, but Mom is in the kitchen, slowly putting away dishes, pausing between each and every plate to catch her breath.

Seeing her like this is like hitting a funny bone but everywhere in my body—my chest and my throat and even my hands ache with anger and frustration and stupid, terrible grief.

Carolyn Bell used to be the definition of energy, of smiles, of doing, a whirlwind of dimples and dark hair and sharp wit. She was the mom that made other moms feel inferior and ungenerous with how much she gave of her time: she worked, she volunteered, she was the Girl Scout Troop Leader and the Boy Scout Den Leader, she babysat and shuttled any and all nearby kids to games and meetings and slumber parties. She read voraciously, she adored throwing parties, she loved my dad like he was still the same nineteen-year-old boy who swept her off her feet. Growing up, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I still do, although now she’s tied with Zenny for the honor.

“Mom, let me help,” I say, shooing her away from the dishwasher, and I’m irritable. I’m irritable because I’m upset, and I’m upset because she’s dying, and she’s dying because I haven’t found a way to fix her yet.

I slam the rack back a little bit too hard and my mother winces. “Sean. I can do it.”

“I wish you’d let me get you more help around the house. It’s really not—”

“It’s not about the money, sweetheart,” she says gently, putting a hand on my arm. When I look down at it, it’s dry and trembling and the back of it is mottled with blood-draw bruises. “I like to feel useful still. Normal.”

“You need to focus on getting well,” I say. “You need to rest.”

“All I do is rest,” she says, dropping her hand. “It gets stale, you know. Doing nothing.”

There’s no arguing with her when she’s made up her mind, so I redirect the conversation. “At least let me empty the dishwasher. Can you make me a cup of coffee while I do it?”

“Oh, of course,” she says, and there’s relief all over her tired face at being asked to do something real and useful. “Coming right up. Sure you don’t want a Mountain Dew instead?”

I make a face. It’s my mother’s elixir of youth—the beverage that powered her nonstop working-mom-perpetual-volunteer lifestyle for all the years I’ve been alive. But I can’t stand it.

I finish the dishes and together we take our drinks into the living room, where Mom’s got HGTV on. She sits in her recliner in the corner, a corner that’s become something of a cancer nest of heating pads and giant hospital cups and fuzzy blankets. I help her get into her nest, tucking a blanket around her feet and making sure she’s got the remote nearby and her cold Mountain Dew within reach.

A fresh romance paperback is on the end table, and out of habit, I tilt it toward me to see if it’s one I’ve already read or one I’ll have to steal from Mom once she’s finished, but the movement sends something hard and small sliding off the end table. A pile of beads.

A rosary.

I blink down at the thing, the crucifix shining against the matte leather of my shoe, the beads in a familiar curled pile by my sole. I blink like I’ve never seen a fucking rosary before, but I have. I’ve seen them too many times, but why is one here on my shoe, why did it fall off Mom’s table, why was it near her chair like she’s been using it?

I look up at her, and her too-wide mouth pulls into a sad smile. “Sean.”

“What’s this?” I say, which is a stupid question because I know what it is. What I mean is why does she have it, why does she need it? She doesn’t need some fake god, she has me, me, her oldest son who’s been moving fucking heaven and earth to get her the best treatment money can buy.

“Sean,” she says again. “Sit down. You’re shaking.”

I don’t listen at first, and I bend down to pick up the rosary. I pick it up like I expect it to sizzle against my skin like acid or bite at me with an electric shock, but it does neither. It’s just an inert pile of cheap metal chain and glass beads. It’s not alive, it’s not magic. It’s nothing but an object.

So why am I still shaking when I stand up? Why don’t I let it go as I sit down on the couch next to Mom’s chair?

“You said,” I say carefully, trying to keep my voice even, “when all this started, you said you didn’t need God. You said you didn’t want him around, and you didn’t want to be like every other cancer patient who got super religious in the face of death. You said those words.” I realize I’m accusing her now, my fist clenched around the rosary beads, and the fist is clenched in anger, but when I look down, it looks like I’m holding the beads in fervent prayer. It’s a jarring sight.

“I changed my mind,” Mom says simply, like that’s all there is to it, like there’s not a window behind her that looks out onto a haunted garage where my sister killed herself.

“You changed your mind,” I repeat, incredulously. “You changed your mind?”

Anger flashes through her eyes, the quick Irish temper that she gave all her boys. “I have a right to that, Sean,” she says in a sharp voice. “I’m the one dying. Not you.”

I clench the rosary even tighter because I can’t snap back at her, not after she’s played the cancer card. “But why?” I say, betrayed. “I thought we were in this together. I thought we felt the same way.”

She reaches over and puts her bruise-splotched hand over mine. “I’m still furious with God over what happened to Lizzy. But I realized being furious with Him was not the same thing as wanting Him out of my life.”

“God isn’t real,” I whisper, searching her eyes. “None of it’s real. How can that comfort you at all right now? How can you want to hold on to make-believe?”

She’s shaking her head. “That’s not…” She sighs. “This is my fault.”

“What is?” I ask, feeling now doubly irritated at this betrayal and at the idea that I’m making her feel guilty. I don’t want her to feel guilty, I just want her to explain herself, explain why, after all this time and after what He’s done, she thinks God deserves her attention.

“Your anger. Your hurt. After Lizzy’s death, your father just shut down about it and everything around it. It’s what he had to do to survive. But I never could hide my anger and my pain, not after her death and not when Tyler took his vows…” She looks away from me. “I worry sometimes that you came to your beliefs not because you genuinely believe them, but because you were young and in pain, and you saw your family in pain too. And you closed the ranks of your heart more out of some kind of tribal loyalty than out of personal conviction.”

“That’s not true.”

She tilts her head, still looking at the floor. “Maybe not. But the reason it scares me is that I would never ask you to reconfigure your beliefs to fit mine.”

“I know.”

“So then please don’t ask me to do the same for you,” she murmurs, looking up at me and squeezing weakly over my hand.

What can I say to that?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.