“You’re doing that on purpose,” she said.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I’m bringing dramatic flair.”
“You’re ruining literature.”
For a moment, the room shifted.
Not back to what we had been.
Something like it.
Something gentler, sadder, and more careful.
Then her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands.
“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 your way back.”
