THE NIGHT THAT Margo received Josie’s package, her brother drove her to the nursing home.

As usual, Margo held her mother’s hand, lightly caressing her papery skin, feeling her mother’s swollen veins rolling around beneath her fingertips. When Robert left to use the restroom, Margo removed the journal from her purse and placed it on the mattress. To her surprise, Thea twitched, as if shocked by static, and bumped her hand against the book’s spine.

Margo leaned forward and whispered, “I brought you something, Mama.” Then, without really understanding why, she slid the journal underneath her mother’s pillow.

The next morning, when the home called, Margo had been expecting it; however, she never thought she’d hear the nurse say, “We’ve got some good news.”

Robert and Margo rushed over to find Thea sitting up in her hospital bed, watching as they came through the door, looking like she’d anticipated them arriving at that exact moment. They cried out in joy and hurried across the room, embracing their mother carefully, as if a forceful jolt might just send her away again. The staff had told them that the likelihood of a recovery — especially from someone their mother’s age — was close to zero. But there she was, once more defying the odds.

After the nurses filled the siblings in on Thea’s state of being, her vital signs and such, Robert and Margo sat with her and shared stories of the past month — innocuous things like the unseasonable warmth, the exceptional foliage, the new stoplight in the center of town. They stayed away from any talk of what Margo had gone through. After about half an hour of this, Thea asked Robert if he wouldn’t mind going out to the pharmacy to get her favorite brand of hand lotion. When he responded that he could bring it to her some other time, she insisted that he leave now.

As soon as he’d gone, Thea took Margo’s hand. “I had a dream about you,” she said.

Margo felt the blood drain from her face. “Did you really, Mama?”

“When I was asleep, I dreamed you were in trouble in the old house.”

“Which old house is that?”

“You know which house.”

Margo felt a rush of cold. “But, Mama, you never told me about —”

Thea went on, “You were with a whole bunch of people I’d never seen before, and you were all in danger. There was a little girl staying in my bedroom, and in the dream, I was a little girl too. I wished I could tell her to warn you, but I was stuck. I couldn’t speak. The only thing I could do was remember. I knew if I showed the girl my memories, that would help you.” Thea reached under the thin covers and removed the book that Margo had slid beneath the pillow the previous night. She held it up, her hand wobbling. Her gummy eyelids overflowed with tears, and her voice hitched. “I helped. Didn’t I?”

Margo felt herself beginning to crumble, but she forced herself to sit up straight. She slowed her breath. And when she spoke, her voice was steady, as still as the water of the bay during that morning she’d traveled with the wedding party out to Stone’s Throw Island. “Yes, Mama,” she said. “You helped.”