“Rough night, man?” the driver says. His accent is New York classic, the kind of thing that would be hilarious if you weren’t living it.

  “Something like that,” Thad says, pocketing the phone.

  “Where are you coming in from?”

  “Berlin.”

  The driver whistles. “Fancy. Business or pleasure?”

  Thad stares at the streaks of ice on the window. “Neither,” he says, then, after a beat, “Family.”

  The driver nods, understanding everything and nothing at all. “You got people in the city?”

  Thad thinks of his mother, Jocelyn, in her office with the city at her feet, her hair perfect, her voice like a command. He thinks of her now, wired up in some hospital bed, every part of her shrinking but the will to make this not about her. He thinks of how far away she seemed, even when she was in the same room.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I got people.”

  The driver leaves him alone after that, content to let the talk radio fill the silence. Thad scrolls through his notifications. Natalie’s calls, one after another. An email from the band’s manager: “Hope all is well, keep us posted. Berlin was legendary, Frankfurt is still on unless you tell us otherwise.” Texts from the band, variations on “Dude, you okay?” and memes stolen from last night’s group chat. He scrolls farther, looking for anything from his mother, but there’s nothing. No message, no selfie, not even a read receipt on his last “Love you.” It gnaws at him.

  The city closes in as they approach Manhattan. The bridges are halos of sodium vapor, the river a cold wound dividing the boroughs. The skyline is a razorback, every window lit with the promise of activity, even at this hour. For a moment, Thad is ten years old again, face pressed to a limousine window, watching the city breathe and thinking it belonged to him. Now, it’s a place he survived.

  They arrive at the Park, traffic already building, even before dawn. The driver cuts through a side street, swerves around a trash truck, and pulls up outside the hospital’s front entrance, wheels brushing the curb.

  “That’ll be eighty,” the driver says. Then, after a pause, “Hey, you look familiar. You play music?”

  Thad snorts, the first authentic sound he’s made in an hour. “Sometimes.”

  The driver grins. “My daughter loves that shit. Winter Daggers, right?”

  Thad nods and hands the driver a hundred without counting. “Keep it.”

  “Will do. Good luck, man.”

  He steps out. The hospital is all glass and stone, washed clean by harsh spotlights and guarded by the usual array of night nurses and security. Thad stands there for a minute, breathing in the city air - cigarettes, diesel, the iron tang of old pipes, and new money, and tries to center himself. He’s supposed to be strong for her. He’s supposed to be here.

  He shoulders his backpack and checks his reflection in the glass doors. He looks like shit, but maybe that’s the point, and he walks inside.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hospitals smell like the end of things. Not the obvious stuff; antiseptics, plastic, latex powder, but also the whiff of ancient sadness, the exhaustion baked into the tile, the dread in every face, no matter how practiced. Thad pushes through the revolving door and gets punched with a wave of it. It sticks to his clothes, climbs up his nose, and settles into the lines of his mouth.

  The lobby is a terrarium for all of Manhattan’s pathologies: slick investment bankers in bespoke masks, parents with kids double-masked and sanitized, old ladies hunched on walkers, a handful of nurses behind a Plexiglass fortress. They all clock him the moment he steps inside. He sees it in their eyes, the recognition, the disdain, the instant recalibration: Is he trouble? Is he sick? Or is he here to break something?

  He heads for the desk, boots echoing off the marble-like gunshots. The receptionist is a young woman with bubblegum-pink braids, three visible facial piercings, and a tattoo of a cat’s face curling out from under her sleeve. She brightens when she looks up at him, then dims when she processes the context.

  “Checking in?” she asks. Her badge says LEXI.

  “My mother,” he says. “Jocelyn Hastings. I think she’s,” he stops, because what? Dying? Pre-dying? “She was admitted last night.”

  Lexi clicks through her monitor, tapping keys with the kind of delicacy reserved for bomb disposal. “You’re on the list. ID?”

  He digs out his passport. The photo is three years and two hundred bad choices old, but it gets the job done. Lexi scans it and hands it back.

