Three more hours on the back of Matthias’ bike and they were there, New Orleans—or N’awwlins, as Matthias’ buddies wanted repeated so often. Although she didn’t mind the snuggle time with her guy, life on the road—especially on the back of a bike—was beginning to take its toll on her body. Even her mind, the boredom of highway after highway. Miles of blacktop. Boring, at least until arriving to and weaving through the crowded streets of New Orleans.

Matthias had taken her straight through to the French Quarter, through the weekend crowds of day-drunk tourists, the streetcars and horse carriages, curbside jazz buskers, through the delicious aroma of shrimp gumbo and rendered duck fat, and past a startling amount of other bikers. It was truly Bike Week, with their hotel lined with two-wheeled beasts of every variety.

The atmosphere was wonderful, as was their nineteenth-century balcony hotel just one block from infamous Bourbon Street. Night and day from their motel. Matthias looked as untroubled and happy as ever, as were his boys, who were eager to celebrate his latest hacking success. Indeed, everything had seemed too good to be true. Until Laurel received a call from her uncle back in Atlanta.

She’d been trying to avoid such calls, for a long list of reasons. But never did she expect this, the news as worrisome as her uncle’s voice. For awhile after the call, she sat alone on the plush hotel bed, not making a sound. Not crying. Not anything. She’d been too tired for any external manifestation of the misery she’d felt.

Mama was sick.

Those were the first words she’d uttered since the call, muttering them to Matthias when he returned to their room with a bucket of ice, some snacks, and an excited grin that melted away instantaneously. He’d crept to the bed slowly, cautiously, as if approaching some wounded animal.

“Damn . . . Laurel . . .”

Knowing exactly what to say was not required of him. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure what she required, if anything at all—other than to see and help her Mama.

“There’s got to be something,” Matthias said. “There’s gotta be . . . like . . . something . . .”

“Yeah,” she said, trying not to cry. “There is. But the insurance won’t cover it.”

“It” was cancer surgery. Fucking expensive cancer surgery to treat the rare condition growing in Mama’s spine.

“But . . . What is it? What’s it called?” Matthias, sounding as broken as she, was doing something on his phone. “What’s it called?”

“Are you Googling it?”

“No.”

“It’s called ana . . .. anaplastic . . . astrocytoma.”

“Anaplastic astrocytoma?”

“Why?”

“I know people. We have a medic on our team with great contacts.”

“Where’s your team?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You don’t know?”

“Not this second, no. We’re spread all through the country. But we mobilize quickly. Like how I got to Atlanta.”

“On a fucking motorcycle?” Laurel said it a little louder and little more spitefully than she’d meant. She put her hand to her forehead, rubbing it as if trying to break through to the brain. “Sorry. You’re trying to help.”

“I think I can, Laurel.”

Out the corner of her eye she watched him moving closer, the large frame of his body. She needed the comforts of it. But a knock on the door reversed his progress. “Probably just one of the guys,” he said, striding toward the door.

She heard the voice of Tucker, an upbeat greeting mellowed by Matthias’ murmur of a response. Both voices went quiet before picking up again in the hall behind her closed door.

She looked at her phone, checking for the thousandth time for any texts of news, good or bad. Sitting there at the edge of the bed, she felt as if she were waiting at a precipice. Life or death. It was explained to her that way. It was a message delivered through her uncle’s words, and proved by the tone of his voice when he finally brought himself to say it.

When Matthias returned, he was wearing that same sad expression. But there was something else now, something like guilt through an awkwardly clenched jaw. A symptom of something preposterous like him using the word “celebrate” to describe what his friends were intending to do that evening. “But I can totally stay here, with you.”

But not even Matthias’ presence could help. Nothing but seeing her in person, Mama, holding her hand, and somehow coming up with the money for a surgery that may not even work.

“Laurel? We can just . . . we can just lie in bed . . .”

“No.”

“I don’t want to leave you.” Matthias sat next to her and pulled her into him, her shoulders falling back against his chest.

“It’s okay,” she said, still motionless. A sad, dead weight in his arms.

“And I don’t really feel like celebrating.”

“I know, but . . . I think I should just take a nap. I haven’t really been sleeping all that much.”

He drew his fingers through her hair. “I’m so sorry, Laurel.”

“I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

She finally leaned away from him. She needed some time alone. She nodded her head. “Have fun, okay?”