Excerpt from The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I'm happy to just be with you without speaking, if you wish."

"Ok ay."

We are silent for a while, and I don't mind the silence. I think of the times when I would sit by my mother's bed after she became ill. I read to her from her favorite poets, and some- times she would fall asleep while I read and I would just sit there watching her. I look past Dr. Desai and see an empty bed with magazines on top. I hope whoever sleeps in that bed doesn't talk.

"Do you know who found you?" she asks at last.

"Found me?"

"You would surely have died if you hadn't been found. Another fifteen minutes and you'd be gone."

I guess it was my father and Barbara who found me after they got home. But neither of them ever comes into my room. So how was I "saved"? Who is responsible for prolonging this mess?

Dr. Desai opens a brown file folder. "The paramedic wrote in her report that a Juanita Alvarez called 9-1-1."

"Juanita." Something breaks and burns near my heart. A block of frozen shame dissolves and I am flooded with it.

"Apparently," Dr. Desai says. "You didn't know?"

"I don't remember much... . I took the pills. A pain in my chest. My throat. The ambulance." I remember suddenly the scared look on my father's face when he and Barbara came to see me in Intensive Care.

Dr. Desai waits for me to say more.

"Juanita is my nanny. Since I was born."

"She must love you very much."

I look around the room for a place to hide my eyes.

"What happened last night?" Dr. Desai asks.

I bite my lip. Last night. Was it me or someone else who saw my father and Barbara leave, who said good night to Juanita and waited for her to go to sleep? The letter I wrote to her. Did I manage to tape it to the back of the painting?

"Vicky?"

I wait until the pressure in my throat loosens enough for me to breathe. "How can you love someone and still try to kill yourself?"

Dr. Desai does not answer. She hands me the box of tissues, and I stare at it until I realize there are tears streaming down my face. I wipe the tears away.

"Would you like to call Juanita?" She reaches into the pocket of her white doctor's coat and pulls out an old-fashioned cell phone, the kind that flips open.

No. Yes. How can I feel both with equal force? I'm so ashamed, but I want to hear her voice. "She'll want to know why" is all I say to Dr. Desai.

"Do you know why?"

"No."

"Then say you don't know. That it's something you're trying to figure out."

"She's going back to Mexico soon."

"Oh?"

"Her arthritis. She can hardly walk. My father and step-mother thought it better if she was in Mexico. With her family."

There's something like disbelief on Dr. Desai's face. Then she nods with understanding and says, "I'll let you have some privacy." She stands and hands me the phone. She walks out of the room and closes the door gently behind her.

It is after one p.m. That's when Juanita sits down to have her café con leche and a slice of white bread with peanut butter. That's all she ever has for lunch. I let the phone ring once, hang up, and dial again. Barbara has told Juanita not to answer the phone because of all the messages she has bumbled, but Juanita and her friend Yolanda have devised this secret code to signal a call for her. The phone rings and rings, and just when I am about to give up, I hear Juanita's voice.

Excerpted from The Memory of Light by Francisco X Stork. Copyright © 2016 by Francisco X Stork. Excerpted by permission of Arthur A. Levine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.