Before

“Sloane.”

The way Dad said my name did it. Not sharp. Not the version that meant I was in trouble or running late. The careful one, the one that meant he already had some idea and was giving me the chance to say it first.

I took a bite of egg.

“I’ve had a slight fever. Two days, nothing serious. I was going to mention it if it didn’t clear up by this morning.”

He stayed quiet. The range hood was off, which meant he’d been up long enough to not need the noise. His case file was spread across the counter next to the stove and his coffee was still steaming. Bernard was sprawled between the island and the range, taking up more floor space than should have been physically possible, thumping his tail against the tile without lifting his head.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and whatever he had seasoned the eggs with, something herby, which meant he’d actually checked the shelf instead of just grabbing salt. The pendant lights above the island were on, warm against the early blue coming through the window. Outside, Colorado was doing its September thing: bright and promising before it got complicated by noon.

“It’s conditioning,” I said. “My body runs hot after tough weeks. You know that.”

“How high?”

“Ninety-nine point something. Maybe a hundred last night.”

“And your leg?”

I looked at him. “How did you find out about my leg?”

“You’ve been entering rooms slower than usual for a week.” He said it the way he said most things in that kitchen, calm and already decided. “How bad is it?”

“It’s just an ache. Deep, but that’s pretty normal after a week like this.”

He put down his coffee.

“I’m calling Dr. Kerr.”

“Regionals are in six weeks.”

“I know.”

“It’s just conditioning, Dad.”

“I know you believe that.”

I had the whole argument ready. Inflammatory response. Body running ahead of itself. Week-by-week training log in my head that could account for every single symptom. I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Deep down, under all of it, I knew. Not what it was, I didn’t know that, but the nature of the ache felt wrong. The fever felt wrong. The fact that sleep wasn’t fixing either of them felt wrong, and I’d known it since the second morning I woke up at 2am and talked myself back to fine.

“Alright,” I said.

Dad picked up his phone. The back door opened.

Chandler didn’t knock. He never had, had been coming through that door since before he could walk and had never once seen a reason to start asking permission. Dark jeans, gray hoodie, faux hawk doing its usual thing. He was already looking at me when he stepped through the doorframe, which meant he’d caught my face through the window on his way up the driveway.

He crossed the kitchen and took the stool right beside mine. Not across. Right next to me. Bernard relocated to investigate.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He reached past me and grabbed the toast I hadn’t touched. His arm was warm against my shoulder for a second. I looked at my eggs.

“Did you eat anything this morning?” Quieter than usual.

“I’m eating now.”

“The eggs you’ve taken one bite of.”

“Chandler.”

“Sloane.”

He rested his elbow on the island and looked at me sideways. Not pushing. Not making it anything. Just there, the way he always was, and the back of my neck went warm in a way I had no intention of thinking about.

My phone lit up on the counter. Noelle.

need a ride? leaving in 10

Dad ended his call and set his phone on the counter. When he turned around he had that same expression, the measured one that meant the decision was already made and he was delivering the verdict.

“You’re not going to school today.”

I opened my mouth. He waited. I closed it. He was right and I knew he was right and we’d been through this particular routine enough times that we could skip some of the middle parts.

Pops had already left, early briefing, travel mug in hand, a kiss to Dad’s cheek and then gone. The house was quieter without him in it in that specific way it always was, like a frequency dropping just slightly.

“Chandler can grab your assignments,” Dad said.

“Already on it,” Chandler said, without looking up from the toast.

I picked up my phone.

staying home today. fever.

Three seconds.

WHAT. since when. why didn’t you TEXT ME. I’m coming over after school don’t argue

I put it face down.

Dad set up at the loveseat around nine, laptop open, reading glasses on, case file beside him. He didn’t announce he’d cleared his schedule or explain why he was suddenly working from home instead of downtown. He just appeared, settled in, and that was the whole conversation.

On screen Lorelai was doing something with coffee while Rory talked too fast about something else. The whole thing was cozy in that frictionless way it gets when you’ve seen it enough times to not need to pay attention. That was the point. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted noise that wasn’t the inside of my own head.

The fever made everything feel slightly underwater. I shifted against the cushion and stared at the ceiling for a minute before I remembered the TV was on and looked back at it.

I made it to the sofa, Bernard immediately claiming seventy percent of the available space, Gilmore Girls on at a volume that was really just texture. My fever had been climbing all morning, that low restless heat that made everything feel slightly too bright, too loud, too much. I pulled the rust-and-navy throw off the back cushion and draped it over my legs. Bernard put his head on my feet.

