Shadowkiller by Wendy Corsi Staub

and so . . . she gets hospice. And I get to read this book to try to make it a little easier—at least, on me. I don’t see how anyone’s going to make it any easier on her. She’s in a lot of pain, and nobody seems to be able to help with that.”
    â€œI’m so sorry. Really.”
    â€œThanks. Me too. Really.”
    No wonder his eyes were so sad. No wonder he wasn’t in the mood to go out for drinks with his friends. No wonder he’d decided to go home, instead, to Jersey—to see his mom.
    â€œHave you ever lost anyone?”
    His question might have caught her off guard, but her answer was instantaneous:
    â€œYes.”
    Maybe not in the way he meant, but loss was loss. Loss was devastating, no matter how it happened. Whether it struck out of nowhere like a sucker punch or crept in slowly and loomed with the inevitability of a funnel cloud on the prairie horizon, it was devastating. Anyone in its wake would be left raw and angry and alone, forever changed, forever fearful, forever haunted by nightmares . . .
    Dream catcher, or not.
    â€œYou know what’s funny? Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange?”
    â€œNo, what?” she asked.
    â€œWhen I was a kid, I used to watch all these old reruns on TV— My Three Sons , Courtship of Eddie’s Father , Bonanza —did you watch any of those shows?”
    â€œYes.” Growing up, she’d loved to escape into television. Even those ancient reruns. Especially those, actually, with their wholesome families and happy siblings.
    The Patty Duke Show was her favorite, about identical cousins. She knew the theme song by heart, with its lyrics about a pair of matching bookends being different as night and day.
    â€œThose shows were all about mothers who’d died and left their boys behind to be raised by their fathers. And I’d worry—nothing against my father, but I’d worry that something would happen to my mother, and I’d pray to God that she’d stick around long enough for me to grow up,” he said, maybe more to himself than to Carrie.
    Praying that someone would stick around . . . ha. She knew firsthand that didn’t work.
    â€œAnd she did stick around, and now I’m grown up, so I guess—” He broke off, cleared his throat. “But the thing is, I’m not ready to lose her. Are you ever? I mean, when you think about it, who can ever be ready for the worst to happen?”
    She wanted to tell him that the worst could happen and even after it had, you’d still be left with the sense, forever after, that it could somehow happen again even though, of course, that was impossible.
    When someone you loved was wrenched from your life, you’d lost them. You couldn’t lose them again.
    But you can lose someone else, Carrie reminded herself, if you let yourself care about someone else.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m unloading all this on you.”
    â€œYou need someone to talk to.”
    He tilted his head, then nodded. “You’re right. I guess it is that simple. And you’re a good listener. Women—they tend to be chatty, and interrupt, and fill all the space they possibly can. At least, most women I know. Like my sister, and . . . and a friend of mine. Ex-friend,” he added, and she got the sense that he might have just escaped a relationship with the kind of female he’d just described.
    â€œBut you ,” he went on, “you wait until someone is finished speaking, and you don’t jump right in to blurt out the first thing on your mind, either. You absorb it before you comment.”
    As she weighed his words, he pointed at her, grinning. “See? You’re doing it now. It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t just want to hear her own voice. Although . . .”
    â€œWhat?” she asked, when he’d trailed into silence, wearing a