“You disappeared for five days!”

“I know.”

“I called you!”

“I asked you not to.”

“Do you have any idea what I thought?”

She met my eyes.

“I thought you might be frightened.”

I nearly laughed.

I’d spent five days silently accusing her of abandoning me.

Skyla opened the wooden box.

I recognized it immediately.

It had belonged to her grandmother.

Its lid was scratched, and someone had glued a damaged corner back together.

Inside, Skyla preserved her grandmother’s handwritten recipes.

She’d once described it as the one possession she’d never willingly surrender.

Now the recipe cards had been shifted aside.

Beneath them lay a thick stack of papers.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“Options.”

She settled onto the couch.

“Remember my grandmother’s friend Meryl? The woman who used to volunteer with patients?”

I nodded.

“Meryl went through a serious illness years ago. Grandma helped her get to appointments. I remembered she’d worked with a patient-support group afterward.”