Chapter 8: What She Didn't Say

She hadn't told Theo. Or Justin. Or anyone. Three months: that was the number the oncologist had given her in February, with the qualifier that it was a range and not a certainty and that "some patients" did better than the median, which was the specific phrasing of medical communication designed to provide hope without promising it. Four months was what she'd told herself. Four months to get the house ready to sell. Four months to do this last thing for Theo, who had been checking on the house every week and filling the feeder and loving her from a distance because he'd learned that distance was what she needed. She had not planned to feel differently. She had not planned to be in the kitchen light with Justin Cole, hearing about her mother's conversations, watching a bird at the feeder, and feeling the world pull her toward it with the particular urgency of things you didn't know you wanted until they were almost out of reach. She sat on the porch that evening after Justin had left and thought carefully. The problem was time. Not enough. That had been the constant of the last three months — every decision made under the shadow of a hard deadline that only she knew about. She hadn't told Theo because Theo would stop being practical and start being a grieving brother, and she needed him functional. She hadn't told Justin because he had questions she couldn't answer and she couldn't ask him to hold information that would change everything. But the wall was out. The light was in. And she had four months, not three, if she was careful. She had spent her career designing things meant to outlast her. Buildings that would stand long after she was gone. It was the thing she was proudest of and had never thought about as a personal fact until now. Justin's truck was pulling out of the drive when she came off the porch. "Cole," she called. He stopped. Window down. She walked to the truck and stood at the window. Up close, she could see the care he was taking to not assume anything, to not move this in any direction she hadn't indicated, and she understood that this carefulness was itself an answer to the question she'd been carrying for ten years. "The questions you have," she said. "I'll answer them. Not all at once. But — I'll answer them." A pause. "I can't promise you anything else. I need you to understand that going in." He looked at her for a long moment. "Okay," he said. Just that. No pushing. No asking for more than she'd offered. "Okay," she said. She went back inside. The kitchen still held the light, even at evening, which she hadn't expected. The house was full of things she hadn't expected. She sat at the kitchen table — her mother's table, the table at the center of thirty years of family — and opened her sketchbook and started drawing the garden as it should have always been arranged. Four months. She had four months. She would use them.