"Your job. The night one."
"Juni, I'd never —"
"You would." She said it the way she'd tell you the carb count of a banana. Not arguing. Just reporting. "You said it to Aunt Steph. In March. On the porch, when you thought I was in the bath. You said if nights don't work you don't know what you'll do, there's no plan C. You said if you go back to days we can't keep the house, and if we lose the house you don't know where we'd go, because Grandpa's place only has the one bedroom and Aunt Steph's in Tacoma and Tacoma's too far from Boise for my appointments. You said, I can't lose the house, Steph, I can't do that to them on top of everything. You said everything like it was a bad word." She looked down at the placemat on the counter, at nothing. "And then you cried. On the porch. I could hear it through the bathroom window."
I remembered the conversation. I didn't remember crying. But I knew that she was telling the truth, because I knew the porch and I knew March and I knew what I sounded like when Steph asked me how I was really doing.
"So when I didn't wake up," Juni said, "the first time, in April, I thought, if Mom finds out I don't wake up, she'll quit nights. And then we'll lose the house. And it'll be because of me. Because of my stupid pancreas." Her chin did something. She got control of it. "And Kel woke up. So I thought, it's fine. Kel can do it. And you were so happy, Mom. You kept saying how responsible I was. You told Abeyta. You told Ximena's mom. You were so happy that I was handling it."
"I was happy because I thought you were safe."
"I was safe," she said. "Kel made me safe."
I turned to my son. "And you went along with this."
"She made me promise," he said.
"She's ten years old, Kellan. You're fifteen. You don't get to keep a promise like that to a ten-year-old. You come to me. That's what you do. That's what I asked you to do, in April, I sat on your bed and I said if you ever hear her —"
"I did hear her!" he said. "That's what you said! You said if you hear her alarm, go in. So I went in. I did what you said." His voice broke in the middle and he didn't stop. "You didn't say, and then tell me. You didn't say, and then wake me up at work. You said go in. So I've been going in."
"That's not —"