Loved this story, even with the bittersweet ending.
I like stories set in San Francisco, my favourite city in my second-favourite state (after Oregon, if anyone cares).
There were a few times when I felt the reader might've separated words a little better (e.g. "Mariapproached me" which probably isn't a phrase that actually occurs in the story, but is indicative of the sort of thing I mean) but other than that, I liked the reading.
I liked the depiction of the allergic mom from the outside point of view. It's easy for those of us without allergies - or perhaps even without severe ones - to dismiss people with potentially life-threatening allergies (and even non-lethal but annoying ones) as alarmists or whiners. I have a friend who
was such a dismisser ... until she developed food allergies herself, which she sees as some kind of karma.
Even though it was never stated, to me it was obvious that Kevin found his mom's allergies inconvenient, irritating, even embarrassing, but then we got to see the mom's perspective and the realization that however true all that is for him, it's ten times truer for her. Well done!
(Full disclosure: I've never been an allergy sufferer and so I probably don't really have any right to be commenting on the subject.)
I found the ending to be a really effective way of demonstrating that Maria's abilities really were gone, with her no longer being able to tell when she was being watched.
Actually, I felt (and liked!) that it was left ambiguous as to whether she was no longer able to tell, or just didn't react, if she could. "But she never looks up at me." Devastating.
