“Her smile fades. "I cant use any of it.""You can use some of it," I say, because I want the smile back and because its true. She can do more than she thinks she can. For some reason, she just wont try. "And I can be your other hand when you need it.”

“What did you call her?" she asks but I don't think it's her real question."Sunshine," I say, and she smiles like she believes it's perfect and she may be the only person other than me who would think so."What is she to you?" she whispers. The real question and I know the answer even if I don't know how to say it.Drew's muffled voice rises up from the floor before I can respond."Family," he says.And he's right.”

“I can be your other hand when you need it.”

“I don't know how to say it - after all this time, I'm not even sure that I can - but I have to break her last rule, because if she knows nothing else, I need her to know this one thing. 'I love you, Sunshine,' I tell her, before I lose my nerve. 'And I don't give a shit whether you want me to or not.”

“It’s about the dream of second chances,” he says finally. He hasn’t raised his eyes from the paper on his desk and I feel him looking at me without looking when he uses his grandfather’s words. “The narrator doesn’t respect the beauty of life and the world around her, so it crushes her into the ground and once she’s dead, she realizes everything she took for granted and didn’t see right in front of her while she was alive. She’s begging for another chance to live again so she can appreciate it this time.”“And does she get that chance?” she asks Josh while I desperately focus on the poster of literary terms on the wall and wait for absolution. When it comes, I barely hear it.“She does.”

“I've done goodbyes before, and I can do this one, too. Somehow this one hurts worse than the others; because this one I could prevent if I wanted to, since I'm the one saying it. This goodbye comes with a choice the way none of the others did.”

“I wished that my hand would work again," I tell him when he climbs in after me. it was my first wish and the only one that mattered."I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it's an impossible wish." He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time."It's not stupid to want to see her again.""It wasn't so much that I wanted to see her again, " he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. "I wanted her to see you.”