  “You’ll want Pavilion C. Sixth floor, Room 612.”

  “Is it bad?” he asks, voice breaking on the last word. He hates that.

  Lexi hesitates, glances at the screen, then back at him. “I’m not supposed to say, but her nurse is outstanding. And she’s in a private suite. That means she’s important, right?”

  “Yeah,” Thad says. “She’s important.”

  The elevator smells like bleach and recycled air, the corners crammed with wet umbrellas and grocery bags, and the last molecules of other people’s fear. He’s alone for the ascent, which should make it easier to collect himself, but instead, every floor is a countdown: six, five, four, three, two, one. He wipes his hands on his jeans and tries to remember how to breathe.

  The doors open on a corridor that’s even more silent than the lobby. It’s carpeted in hospital blue, walls lined with generic nature prints, and glowing hand sanitizer dispensers. Halfway down, he sees a cluster of nurses at a station, one of whom glances up, makes a note on her pad, and then whispers to the others. He walks past them, not breaking stride.

  The numbers march upward: 608, 610, 612. The door is shut. There’s a note taped next to the handle: “Please use hand sanitizer. Mask required. Thank you.”

  He scrubs his hands at the wall-mounted dispenser, then pulls a surgical mask from the box. He’s about to go in when a voice, low and a little hoarse, calls, “Thad?”

  He turns. Natalie is sitting in one of the waiting chairs, a laptop open on her knees, phone glowing in her hand. She’s wearing a tailored suit in graphite, her heels kicked off to the side, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She looks exhausted but still perfectly composed—a professional, even in defeat.

  He drops into the chair next to her. “You could’ve called.”

  “I did,” she says, managing a half-smile. “But I figured you’d be here before I could leave a voicemail.”

  “Is it… is she awake?” He stares at the closed door like it might have teeth.

  “She’s asleep. She wanted to rest before you came. Told them to sedate if necessary.” Natalie shrugs, the gesture a little too rehearsed. “You know how she is.”

  “Stubborn.”

  “Terrified. But mostly stubborn.”

  He feels the back of his neck flush. “What are they saying?”

  Natalie closes the laptop and folds her hands over it. She looks him in the eye, which is worse than any lie. “They don’t know yet. There’s a mass. It’s not responding to the first round of drugs. Biopsy later today, but…” she trails off.

  “But it’s bad.”

  “Yeah. It’s bad.”

  Thad sits, letting the words trickle down into the hollow space beneath his ribs. “She didn’t want me to know.”

  Natalie’s smile is tight and a little apologetic. “She didn’t want anyone to know. It was not until it became a problem she could solve herself. Typical Jocelyn.”

  He looks at Natalie, at her neat hands, the careful way she’s composed herself for this conversation. “You ever get tired of being the one who cleans up her messes?”

  Natalie almost laughs. “I get paid for it. You get the privilege.”

  He grins, but it dies before it reaches its full extent. “Is she… herself?”

  Natalie’s lips twitch, unsure whether to answer. “She’s still running the company from bed if that’s what you mean. She made me reschedule two board meetings before the anesthesia even wore off. She asked for the annual report in hard copy. She doesn’t trust the iPad anymore.”

  “Paranoid to the end.”

  “Driven,” Natalie corrects. “She wanted to make sure you’d come.”

  He looks at the floor and tries to line up his shoes so they’re even. He feels like a kid in detention, unsure whether to be sorry, angry, or exhausted.

  “I should,” he gestures at the door.

  Natalie stands and slides her heels back on with a practiced flick of her foot. “Be ready, okay? She doesn’t want you to see her like this. But she’ll pretend because that’s what she does.”

  He nods, not trusting himself to say more. Natalie vanishes down the corridor, heels clicking softly.

  He hesitates in the doorway, runs a hand through his hair, then opens the door.

