Chapter 7: Diane
"Diane." Robert moved first.
She shook her head quickly — the gesture of someone who does not want to become the center of attention.
"I'm fine.
I just — I stood too long.
I haven't been sleeping well."
"You've gone white," Carol said.
"I'm always pale."
"Not like that."
Robert was already beside her.
He crouched down to her level the way he'd learned to do with patients in the ward — not looming, not alarming, just present.
"How long has your side been hurting?" he asked.
She looked at him sharply.
"I'm not — I'm not a doctor, Diane, I know.
But I spent enough time in that building to recognize that face." He kept his voice low.
"How long?"
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: "A few weeks."
"Have you told anyone?"
"I have an appointment.
Next Thursday."
"That's six days from now."
"I'm aware."
I pulled a chair close and sat beside her.
She looked at me with an expression that was half embarrassment and half something older — the look of a woman who has been managing alone for long enough that being looked after feels almost foreign.
"Frank used to say I was the worst patient he'd ever met," she said.
"And he was married to a nurse for thirty years, so that's saying something."
"He sounds like he was right," I said.
She laughed — a small, surprised sound.
"He usually was."
"Tell me about him."
She glanced at me.
"Now?"
"We have time.
The officiant is still here.
The cake is still on the table.
We have time."
So she did.
She told me about Frank — a quiet, methodical man who had repaired clocks as a hobby and made the same joke every Sunday morning for forty years and cried at every film he claimed not to care about.
She told me about the last months, and the way grief had a physical weight she hadn't expected, like wearing a coat that didn't belong to her and not knowing how to take it off.
She told me that Robert had shown up at her door the first Friday with two cups of coffee and no agenda, and that he had not tried to fix anything or say the right thing.
He had just sat with her.
And that, she said, had been the only thing that helped.
"He talked about you constantly," she said to me.
"Every week.
Ellen said this.
Ellen did that.
Ellen would know how to handle this." She shook her head.
"I used to tell him he should be talking to you instead of me."
"What did he say?"
"He said he was trying to protect you." She paused.
"I told him that was the most loving and most foolish thing I'd ever heard.
That the people who love us don't need protecting from our hard parts.
They need to be trusted with them."
I looked at Robert, who was standing a few feet away, close enough to hear.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
"Did it help?" I asked Diane.
"The counseling."
"More than I expected." She smoothed the fabric of her skirt with one hand.
"I still wake up at three in the morning and reach for the other side of the bed.
I don't think that stops.
But I can get up now.
I can make coffee.
I can come to a stranger's vow renewal and hand over envelopes and make a complete scene." She gave me a dry look.
"So.
Progress."
"You didn't make a scene," I said.
"You told the truth."
"Your granddaughter told the truth.
I just provided the documentation."
Lucy, who had been listening from two chairs away with the focused attention of a child who knows she is being discussed, sat up straighter.
"I heard Grandpa on the phone," she said seriously.
"He was talking to a lady and he said don't tell Grandma yet.
So I thought—" She stopped.
Reconsidered.
"I thought it was bad."
"It wasn't bad," I told her.
"I know that now." She paused.
"But I still think secrets hurt people."
"Sometimes they do," I said.
"And sometimes people keep them because they're trying to be kind, and they get it wrong." I looked at Robert.
"And then the people who love them have to decide what to do with that."
Lucy thought about this carefully.
"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.
The yard was quiet.
The lights swayed.
Thomas stood near the gate with his hands in his pockets.
Carol and David and Patrice were watching me.
Diane was watching me.
The officiant had not left.
Robert was watching me.
I stood up.
I held out my hand to him.
May you like
He took it.
"Lucy," I said, "I think we're ready for those rings now."
