Yesterday you squeezed my hand.” He laid his warm palm flat against her limp fingers.

“Do it again, Mommy.

Just a little.”

Adaira did not know whether her hand had truly moved the day before, or whether her son had simply needed it to be true badly enough to make it so.

But she gathered every scrap of will left in her and poured all of it down her right arm.

She thought of Sam walking home alone in the cold.