  Inside, the lights are dimmed, and there’s the slow, rhythmic bleep of a monitor. Jocelyn is asleep, head tipped to the side, one hand curled on the sheet. The room is filled with flowers, including pristine white lilies, hydrangeas, and two rose arrangements so perfect they look plastic. There’s a stack of legal pads on the side table and a single gold pen perched atop.

  His mother looks like she’s been erased and then redrawn with only the barest lines. Her hair is thinner, her lips blanched, and her hands skeletal beneath the IV line. For a second, he can’t even step forward because if he does, it becomes real.

  He stands in the doorway, mask still on, heart pounding loud enough to drown out the machines, and looks. All the things he wanted to say vanish, replaced by a single, stupid prayer: Please wake up, please be okay.

  CHAPTER NINE

  He stands there, frozen, until Jocelyn’s eyelids flutter, and she lifts her head. The motion is brittle and exact. For a moment, she looks at him, expression flat, appraising. “You look like hell, Thaddeus.”

  He almost laughs. “Missed you too, Mom.”

  She lifts a hand to her temple and smooths back a strand of hair that’s gone silver overnight. Even this she does with efficiency, as if grooming herself for a board meeting rather than a hospital bed.

  “I told Natalie not to call you,” she says, her voice surprisingly strong, though slurred at the edges. “You had three more shows. Paris is tomorrow.”

  He crosses the room, backpack thumping against his hip. “Paris can wait. You can’t.”

  She gives him the withering look he remembers from childhood, the one that used to pin him to the spot for hours. “That’s not true. I’ve got at least two weeks.”

  “Not funny.”

  She shrugs, then picks at the IV with her good hand. “I warned the nurses I’d rip this out myself if they didn’t use the smallest gauge. You’d think I was asking them to do open-heart surgery.”

  Thad pulls up a chair and sits close enough to touch her, but doesn’t, not yet. He’s not sure where to start. He’s not sure if there’s a proper way.

  “So,” he says, “stage four?”

  She nods. “Yes. Metastatic. Liver and somewhere else, I wasn’t listening. Maybe lungs.” She laughs, dry as old paper. “Did you know I once ran a marathon?”

  “Only every Thanksgiving. You made it sound like the moon landing.”

  “Try running with a tumor the size of a racquetball. It’s a different kind of finish line.” Her breath whistles on the inhale. “Sit up straight. You look like a deflated beanbag.”

  He tries to comply, but his spine won’t hold. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jocelyn closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, there’s something raw in her gaze, like she’s dropped the mask for a second. “Because I thought I could fix it. Because I thought if I waited long enough, you’d be ready.”

  “For what?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she gestures at the legal pads on the table. “The Board wants to name an interim CEO. I told them to get stuffed, but Richard’s already circling.”

  “Richard,” Thad echoes as if the name itself is a disease. “Uncle Richard, the dick.”

  “Vultures, all of them. But at least vultures wait until the prey is dead.” She tries to sit up, fails, and gives up with a sigh. “Your hair looks terrible.”

  He wants to cry. He does. Instead, he picks up her hand, careful of the IV line, and holds it. It’s shockingly light, the bones like bird legs under her skin. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  She squeezes his fingers. “You always were.”

  He sits with her like that, not talking, watching the slow expansion and collapse of her ribcage, the way her eyelids flicker at every beep of the machines. Time becomes a slow, syrupy thing, impossible to measure.

  After a while, she opens her eyes again. “Are you sleeping with the keyboardist?”

  The question is so ridiculous that it almost knocks him off his feet. “What? No.”

  She narrows her eyes. “The groupies still, darling?”

  He shakes his head. “Jesus, Mom, can we not…”

  “Relax, Thaddeus. I’m dying, not blind. Your last Instagram post was a little on the nose.”

  He wants to explain, to correct, but it’s not worth the breath. Instead, he says, “You shouldn’t joke about it.”

  “Someone has to,” she says. “Everyone else is too polite.”

  He tries to let go of her hand, but she won’t release it. Instead, she holds on tighter, knuckles whitening. “I need you to listen,” she says, the command echoing all the way back to his childhood. “No arguments. Not this time.”

