“Tell me,” she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of the panic from earlier.

“She’s in a coma,” Dr. Evans said, leading her to a chair. “The trauma to the skull is severe. There is significant swelling in the brain. We’ve had to drill to relieve pressure, but…” He hesitated. “There’s internal bleeding. Her spleen is ruptured. Four ribs are broken. Her tibia is shattered.”

“Will she wake up?” Margaret asked.

Dr. Evans looked at the floor, then back at Margaret. “I need to be honest with you. The Glasgow Coma Scale score is three. That is the lowest possible score. The brain damage… it’s catastrophic. Even if her body heals, the Emily you knew…” He took a deep breath. “You should prepare for the worst. You should say your goodbyes.”

The words hit Margaret like physical blows. Say your goodbyes.

“Can I see her?”

“Briefly. She’s in the ICU.”

Margaret walked into the room. The machinery was deafening—a symphony of beeps and hisses keeping a corpse alive. Emily was unrecognizable beneath the tubes and bandages. She looked small. So incredibly small.

Margaret pulled a chair up to the bedside. She took Emily’s hand—the only part of her that wasn’t bandaged. It was cold.

“I remember when you were five,” Margaret whispered, stroking the pale skin. “You fell off the swing set and scraped your knee. You cried so hard. I put a band-aid on it and kissed it, and you asked for ice cream. And it was all better.”

She leaned her forehead against the metal rail of the bed.

“I can’t kiss this better, baby.”

She sat there for an hour, watching the heart rate monitor. Every beep was a second stolen from the reaper.

Then, her mind drifted. She thought of the Gable estate. It was a massive Georgian mansion on a hill, surrounded by iron gates. It was probably warm inside. They probably had the fireplace going.