Jodie Picoult - My Sister's Keeper

But I bet I could figure it out; it isn't really all that confusing. You head toward the place where all those different positions cross, and you hope for the best.

If there was a religion of Annaism, and I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: in the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she had left.

JUST BEFORE SEVEN A.M. on Sunday, an octopus walks into the station. Well, it is actually a woman dressed like an octopus, but when you see something like that, distinctions hardly matter. She has tears running down her face and holds a Pekingese dog in her multiple arms. "You have to help me," she says, and that's when I remember: this is Mrs. Zegna, whose house was gutted by a kitchen fire a few days ago.

She plucks at her tentacles. 'This is the only clothing I have left. A Halloween costume. Ursula. It's been rotting in a U-Store-lt locker in Taunton with my Peter Paul and Mary album collection."

I gently sit her down in the chair across from my desk. "Mrs. Zegna, I know your house is uninhabitable—"

"Uninhabitable? It's wrecked !"

"I can put you in touch with a shelter. And if you like, I can speak to your insurance company to expedite things."

She lifts one arm to wipe her eyes, and eight others, drawn by strings, rise in unison. "I don't have home insurance. I don't believe in living my life expecting the worst."

I stare at her for a moment. I try to remember what it is like to be taken aback by the very possibility of disaster.

When I get to the hospital, Kate is lying on her back, holding tight to a stuffed bear she's had since she was seven. She's hooked up to one of those patient-managed morphine drips, and her thumb pushes down on the button every now and then, although she is fast asleep.

One of the chairs in the room folds out into a cot with a mattress thin as a wafer; this is where Sara is curled. "Hey," she says, pushing her hair out of her eyes. "Where's Anna?"

"Still sleeping like only a kid can. How was Kate's night?"

"Not bad. She was in a little pain between two and four."

I sit down on the edge of her cot. "It meant a lot to Anna, you calling last night."

When I look into Sara's eyes, I see Jesse-they have the same coloring, the same features. I wonder if Sara looks at me and thinks of Kate. I wonder if that hurts.

It is hard to believe that once, this woman and I sat in a car and drove the entire length of Route 66, and never ran out of things to say. Our conversations now are an economy of facts, full of blue chip details and insider information.

"Do you remember that fortune-teller?" I ask. When she looks at me blankly, I keep talking. "We were out in the middle of Nevada, and the Chevy ran out of gas… and you wouldn't let me leave you in the car while I looked for a service station?"

Ten days from now, when you're still walking in circles, they're going to find me with vultures eating out my insides, Sara had said, and she'd fallen into step beside me. We hiked back four miles to the shanty we'd passed, a gas station. It was run by an old guy and his sister, who advertised herself as a psychic. Let's do it, Sara begged, but a reading cost five bucks and I only had ten. Then we'll get half the gas, and ask the psychic when we can expect to run out the next time, Sara said, and like always, she convinced me. Madame Agnes was the kind of blind that scares children, with cataract eyes that looked like an empty blue sky. She put her knobby hands on Sara's face to read her bones, and said that she saw three babies and a long life, but that it wouldn't be good enough. What's that supposed to mean? Sara asked, incensed, and Madame Agnes explained that fortunes were like clay, and could be reshaped at any time. But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.

She put her hands on my face and said only one thing: Save yourself.

She told us we would run out of gas again just over the Colorado border, and we did.

Now, in the hospital room, Sara looks at me blankly. "When did we go to Nevada?" she asks. Then she shakes her head. "We need to talk. If Anna is really going through with this hearing on Monday, then I need to review your testimony."

"Actually." I look down at my hands. "I'm going to speak on Anna's behalf."

"What?"

With a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Kate is still sleeping, I do my best to explain. "Sara, believe me, I've thought long and hard about this one. And if Anna's through being a donor for Kate, we've got to respect that."

"If you testify for Anna, the judge is going to say that at least one of her parents is capable of supporting this petition, and he's going to rule in her favor."

"I know that," I say. "Why else would I do it?"

We stare at each other, speechless, unwilling to admit what lies at the end of each of these roads.

"Sara," I ask finally, "what do you want from me?"

"I want to look at you and remember what it used to be like," she says thickly. "I want to go back, Brian. I want you to take me back."

But she is not the woman I used to know, the woman who traveled a countryside counting prairie dog holes, who read aloud the classifieds of lonely cowboys seeking women and told me, in the darkest crease of the night, that she would love me until the moon lost its footing in the sky.

To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.

BRIAN AND I ARE SITTING ON THE COUCH, sharing sections of the newspaper, when Anna walks into the living room. "If I mow the lawn, like, until I get married," she asks, "can I have $614.96 right now?"

"Why?" we say simultaneously.

She rubs her sneaker into the carpet. "I need a little cash."

Brian folds the national news section. "I didn't think Gap jeans had gotten quite that expensive."

"I knew you'd be like this," she says, ready to huff away.

"Hang on." I sit up, rest my elbows on my knees. "What is it you want to buy?"

"What difference does it make?"

"Anna," Brian responds, "we're not forking over six hundred bucks without knowing what it's for."

She weighs this for a minute. "It's something on eBay."

My ten-year-old surfs eBay?

"Okay," she sighs. "It's goaltender leg pads."

I look at Brian, but he doesn't seem to understand, either. "For hockey?" he says.

"Well, duh ."

"Anna, you don't play hockey," I point out, and when she blushes, I realize this may not be the case at all.