Chapter 5: What Eight Months Looks Like
Claire's apartment was a twenty-minute drive.
I had a key.
I had always had a key.
I sat outside in the car for a few minutes before I used it.
The apartment was quiet.
The curtains in the front room were half-open.
There was a mug on the kitchen counter and a blanket folded over the arm of the sofa.
On the small table by the window, there was a prescription bottle, a glass of water, and a library book with a folded receipt marking the page.
Claire was sitting in the chair by the window.
She had changed out of the dark coat.
She was in a grey sweater and she was looking out at the street.
She heard me come in and turned.
She didn't look surprised.
She didn't look relieved.
She looked like someone who had been waiting for something for a very long time and had stopped trying to guess what it would be.
"You read it," she said.
"Yes."
"Sit down if you want."
I sat on the sofa.
She stayed in the chair.
"Tell me about the diagnosis," I said.
"All of it.
Not the version you decided I could handle.
All of it."
She looked at me for a moment.
Then she told me.
It had started with fatigue she had dismissed as stress.
Then a scan.
Then a second opinion.
Then a specialist in the city she had driven to alone, telling me she had a work conference.
"I went to four appointments before I told my mother," she said.
"I told Rachel the week after."
"But not me."
"No."
"Why Rachel and not me?"
"Because Rachel would do what I asked." Her voice was even.
"I knew you wouldn't."
"You're right," I said.
"I wouldn't have."
She looked out the window.
"The treatment started in January.
It's — it's going.
They think it's going."
"What does going mean?"
"It means the last scan was better than the one before it." She turned back to me.
"It means I'm not dying, Mark.
I want to be clear about that.
I'm not dying.
I'm sick and I'm being treated and it is going to take a long time, but I'm not dying."
Something loosened in my chest that I hadn't realized had been locked.
"You should have told me in September," I said.
"I know."
"You should have told me the week you found out."
"I know."
"I would have stayed."
"I know that too." Her hands were in her lap, very still.
"That's exactly what I was afraid of."
"Claire." I leaned forward.
"Listen to what you just said.
You were afraid I would stay.
You were afraid I would love you through something hard.
You were so afraid of being loved the right way that you sent your sister to my wedding."
She was quiet.
"That is not protecting me," I said.
"That is deciding for me.
There is a difference."
Her jaw tightened.
One tear moved down her face and she let it.
"I didn't want to be a burden," she said.
"You were going to be my wife."
"I know."
"That's the same thing as saying you didn't want to be my wife."
She looked up sharply.
"That is not what I meant."
"Then tell me what you meant."
"I meant—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I meant that I had watched you carry enough.
Lily's mother.
The years after.
I watched you put yourself back together piece by piece and I could not be the thing that broke you again."
The room was very quiet.
"You don't get to make that decision," I said.
"That is my decision to make."
She pressed her hand over her mouth for a moment.
"I know," she said, when she lowered it.
"I know that now."
Outside, a car passed.
The light through the half-open curtains shifted.
"What happens next with the treatment?" I asked.
She blinked.
"What?"
"The treatment.
What's the schedule.
What do you need."
She stared at me.
"Mark—"
"Answer the question, Claire."
She answered the question.
I listened to all of it.
I asked two more questions.
She answered those too, her voice careful and uncertain, like she was waiting for the moment I would stand up and leave.
I didn't stand up.
When she finished, I said, "I'm going to pick up Lily from Daniel's.
I'm going to bring her here.
And the three of us are going to have dinner, and you are going to tell her yourself that you're sick, in whatever words you think are right for a seven-year-old.
And then we are going to figure out the rest of this together."
Claire looked at me for a long time.
"You're angry with me," she said.
"Yes."
"But you're still here."
"Yes."
Her breath came out slowly.
"Why?"
"Because Lily was right," I said.
"Hiding in a hallway alone is what alone looks like.
And I'm not willing to leave you there."
I stood up.
"I'll be back in forty minutes," I said.
"Don't move the library book.
I want to see what page you're on."
She looked at the book on the table.
Then she looked back at me.
For the first time since the chapel, something in her face came loose.
"It's not a very good book," she said quietly.
"Then we'll find you a better one."
May you like
I left.
The door closed softly behind me.
