“I’m standing right next to your bed.”

“She told me I have to practice a new word,” Lily said, her voice muffled against the sheets.

“What word, baby?”

“Mommy,” Lily whispered, her voice so low I had to strain to hear it over the steady beep of the heart monitor.

“She said you were gone forever, so she gets to be my new mommy now.”

The words sat in the room like lead weights.

The paper I had pulled from Derek’s locked case in our hall closet flashed through my mind: the Voluntary Transfer of Parental Rights, signed with my name in Derek’s handwriting, without the loop I always put on the capital H.