“Bernard.”

He exhaled, long and deeply satisfied. I didn’t move him.

I fell asleep somewhere in the third episode and woke up to a dimmer room, the light slanting in from a different angle. Dad was still in the loveseat, red pen working across the case file in his lap, reading glasses still on. The TV hadn’t changed. He hadn’t turned on any extra lights.

I stayed still in that half-awake place where everything is soft and undemanding and the ache in my leg was just a fact, not a problem I had to solve yet. Dad was still in the loveseat. The TV was a low hum. Bernard hadn’t moved. I had about twenty seconds of that before my brain caught up and took it away.

Outside the sky had gone that rich late-afternoon blue. I heard Pops pull into the driveway, then Chandler’s Jeep a minute behind him. The back door, voices in the kitchen, more than one. Stetson. Chandler. Then Jake’s laugh at something, that loud booming one that meant Stetson had said something worth it.

Then the front door. Three quick knocks.

Noelle was the only person in my life who knocked like that.

I heard Stetson get there before anyone else, heard the door open, heard him say hey. There was that shift in his voice, brief and specific, the slight recalibration that happened when it was her. He landed on casual a half-second late. I’d been catching that shift for a while now. Pretty sure he had no idea.

Jake showed up in the doorway before I was fully sitting up. He crossed to the sofa and crouched in front of me, elbows on his knees, eye level, the way he’d done since I was small enough that it was actually a crouch. He looked at me the way Jake always looked when he was being serious: steady, no rush, like he had all the time in the world and wasn’t going to miss anything.

“How you doing, baby girl?”

He’d been calling me that since before I was old enough to tell him to stop. At some point I’d stopped minding.

“Better.” I meant it. The fever felt lighter. “I think it broke.”

Something in his face eased. “Good. You hungry?”

My stomach answered before I could.

“Actually, yeah.”

Jake smiled. “Good. There’s pizza.” He stood and turned toward the kitchen. “Chandler.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s awake.”

A beat. “Be right there.”

I hadn’t said a word about what I wanted. Thirty seconds later Chandler came through the doorway with a paper plate: two slices of buffalo chicken, cheesy bread, a small paper cup of ranch balanced at the edge. He set it on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen for his own. No announcement. No here you go. Just done.

Dad and Pops came in together, Pops with the box, Dad with napkins. Stetson was last with Noelle right behind him. She looked at me the way she did when she was worried, set her bag down, and sat cross-legged on the floor like she’d been doing it her whole life. She practically had. Stetson sat next to her. Not right next to her. Close enough.

Jake settled at the far end of the sofa, lifted my feet off the cushion. Bernard raised his head and issued a look of deep personal offense. Jake set my feet back on his lap. Bernard put his head back down. Agreement reached.

Dad and Pops took the loveseat, Pops tucked against Dad’s side the way he always was when there was room. Chandler dropped to the floor in front of Stetson. Nobody changed the channel.

I reached for my plate. The ranch was cold. The buffalo chicken was exactly right. I finished both slices without stopping, which felt like something, given the morning.

Noelle leaned over at some point and rested her head briefly on Stetson’s shoulder. He went very still in the way boys do when they’re working hard not to show something. I looked at the TV and ate my cheesy bread.

“So,” Dad said.

No introduction. Just so, the way he started things he wanted to land gently.

I looked at him.

“Dr. Kerr called. She wants to see you Thursday morning. Check the leg, run some tests, rule some things out.”

The room didn’t shift. The TV kept going. Jake’s hand rested easy on my ankle.

“Okay,” I said.

Dad nodded and picked up his pizza. Delivered and received, set back down like any other item on the week’s agenda. I wasn’t going to think about it tonight. Tonight the great room was warm, Bernard was heavy on my feet, and Chandler was saying something to Stetson that made Pops laugh into his drink.

Normal. Everything completely normal.

I was good at that. Believing what I needed to.

Later, after everyone had gone and the house went quiet, I lay in bed with the light off and pressed my palm flat against the outside of my left thigh.

Just resting it there.

The fever had broken. The ache hadn’t. Steady and deep, the same as that morning, the same as the morning before that. It wasn’t in my muscles. It was further down than that, and the difference was one I recognized but hadn’t let myself sit with yet.

I pulled my hand away and looked at the ceiling.

Thursday, I told myself. It would all make sense on Thursday.

I almost believed it.