I blew the flame out. “Do you want me to let the dog go? I’d be more than happy to let him bite your hand off.”

Maurice strained at his collar, twisting my fingers in his attempt to pull himself backward off the sofa. Hunter grinned. He flicked the lighter again and lunged at Maurice, waving the flame in his face.

“How do you like that? I’ll burn you up, you crazy son of a bitch!”

That was it for my fingers. Maurice gave a violent twist and pulled out of his collar. He ran across the room and dove beneath the dining room table, where he backed into the far corner, snarling.

“Ha!” Hunter yelled. “Where you going, boy?”

He dropped down on all fours and crawled towards the dog.

Nana grabbed at the back of his shirt. “Stop it, do you hear me? Hunter, stop it!”

My mother appeared in the door to the hallway and stood blinking at the light. The left side of her nylon nightgown was tucked into the waistband of her underwear.

“What the hell is going on?” she said. “I can’t find my glasses.”

Hunter was stuck. He’d managed to get halfway under the table, but my grandmother had him by the belt and was hauling him backwards for all she was worth. He still held the lighter, the flame on it about three inches high. Every time Nana gave a yank on the belt, the flame scorched the bottom of the table.

“Come out from under there,” she said.

“Let go of me, goddamn it!”

“Go find your glasses,” I told my mother. “The dog and I are going to make a break for it. If I can get Maurice out of here, we’ll be at Susan’s.”

She squinted at me for a moment before heading back to the bedroom.

My grandmother had lost her grip on Hunter’s belt and been obliged to take hold of his ankle. He’d managed to edge forward so that he was only a foot or so from Maurice’s nose. The dog was in a panic, trying to back up and knocking his head against the bottom of the table. On the side with the missing leg, the stack of books wobbled precariously.

I unlocked the front door and opened it wide behind me. I grabbed Hunter’s other ankle. “On the count of three,” I said to my grandmother. “One, two, three. Maurice! Here boy!”

We pulled a little too hard. The dog slipped between two dining room chairs and ran outside, but my grandfather was farther out than I’d planned. If he’d been a bit quicker, he could have turned over and grabbed us both. Instead, he tried to stand up. I heard rather than saw his head hit the bottom of the table. Hunter had dislodged the stack of books and the table was sloping dramatically. The Olivetti slid towards the far wall of the dining room.

I didn’t wait to find out what happened next. I slammed the front door shut behind me and followed Maurice out into the night.

Chapter Eleven

“Tell me about your visit with your mother,” I said.

“First you tell me what the doctor said.” Abby reclined on the bed with her hands behind her head. She looked as tired as I felt.

“There’s an unidentified mass in his left lung. Could be cancer. The lung specialist wanted to do a biopsy.”

“What for? Your grandfather smoked for, what, sixty years?”

“Longer. He told me he started smoking cigarettes at fourteen. Before that, he and his brothers used to roll up something called rabbit weed and smoke that.”

“Nice. Don’t tell Joe Camel about rabbit weed. So, I’m assuming you said no to the biopsy.”

“I did. If it is cancer, they can’t treat it. He’d never survive radiation and chemo. He’s not going to survive the week; that’s perfectly clear. I told the doctor we wanted palliative care only. I said we wanted him to be comfortable and in no pain at all. Morphine sulfate PNR.”

“That’s PRN,” she said, “but you could have just said ‘as needed.’ You don’t really give morphine PRN. You give it every two-and-a-half or three hours.”

“Shit.” I sat down on the foot of the bed. “I tried to remember everything you told me. I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about. Do you think they thought I was just some idiot who’s been watching too much ER?”

She smiled and sat up, edging closer to me. “No,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “They didn’t think you were some idiot. They thought you wanted to do what was right for your grandfather. They thought you were making a hard but realistic decision. How is your mother taking it?”

“She didn’t say anything. She was just . . . quiet. She has a problem with authority figures—doctors, teachers, cops. They make her nervous. She doesn’t like to be talked down to.”

“Quite rightly,” Abby said. “That’s why nurses are better than doctors. You know the old joke, what’s the difference between God and a doctor? God knows he’s not a doctor.”

“This one, Adkins, seemed okay. The lung specialist was a bit of an ass. Why in the hell would he even suggest a biopsy on someone like Hunter?”

“Some doctors like to cut on people.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he was concerned about liability. Maybe he thought you’d want to take heroic measures to save your grandfather’s life. Some people want us to do absolutely everything, even when there’s no hope.”

“Nana won’t take a dog to the vet to have it put to sleep. She didn’t take Maurice. One day, he just fell over dead in the backyard, riddled with tumors and lumps and arthritis.”

Abby flinched, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder and we comforted each other.