Free On a Night Like This by Ellen Sussman

semester. Mom, you know the guy who made
Pescadero
?”
    “Wrote it. Keep walking. You’re confusing the dog.”
    “How do you know him? This is his dog? This is
Pescadero
’s dog?”
    “Luke’s dog. What is
Pescadero
anyway?”
    “It’s named for the town on the coast. How do you know this guy?”
    “Went to school with him. In the good old awful days. He was one of those good old awful boys.”
    “And he just appeared? At your doorstep? With Sweetpea?”
    “No, he called. The school thought I was lost. He said he’d find me.”
    “Mom. Stop. Look at me. This is amazing. If Luke Bellingham wrote
Pescadero
then he’s, like, famous. And we’re walking his dog?”
    “Yeah,” Blair said, suddenly pleased. “We’re walking his dog. We should be famous. The famous dog walkers of the famous dog of the famous man.”
    “So why was he sorry?” Amanda asked, rolling her eyes. It was a move she had perfected by the time she was seven. Blair had always known her daughter would be wiser than she was in so many ways.
    Blair closed her eyes. She stopped walking and stood still, the world spinning around inside her head.
Tell Amanda. You’ve always been honest with her.
But not about something like this. When she opened her eyes, the world was still spinning.
    “Sit down,” she said, taking in great gulps of ocean air.
    “Here?” Amanda asked.
    “Here.” Blair sat on the sand at the edge of the surf. Sweetpea fell into a heap at her feet. Reluctantly Amanda joined them.
    People walked by; dogs sniffed Sweetpea and moved on; the clouds pulled past them in the sky. Blair was quiet. Amanda waited. Sweetpea perched her head on her paw, gazing at Blair adoringly.
    “Do you think the dog speaks English?” Blair asked. “Like she’ll report back to Mr. Hollywood everything we say?”
    “Mom.”
    “I’m sick,” Blair said finally. “I had a mole removed from my back and it might be cancer. It is cancer. They already did the tests. I’m screwed. We’re screwed.”
    Amanda looked at her mother as if she were speaking a foreign language, one that she was inventing on the spot. So Blair reached out to her, and Amanda smacked Blair’s arm away, hard enough to hurt.
    “Amanda!” Blair said, rubbing her arm.
    “There are treatments. Right? Like chemo and radiation and all that stuff. Right? It’s just hell for a while and you lose your hair and then everything’s fine. Right?” Amanda’s voice was angry, defiant.
    “Maybe. Please, baby. Let me hold you.” Her daughter looked small suddenly, too small to be sitting in such a huge expanse of space—sand and sky and sea, dog and mother and so many words.
    “What’s maybe? Tell me what that means.”
    “It means that they don’t know. Or they don’t like it. This is one of the bad ones, the ones they’re still trying to lick. Before it licks me.”
    And miraculously, Sweetpea got up, moved over to Amanda and plopped down again, this time with her head in Amanda’s lap. Amanda fell over the dog and Blair heard sounds coming from one of them, small and weak sounds.
    “My baby,” Blair said, and her heart broke, hard and fast enough to feel it like a rupture in her chest, making her bend over, gasping for breath.
    Amanda looked up and whispered, “Mom,” and Blair moved over to pull her daughter into her arms. They cried the same way, the way they always had, taking big heaving gasps of breath with each sob. The dog buried her head between them.
    When Blair’s cries subsided, she smoothed Amanda’s hair back from her face, wiped her face with her hand.
    “We’ll get through this,” Blair said. “We’ll be OK. We’ll fight it, right? We’re good at that. We’ll fight the damn thing.”
    Amanda looked at Blair. “Don’t lie to me about any of this. OK? I’m not a baby. I want to know.”
    Blair nodded. “You’re not a baby, sweetheart. I know that.” But she felt like she was still lying, promising her daughter a fight when the doctor had