Page 111 of Here We Go Again

Joe is going to die. There is no secret medical trial that will save him. No third-act miracle coming their way. Absolutely nothing she can do. So, she frees herself from the burden of responsibility. It’s not her fault. All she can do is clean up the shit when it comes.

“I want to write a book,” she tells Logan.

“Can we clean the poop off our hands first?”

Another deranged laugh emerges from Rosemary’s throat. It’s hilarious. Or maybe it’s tragic?

The early morning Dunkin’ employees take pity on them, and Rosemary washes her feet in the bathroom sink, then orders herself the largest iced coffee possible.

The van still smells like poop, but they drive with the windows down. As they finally cross the state border into Maine, they get to see the sunrise over the Atlantic out the passenger side of the car. Everything is beautiful and painful.

Except the Dunkin’ iced coffee. That tastes like actual shit.

LOGAN

Dunkin’ has the most magnificent coffee she’s ever tasted.

Rosemary is behind the wheel, and she oscillates between laughing at nothing and crying at everything. She seems a few mile markers away from a total mental breakdown.

But the sunrise is in her hair as it whips in the wind of the open windows. Logan wants to sleep, but she doesn’t. She watches Rosemary come into full light instead.

ROSEMARY

Bar Harbor, Maine.

At nine o’clock in the morning on July 12, they finally arrive. It only took them a month. She laughs at the thought.

And then she’s crying again, because this—this pretty little resort town in northern Maine—is where it all ends.

“Hang in there, Rosie,” Logan orders as she uses her phone to navigate them to a small, Cape Cod–style cottage by the sea. “You can sleep soon.”

Rosemary tries to keep it together until she pulls into a gravel driveway. There’s already a white van with the wordsMount Desert Home Hospicepainted on the side.

Rosemary turns off the engine for the last time. Then, she falls out of the van like a lifeless ball of clay. Somehow, Logan is already there by the driver’s-side door, waiting to catch her.

A burly white man with a full auburn beard wearing scrubs appears in front of them, pushing a gurney. He looks like he belongs on the cover of a romance novel about lobster fishermen. “I’m Nurse Addison,” he grunts by way of greeting. Rosemary has no idea if Addison is a first name or a last name.

“I’ll be overseeing Joseph’s medical care,” Nurse Addison explains as he effortlessly lifts Joe out of the Gay Mobile and onto the gurney. Rosemary is only vaguely aware of the fact that Logan is still holding her upright.

“And I’m Guillermo,” says an equally large man in bright floral scrubs. “Mr. St. Patin hired me to assist Nurse Addison until Mr. Delgado passes. Let’s get everyone into the house.”

Thehousein question looks like it hasn’t been touched since theeighties. Nurse Addison puts Joe into a hospital bed he’s set up in the living room, and Guillermo leads Logan and Rosemary upstairs to two bedrooms separated by a shared bathroom.

Separate bedrooms.

Logan deposits Rosemary into a drafty bedroom with maroon carpet and vomit-colored walls. The bed is rickety, sharp coils digging into her back, but she doesn’t even care because it’s a bed. Odie climbs up next to her and curls himself into a tight ball against her side. Logan turns to go find her own room.

Everything is beautiful and painful.

Rosemary stares at the ceiling as tears roll sideways down her temples. The shower whooshes to life on the other side of the wall.

Rosemary should shower, too. Rosemary shouldsleep.

Instead, she rolls over and studies the room. A dated dresser with a built-in vanity. A dormer window with a desk tucked into the nook. And on the desk, a typewriter. Joe’s old typewriter.

She drags her body over to the desk and sits down on the wobbly wooden chair. Out the window, she can see green trees. Sunshine. The ocean.

There’s a stack of aged printer paper, almost the same color as the walls, in one of the desk drawers. It takes a few minutes to figure out how, but eventually, she feeds a sheet of paper into the typewriter, her index finger punching an experimental key. The letterLappears on the paper with a forceful clack.