“We used to be good at this,” she said.
“At what?”
“Being together without trying so hard.”
The words settled between us.
I closed the book.
“I miss that.”
She didn’t answer.
But she didn’t ask me to leave.
A week passed before the biopsy results came.
Dr. Keller entered the room just after lunch with another doctor beside him, an oncologist named Dr. Anita Shah. The moment I saw both of them, my chest tightened.
Sophie was sitting upright, wrapped in a cardigan her mother had brought. Her mother, Linda, stood near the window, holding her purse with both hands like a shield.
Linda had barely spoken to me since she arrived from Milwaukee.
I didn’t blame her.
The first time she saw me in Sophie’s room, her face went completely still.
“Well,” she had said, “you found yourway back.”
There was no cruelty in it.