  He nods.

  “I don’t want a funeral,” she says. “It’s a waste of time and money. If you must do something, make it brief. Cremate, don’t bury. And scatter me somewhere interesting, not on a golf course. Paris would be fine.”

  He’s biting the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. “Not next to Dad?”

  “Your father won’t care. He’s been dead for years, and I don’t want to be buried. I never have been. Besides, he was a cheating bastard.”

  “I know,” he says. “You always said he was a selfish bastard.”

  She smiles, wicked and pure. “I know, and I am not spending the rest of my life close to him.”

  He wants to say I love you, but the words die in his throat, heavy and sticky and impossible to force out.

  She sees it anyway. “Don’t start crying. If you do, I’ll revoke you from the will.”

  He laughs, which is what she wants. “Not a chance. I’ve already spent it.”

  “On what? Cocaine and hair dye?”

  “Mostly shipping fees.”

  Jocelyn’s laugh is a whisper, but it’s real. She squeezes his hand again. “You know what happens next, right?”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  “I’m leaving it all to you. The company, the foundation, the patents. Even the house, if you want it.”

  He blinks. “You’re joking.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  “Mom, I don’t even know what the company does.”

  She waves her hand. “You’ll learn. Natalie will help. Keep it out of your uncle’s hands. Promise me.”

  He hesitates. “I promise.”

  “Never let that dick have it, ever. He will destroy what I built. He will sell it to the highest bidder at the first chance he gets, and it will all be gone,” she sighs.

  “I know,” Thad patted the top of her hand.

  Jocelyn sags back against the pillows, her strength spent. “Good. Now go away. I need to sleep, and you look like you could use a shower.”

  He stands, not ready to leave, but she’s already closed her eyes. Her grip on his hand slackens, then lets go entirely.

  He backs out of the room, closes the door gently behind him, and slumps against the wall in the corridor. He feels hollowed out, every organ replaced with air, and it’s all he can do not to slide down onto the carpet and disappear.

  Instead, he stands there, fists in his pockets, staring at the wall until the world makes sense again.

  It never does.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The city is already roaring by the time Thad steps out of the subway. He barely remembers the ride back to the hotel, the hours spent pacing his room, or the shallow, anxious sleep that left him sweating and wired. What he does remember is the promise, replayed on a loop in his skull: Keep it out of your uncle’s hands. Promise me.

  He gets coffee from a street cart, burns his tongue, and lets the pain center him. The walk to the hospital is a gray blur, concrete, strangers, and the hollow boom of traffic. There’s no wind, but the air is sharp, stinging his cheeks. By the time he arrives, his hands are shaking again, not from the cold but from something more profound, animal.

  Jocelyn is awake, sitting upright in bed, already dressed in something approximating business attire: a silk scarf at her throat, makeup applied with the precision of old habits. The hair is thin, but every strand is where she wants it. She looks better than she did yesterday, less ghostly, more warlord-like.

  “You’re late,” she says, barely glancing up from her legal pad.

  “It’s 8:02,” he points out.

  She makes a sound, half laugh, half snort, and sets the pad aside. “In my experience, early is on time, and on time is late. But I suppose you never learned that on tour.”

  He sits. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like someone filled my veins with wet cement. But I’m alive, and that’s more than I expected. The nurse said you can bring me coffee, as long as it’s black. I don’t trust the cafeteria.”

  He hands her the second cup he bought. She sips and grimaces but drinks anyway. “See? Useful, when pressed.”

  There’s a pause. Thad expects her to make small talk, but she doesn’t. She leans in, eyes sharp.

  “I need you to listen,” she says, echoing the words from yesterday. “No interruptions. I’m tired, and this might be the last day I make sense.”

  He nods.

  “I’m leaving the company,” she says. “Chic Alchemy is yours. No board, no trust. Straight transfer, effective immediately upon my death. Natalie has the paperwork.”