The screen kept flashing, casting a pale blue light over the bedside table and a dusty plastic water pitcher.

The woman in the bed watched my hand with still, quiet eyes.

“Who is that?” she asked.

Her voice was a thin, dry whisper that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete.

“It’s Rachel,” I said, stepping closer to the bed.

“Rachel?”

Her eyes tracked my face, searching the lines of my forehead and the shape of my jaw.

I took off my damp wool coat and laid it carefully over the back of a orange plastic chair.

“I’m your granddaughter,” I said. “Ethan’s wife. Diane’s daughter.”

She blinked slowly, her pale hands clutching the edge of the stiff white sheet.

The skin on her knuckles was translucent, showing the blue veins beneath like thin wires.

“Rachel,” she repeated, a tiny spark of recognition lighting up her gray eyes. “You have your father’s nose.”

“But you have your grandfather’s eyes,” she added, her voice gaining a fraction of strength.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, careful not to let the springs creak too loudly.