"Oh... oh my God..." Roisin kept muttering while she was leaving the home office. "I... I can't believe it."
"Are you okay?" Maya asked gently.
Roisin furrowed her brows and glared at her guest. "What do you think? Everything I thought I knew about my family is a lie, a big fat lie."
"Anything I can do for you right now?"
"I'd appreciate it if you got the hell away from me. I need time to process this."
"I understand. Take as much time as you need."
Maya took a few steps back away from her host to give her space. While taking those steps back, she happened to bump into Roisin's husband.
"What's going on?" Brian asked, now concerned. "I could hear Roisin screaming and crying all the way from the bedroom."
"Well..." Maya's train of thought wandered off for a bit in order to figure out the best way to explain the situation. "There's no easy way to tell you this, but um... your wife's cousin isn't actually her cousin. She's actually her mother."
"W-What?" Brian was trying his hardest to process what he just heard. "Sorcha is actually my mother-in-law?"
"That's right. That's what Sorcha wanted me to tell her before she died. Please, you and Roisin and the children need to be there for her before she goes."
Brian still couldn't believe it. "Oh my God... how much longer does Sorcha have?"
"That, I don't know. Could be two days, two weeks, two months... however long she has, it's borrowed time all the same."
"So... when can we go to see her?"
"Preferably tomorrow. Though maybe we can wait a couple days before seeing her. What do you think?"
Brian had to think long and hard about what he wanted to do in this situation. It took him a while before he reached a conclusion. "I would like to see her as soon as possible... in other words, tomorrow."
Maya gave him a sad smile. "Alright. Tomorrow, we will all be flying to New York. I don't know if this will be the last time we see her, but we have to make it count nonetheless."
"You are absolutely right, Maya. We do need to make it count."
As quickly as they'd left Dublin for New York, they soon found themselves in the hospice where Sorcha was living out her final days. The Irish-American woman had refused to let anyone close to her see her as she was, so Maya, Roisin, and Roisin's family just sat on the other side of the curtain. The sunlight was powerful enough to illuminate the silhouettes of Sorcha's bed and the nurse tending to her.
"Roisin?" Sorcha weakly called out to her daughter.
"Yes, Sorcha?" Roisin asked. "What is it you need?"
"Just... just stay with me. That's all I want."
"Are you sure? You don't want to see your new granddaughter Meaghan?"
"No... I don't want her or the other children to remember me like this. They shouldn't have to see anyone like this..."
"Alright... if that's what you want, so be it." Roisin just reached out through the curtain and gently touched her mother's hand. She genuinely couldn't believe how bony and thin it felt, especially when the skin itself felt dry and leathery like alligator scales. "Don't worry, Sorcha... um, Mum, whatever you want me to call you. The family and I are going to stay right here."
While this was going on, Maya was outside purchasing a snack from the vending machine. She needed to do something to take her mind off what was happening to Sorcha. It was the beginning of September now, but boy had it been a rough year. Her mother gave birth prematurely, her younger sister nearly died while in the NICU (but miraculously survived, thankfully), and now the woman who practically raised her was dying. Maya hoped for her own sake that the rest of the year would be better. After all, as indifferent as she was about Yoko, the latter was supposed to welcome two little girls with John in five days. Surely, nothing could go wrong there, right? She certainly hoped so anyway. She made her way back to Sorcha's room to try to distract from everything that happened, but to her surprise, a nurse was already cleaning up the body and preparing it for transport.
Roisin, her husband, and the children just stood there and silently cried, their eyes puffy and glazed over and red.
Maya was confused, but it took only a moment for her to realize what had happened. "Oh no... Sorcha..." She turned to look at Roisin in the eye. "When did this happen?"
"Her death, you mean?" Roisin asked back. "She passed on while you were getting your snack."
"But how? How did she die just now?"
"She just did. She suddenly stopped breathing, and that was it. It was over."
"I can vouch for that," the nurse interjected. "Do you want to see her, Miss Diamond?"
Every fiber of her being wanted to say yes, throw back the curtain, throw herself over the nanny who helped to raise her for nearly nineteen years, and sob her heart out... but she didn't. Instead, she declined, not wanting to bring upon herself even more sadness than what she already went through.
Maya couldn't believe it. Her nanny was actually gone. Sorcha McKenna was gone, and she died from a disease that no human being should ever have to go through. It was too much for her to take in. She needed to see her mother, and she needed to do it right now.
When she made it to her mother's house, she was a bit confused to see Whitney not greet her jovially like usual. Her expression was just blank. Maya honestly couldn't tell what was going through her mother's mind at that moment, but it couldn't have been good.
"Mom?" Maya asked out of concern. "Mom? Is everything alright?"
Whitney didn't say anything at first.
"Mom?" Maya asked again. "What's wrong? It doesn't have to do with Petunia, does it?"
"No, of course not, starlight," Whitney replied. "Petunia's been doing great since she came home from the NICU."
Maya breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's good. So why didn't you greet me like you usually do?"
Whitney took a deep breath. "Starlight, I don't know if there's any other way for me to say this... but John and Yoko were at their appointment today, and during the sonogram, the doctor could only hear one of the babies' heartbeats."
Maya couldn't understand what was being explained to her. "So... what does that mean?"
"It means one of the babies died." Whitney sighed heavily and held both of Maya's hands into her own. "I know how hard this must be for you to hear this, especially after what happened to Sorcha."
"How did you know-?"
"Georgia told me, starlight. Sorcha was so good to you. She didn't deserve it. For shame."
Maya gave a sad smile. "At least Sorcha died with her family by her side."
"I'm sure she did."