After Five Years, She Still Wants My Corneas

Five years after Charlie's death, her mother and brother break into her grandmother's house, demanding Charlie's cornea for Jeremy, who lost an eye on a graduation trip. The grandmother tells them Charlie is gone, but the mother refuses to believe it, cursing the girl she adopted only to guide a son into her family. When Jeremy was born, Charlie became his caretaker, neglected and used.

Charlie's body was donated, so her mother will never find her. The grandmother remembers how Charlie was starved, frozen, and nearly sold into marriage for Jeremy's sake. She alone grieves the girl who saved Jeremy from kidnappers and was abandoned to years of captivity in the mountains.

Now the mother threatens to throw the grandmother out of her own home, still calling Charlie a murderer and wishing she had never adopted her. The grandmother can only hold Charlie's photograph and ask whether she regrets saving Jeremy.